This is what the end of our driveway looked like yesterday afternoon.
Naturally, it had to be cleared. Clif fetched Little Green and got to work.
While Clif took care of the wall o’snow, I shoveled the various paths out back—much to the delight of the dog—as well as the steps and walkway out front. I also tackled the wall o’snow by the mailbox and cleared a space so that the mail carrier could deliver mail.
When we were done, I could appreciate all the beauty of this white stuff.
Yet again, after the clean-up, we felt we had earned our snack of buttered popcorn. Clif and I settled on the couch in the living room, and the dog, of course, settled beside us. After the snack, I took a short nap and woke up refreshed, ready to go to a library meeting.
Oh, the goings-on at the little house in the big woods.
I might be exaggerating. It hasn’t snowed every day, but it’s starting to feel that way. Clif and I are beginning to wonder where in the world we are going to put more snow. Our driveway is a tunnel, and backing out, I’m more than likely to hit a snow bank. Fortunately, snow is soft, which means no damage is done.
We did have a break on Friday, when friends came over for minestrone soup, cornbread, and strawberry bars. We had many things to discuss, but we did manage to slide in some book talk, which always perks me up.
We had another break on Saturday, and Clif and I just piled on the activities while the weather was good. In the morning, we went to Railroad Square for Cinema Explorations, a winter film series. (Clif and I are on the planning committee.) We saw On the Way to School, a delightful but thought-provoking film about the long journey some children must make to get to school. Children from Kenya, Argentina, Morocco, and India were featured, and they traveled many, many miles, some by foot, some by horse, and one boy was even pushed several miles in a wheel chair. Sometimes the way was dangerous—elephants in Kenya, treacherous terrain in Morocco—and these children received blessings from their parents to get to school safely. The French director Pascal Plisson has worked for National Geographic, and the film’s gorgeous cinematography reflects this.
My friend Margy Burns Knight—an author, teacher, and former Peace Corps volunteer—led a discussion after the film, and when the official discussion was over, it spilled into the parking lot and then to Grand Central Café, where we had pizza. Even though the subject is serious, the tone of On the Way to School is as light as a Mozart aria. Nevertheless, we spent as much time talking about the film as we did watching it. Despite the film’s light tone, it means business.
After the movie, Clif and I came home to celebrate Mike’s birthday. We are of the firm conviction that every birthday, anniversary, holiday—you name it—should be celebrated. Celebrations add spice to life, and they don’t have to be elaborate or expensive to be fun. Our celebrations are always simple and at home, with meals cooked from scratch and small presents. There’s nothing big or showy about our celebrations, and we thoroughly enjoy them.
Mike’s birthday celebration was no different, and we stretched it out as we always do with appetizers—roasted pistachios and chickpeas as well as popcorn; followed by the main meal, homemade pizza—I did cheat and buy the dough; and dessert—ice cream cake.
It was a good thing we celebrated Mike’s birthday on Saturday because on Sunday, more snow came, and here it is on Monday, snowing yet again.
Today, friends are coming over for lunch, and yesterday I made a big batch of minestrone soup using lots of Farmer Kev’s vegetables: yellow and green beans, yellow summer squash, garlic, and carrots. The soup is warming in my trusty Crock-Pot as I write. I’ll be making corn bread to go with it.
This Saturday, we will be going to Cinema Explorations, the winter film series Clif and I helped organise for Railroad Square Cinema. In the afternoon, Mike, Shannon, and the dogs will be coming over to the little house in the big woods to celebrate Mike’s birthday.
A busy but fun weekend that will certainly perk up this housebound family.
Yesterday’s post was rather heavy, so today I thought I would turn to a lighter subject: our cats—Sherlock and Ms. Watson. A few days ago it occurred to me that while I frequently write about the dog and include many photos of him, I seldom write about the cats. It seemed only fair, then, to devote some time to them.
I suppose I should just come clean and admit I am more of a dog person than a cat person. I don’t dislike cats—far from it—but somehow I’m just more attuned to dogs. However, because we feed the birds, we have a mouse house. Several years ago, we tried going without cats, and we had a mouse invasion. Oh, the little creatures were all over the place—even in my office—and while I have nothing against mice, I do want them to stay outside. So we have cats, and they are a very effective mouse deterrent.
