Sun Squirreling

These days I'm storing up sunshine like a squirrel stores nuts.  I don't know that I can really store sunshine (maybe in the form of Vitamin D?), but at least I can store up the memory of it.  On second thought, forget that.  I know that it is impossible, on a sleety January day, to recall how it feels to sit in the warm sun.

Regardless, I sat outside on the sunny patio stripping lavender for a while this morning.  I have quite a harvest this year.  My plants, which I placed up against the stone wall in front of the house, made it through their first Vermont winter, thanks no doubt to being snuggled under a thick duvet of snow, their backs against the sun-warmed stones.

Normally, I don't strip lavender, but roughly chop the stems and throw the whole thing into potpourri.  This year, however, I want to make lavender-filled eye pillows, and the stems might feel a little rough against the eyelids of my loved ones--not to mention my own eyelids--so I'm having to separate the blossoms from the stems.  It's a slow, repetitive task, but if you're olfactorily fixated like me, you don't mind it.

While I worked, Wolfie and Bisou passed the stick du jour back and forth to each other.  The bird feeder was right behind me, so I could hear the flutterings of the chickadees as they landed and took off, and also the bulletins they sent out (i.e., tweets) as to their location and activities.  "Just arrived at feeder for lunch," "Dropped a seed!" "Stopped on chicken-house roof to check dog locations," and on and on. 

Replace the flaming maples with gnarled olive trees and the chickadees with hoopoes  (you can see them here) but keep the sun, the cobalt sky and the scent of lavender, and I could have been somewhere on the foothills of the Pyrenees. 
  
Then a chilly breeze came up, and I came back to Vermont.  I gathered up my lavender, called the dogs, and went inside.

Southern Exposure

Nothing restores the soul in winter like a south-facing window on a sunny afternoon.

I am fortunate to have a glassed-in porch at the back of the house. It is narrower and more rustic than I would like, but on a cold sunny day, with plenty of snow on the ground, it is heaven on earth.

It was 14F when I took the younger dogs out this morning, and the snow in the field was knee-deep. Wolfie and Bisou plowed through it like a pair of dolphins in the surf, but before long I could tell that even they had had enough, and we went inside. I unfastened my treat pouch, took off my sunglasses, gloves, hat, and coat. I rubbed Bisou with a towel and did my best to melt the snow balls that had collected in her armpits and belly. And then she and I went into the porch.

It felt like 80F in there, and was as bright as a Mediterranean beach. We sat down on the old loveseat that is too banged-up for the living room and watched the birds at the feeder. The day we took down the Christmas tree was so frigid that we just threw it out the back door, thinking to drag it out to the woods later. But what with the non-stop snowstorms and everything, the tree is still lying there, right at the foot of the bird feeder. The chickadees perch deep inside its branches and eat their sunflower seeds in comfort, out of the wind. I think we'll leave the tree there for them until the spring.

What a difference the sun makes! Snuggled in our loveseat, Bisou and I do a bit of Apollo worshiping. Against the window, my modest collection of houseplants--the rosemary bush, the scented geraniums, a tall pony tail plant, a jade plant in bloom--are worshiping too. Plants by a window--cold outside, warm inside--did I already say it was paradise? If Bisou and I were cats, we'd be purring.

My boots come off, then the fleece top that I wear over my cotton shirt, but I keep them close at hand. Pretty soon the light will begin to decline, the temperature will drop, and Bisou and I will retreat to the living room, and sit on our sheepskin by the woodstove.

Morning With Chickens

When the weather is really cold and the wind is blowing, I keep the door of the chicken coop closed and the light on. Poor Charlemagne's magnificent comb and wattles are turning black at the edges from frostbite, so I want to give him all the protection I can. At the same time, fresh air and sunshine are good for chickens, and too much protection can make them sick.

This morning the sun was out, the temperature was inching into the twenties, and I decided it was time to open the coop door to the elements. But when I went to open it, I found that it was frozen shut. (If you're wondering how I got into the coop in the first place: our animal dwelling is attached to the back of our attached garage, so I can get to my beasties in all weathers. The door that froze shut was the one leading from the coop into the chicken yard.)

I gave the door a couple of shoves, to no avail: this was a job for the hair dryer. I took off my barn shoes and put on my house shoes and went up to the second-floor bathroom and fetched the dryer and came back downstairs and took off my house shoes and put on my barn shoes and plugged in the dryer and turned it on.

All I could do was aim the warm air at the crack between the bottom of the door and the floor, I couldn't even see the ice that was causing the trouble, since it was all on the outside. This is the kind of job that makes me nuts. I was crouching on the straw, blowing hot air at an invisible chunk of ice that might take hours, or even days, to melt. There had to be a faster way.

I turned off the dryer and got a weeding tool—a metal rod about a foot long, with a bifurcated end—and tried to get it under the door, but it was sealed shut. I got up and hit the door with my shoulder as hard as I could, the way I'd seen police do on TV. The door barely budged. With a sigh of irritation I crouched down again and turned on the hair dryer.

I thought I could entertain myself by watching the chickens—you know, paying attention to them, being in the moment. But the noise of the dryer was making it impossible to pay attention to anything. Finally I gave up and focused on that crack under the door.

And then, behold, I saw a drop of water run under the crack. The dryer was working! I jumped up and gave the door a shove, but it still didn't budge. I tried again to pry with the weeding tool. No luck.

Clearly the yang approach wasn't working, so I squatted down and went back to the yin technique with the dryer.

Several eons passed, but eventually the water drops became a trickle and I was able to open the door just enough to stick out my arm and direct the dryer at the ice. Then there was enough room to maneuver the weeding tool and chop off chunks of ice. And finally with a loud squeak the door opened wide and a swath of sun entered the coop.

The chickens immediately went to that sunny spot and started preening. One hen sat down on the hay and closed her eyes in ecstasy. The most timid one burrowed her head under Charlemagne's chest and kept going until she was completely hidden under him. He fluffed out his feathers and stood over her like a mother hen. If chickens could sigh, they would all have been sighing with pleasure. To them, at that moment, the sun truly was a god.

The sight of my flock preening in the sun has stayed with me all day, and made me unaccountably happy. What is it about giving comfort to animals that gives such pleasure? It is not unlike the joy of mothering an infant. The needs are critical but simple, and you know you can fulfill every last one of them.

Alas, infants soon outgrow those simple needs, but some of us never get over the urge to satisfy.