We refer to the hottest time of year as the dog days of summer. However, right now in Maine, winter is at its coldest.
Frost gardens have grown on the windows.
Perhaps we can refer to this cold season as the cat days of winter?
The frigid weather has finally frozen the lakes, but there are no villages of fishing shacks as there have been in past winters. I wonder if Covid-19 has discouraged people from gathering on the ice. I miss the busy hubbub of activity that the villages bring to deep winter. This year the lakes seem so quiet.
But there is always the consolation of bare branches against a bright blue sky. The pandemic cannot take this away.
The first blizzard of the season is blowing up the East Coast. My New York City daughter has reported that it’s snowing like crazy in Brooklyn. Soon, it will be snowing like crazy in Maine, too. A foot is predicted, but we shall see.
However, we have plenty of wood for the furnace, and our snow thrower, Little Green—with its belts repaired—is ready to go.
Time to make a white bean soup for tomorrow so that after we’re done cleaning up the snow, we will have a nice meal that can be reheated with little effort.
Winter is a lot of work, I know, and staying warm can be expensive for those of us on a tight budget. Still, I love this hunkering down time of year, when the world is cold and white on the outside and snug on the inside.
The Danish and Norwegians have a word for this notion of coziness—hygge—and I am sure many of you have heard of it. As someone who loves all things cozy, I feel as though this word, this concept, was made for me.
Essential, perhaps, for a woman who was born north of north in the lower forty-eight states, where winter can start in November and often doesn’t let up until the end of March or the beginning of April.