Sherlock and Ms. Watson are litter mates. (Clif, a fan of the quirky detective, named them.) I got Sherlock and Ms. Watson as kittens from the Humane Society in Augusta. Neither has a tail, and, yes, the cats were born that way. We get a surprising number of questions about this. I hope we don’t look like the kind of people who would chop off the tails of two kittens. Because we most certainly are not. Sherlock has the stubbiest tail, and with its puff of fur it looks almost like a rabbit’s tail. Ms. Watson’s tail is a little longer, and she is able to twitch it when she is irritated.
Unfortunately, she has ample cause to be irritated because Sherlock is not what you would call a nice cat. You might even call him a punk. Sherlock drives Ms. Watson away from choice spots, say, on top of the buffet, so that he can have the spot for himself. He bites her back hard enough to leave small marks. He periodically chases her through the house, and she hisses as she runs.
Since Ms. Watson is a timid cat, Sherlock’s aggression is a trial for her, and we intervene when we can. Fortunately, Sherlock is also rather lazy, content to nap much of the time and leave Ms. Watson alone. However, when Sherlock gets too feisty, we put him on the porch, and especially when it’s cold, this calms him right down. Five minutes later we let Sherlock in, and he has lost the desire to pick on Ms. Watson.
Despite his bullying personality, I am fond of Sherlock. And Ms. Watson is a dear little cat who would like nothing better than to be in my lap when I’m on the couch.
As I wrote in a previous post, last weekend we visited our friend Diane, and one of the things we talked about was her work at her town’s local food pantry. On Monday, I got an email from her telling me that because of the bad weather, only ten families came to the pantry. A normal Monday count is fifty families. Ten families out in bad weather to get food. Fifty families when the weather is good. And Diane lives in an affluent community that is not known for the number of people who need food assistance.
By a strange coincidence—it’s funny how often this happens—there was an editorial in last week’s Sunday Kennebec Journal about the greater Portland area and General Assistance. (Diane does not live in Portland.) The gist of the piece was that Portland’s General Assistance is not excessively generous and is, in fact, greatly needed. “Demand for General Assistance spiked in 2009, the first year of the worst recession in 80 years. The budget has climbed each year since then as the benefits of the recovery have been disproportionately distributed to the people at the high end of the income scale. That’s why in Portland you can see lines outside trendy restaurants and at the soup kitchen a few blocks away.”
That last sentence really caught my attention—the notion of two lines of people, one group waiting to get into a trendy and almost certainly expensive restaurant while another group waits in line for the soup kitchen. What kind of city, what kind of state, what kind of country do we have where there are two lines so far apart?
People, of course, are entitled to spend their money any way they want, but is it decent to flock to a trendy restaurant, where the meals are usually $25 or even higher, while so many people wait in the soup kitchen line? Before the Great Recession, I’m not sure if I would have asked this question. I am a foodie, and I love the idea of a vibrant food scene with good chefs and good restaurants. A happy day for me is going to an outdoor food fair—when the weather is good—and nibbling on food here and there. When times were better, Clif and I would occasionally go to a restaurant where the meals were expensive.
But the Great Recession has clarified a lot of things, one of them being the terrible inequality in this country. People are twisting themselves inside out to have a safe, comfortable place to live, enough fuel to stay warm, enough food to eat, education for their children, and in too many cases, health care. (Diane spoke of how some of the people who come to the food pantry have lost all their assets, including their homes, because of illness and lack of health insurance.)
It is human, I know, to be concerned with the circle of people closest to you. It is easy to forget that there are other less fortunate circles. It is easy to look away, to justify, to want to splurge. But again I ask the question: Is it decent?
It’s official. The snow is so deep in the backyard that the cellar windows are completely blocked, and when you look out, all you see is a white wall. As my daughter Shannon put it, we have gotten four feet of snow in one week. Surely that must be some kind of record for the most snow in the shortest amount of time. With all this snow, those who ski, snowshoe, or snowmobile must be pretty darned happy.
The view out the cellar window
It has also been very cold, which makes the snow light and subject to drifting. Even in our yard, which is surrounded by trees and thus shielded from the wind, the snow has been sculpted into huge mounds. On this sunny day, the blue-shadowed snow surrounds the little house in the big woods, and it reminds me of a desert, with shifting snow rather than shifting sand.
A desert of snow
The next four days, the weather is supposed to be fairly decent, with perhaps just a bit of snow—four inches or so—to remind us that winter still has a grip on us.
With all the clean-up we must do, I can’t call winter restful. There’s nothing relaxing about hours of shoveling day after day. Still, despite the hard work, I am dazzled by the beauty of this desert of snow I find myself in.
The window box, buriedRolling snow
Soon I will go out to do more shoveling. Soon I will refill the bird feeders that have been mobbed by hungry birds—finches, titmice, chickadees, woodpeckers, and blue jays. The mourning doves, crows, and squirrels hunt for fallen seed in the snow. After I fill the feeders, I will be sure to scatter seed for them, too. Little tunnels indicate other rodents gather seed beneath the feeders.
These creatures somehow survive the cold weather. Fluffy feathers, thick fur, underground burrows all help. But I am grateful for my own snug home and my well-stocked pantry and freezer, filled with so many good things.
Soup will soon be on the menu. Warm, nourishing, economical, exactly the right kind of meal when you are surrounded by a snow desert.
Yesterday, we visited our friend Diane, and upon returning and driving through the tunnel of snow that is now our driveway, my husband, Clif, observed, “You should call this the little house in the big snow.” Duly observed, and he couldn’t be more right.
I’m not sure if the pictures adequately show just how deep the snow is around our house, but in the shot below, it looks as though the snow is up to the windows. That’s because it is. While we don’t have the most snow ever—one winter the snow was up to the bottom of our outdoor lantern—it seems as though it’s the most snow we’ve gotten in the shortest amount of time—two feet of snow promptly followed by another foot of snow with yet another foot of snow predicted for today.
Snow up to the windows
And how cold it is. When I went outside to take pictures of our snow-bound house, the snow squeaked beneath my shoes, and I wasn’t suprised to learn that the temperature was still at zero degrees, even though it was midmorning.
So, more clearing of snow this afternoon. High winds are predicted to go along with the storm, which means we have to worry about our power going out. Clif is working at home today, and we’ll have our big meal at noon—a strata using Farmer Kev’s broccoli. That way, we’ll have plenty of time to do the dishes and clean the kitchen before the winds come.
Because of the weather, Clif and I have been pretty house-bound, and although we love our home, there comes a point where we both feel a little stir crazy. How good it was, then, to visit our friend Diane. We had tea, a tasty bread made from exotic grains—can’t remember what they were—that gave a lovely carob flavor to the loaf. Best of all was the conversation. We talked about the burgeoning food movement in Maine—the increase in young farmers and co-ops. We talked about the number of people struggling to afford good food—Diane volunteers at her local soup kitchen and food pantry, and she has seen first hand how the Great Recession has affected people. She told us about a Japanese drumming concert she recently attended and how she met a man who was planning on opening a noodle shop on Munjoy Hill.
“Let’s all go when it opens,” I said. Clif and I rarely eat out anymore. With many places charging $10 for lunch, it’s become too expensive for us. But Clif and I are suckers for noodle shops—we found a great one in New York City once when we were visiting Dee—and noodles are usually very affordable.
When we left Diane’s house, a nearly-full moon was rising, framed by a neighbor’s roof and the bare branches of a large, dark tree. The sky was a deep blue, and how beautiful the winter sky was at twilight.
We stopped at Reny’s on the way home, and we got some wicked good deals, as we Mainers like to say.
All in all, a great way to cap off a delightful afternoon.
Finally, the snow stopped, the sky cleared, and the sun came out. Time to clean up the snow. Again. But also time to take some pictures of late January—of deep snow, ice, and small things.
To borrow and flip a common description of March, January is certainly going out like a lion. It is snowing again, and the forecast indicates we will be getting another foot of snow. More shoveling, more canceled plans.
On the bright side…Clif and I will certainly be getting our exercise thanks to nature’s gym, as we jokingly call it. And, Liam, too, will get a work out. By nightfall, after so much shoveling, we’ll all be sacked out in the living room. And if the snow doesn’t stop by nightfall, tomorrow we’ll have to do it all over again.
We are positively hemmed in by the snow, and the woods are now closed to me. I could go on snowmobile trails, but it makes me nervous to do so. Those little machines go fast, and especially with the dog, I’m always afraid I’m not going to get out of the way in time in such deep snow. The trails are for the snowmobiles, so I don’t have much of a complaint, but I will miss going in the woods. Always something different to see and photograph.
Except for the paths I have shoveled, my own backyard is closed to me. Winter, with its deep snow, is a time of confinement. The landscape might loom large and white, but where you can go is narrowly proscribed unless you have skis, snowshoes, or a snowmobile. Unfortunately, with my creaky knees, my days of skiing and snowshoeing are over. While I don’t hate snowmobiles the way some green beans do, I have no desire to own one.
It’s a good thing, then, that January is so beautiful. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to stand it. On a snowy day, January is majestic and solemn. On a sunny day, with the blue shadows on the smooth snow, the landscape is so dazzling that I almost don’t mind being confined to my little paths. Almost. (The pictures in this post were taken yesterday, on one of those sunny days.)
Today, along with shoveling, will be a day to make bread. I’ll also do a bit of decluttering in the hopes we can get to the transfer station tomorrow.
In the meantime, the snow comes down, soft and steady.
When the blizzard came to Maine on Tuesday, everything except the falling snow and the hungry birds seemed to come to a standstill. The schools, were closed, the state offices shut down, and even my dentist’s office wasn’t open.
“This is the first time ever our office has closed ahead of time,” Nancy, my dental hygienist, told me on Monday when I was having my teeth cleaned.
And a good thing, too, because the snow came down, down, down all day Tuesday and well into Wednesday morning, when the storm finally wore itself out. Midafternoon on Tuesday, Clif and I went out to clear the driveway, the walkways, and the various paths in the backyard. We knew we’d have to do it again on Wednesday, but with so much snow, we felt it was best to keep up with it. The dog came out to jump, bark, and supervise. At one point, Liam’s black face was covered with snow, and it made him look like a panda bear.
Panda Liam
We spent two hours outside and cleaned about a foot of snow. When we came in, the paths, steps, and driveway were already filling back in. We shed our dripping clothes, made some popcorn, and settled on the couch to read. The dog settled beside us, begging for popcorn. Outside, a blue-grey dusk settled over the landscape, and it was a color I had never seen before. But gradually the black of night replaced the blue-gray of dusk, and it was time to pull down the shades.
There is something sharply defining about a blizzard—the preparations, the shoveling, and the clearing of snow. We know what our duties are, and we tend to them. As much as we humans are shaping the planet, nature is still a force be reckoned with, and blizzards put us in our place.
On Wednesday, after breakfast, Clif and I were back outside. Again, the driveway, steps, walkways, and paths had to be cleared. The car, a great mound of snow, had to be uncovered. At the end of the driveway, there was a wall of snow—four feet high—left by the plow. But hardest of all was the roof, which had to be scraped so that ice dams, which lead to leaks, wouldn’t build up. The snow in the front yard was so deep that I had to shovel a path for Clif so that he could scrape the roof with a long device of connected poles and a large plastic blade on the end. In turn, the scraping of the snow brought an avalanche of hard-packed snow onto the two porches. This snow, of course, had to be removed.
“I’ll do it,” I said to Clif, whose arms were tired. He had done enough.
Clif with the roof scraper and Liam at the ready to supervise
All told, we each spent six hours clearing snow after the storm, but by late Wednesday afternoon, the cleaning was done, and we both felt we had earned more popcorn. After our snack, Clif dozed on the couch, the dog slept in the chair by the window, and the orange cat lay on my lap, making it difficult for me to write in my notebook.
Another foot of snow is projected for Friday and Saturday. Clif and I will be ready, and so will Liam.
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Notes From the Hinterland 