The Way It Is

We honored the centennial of beloved poet William Stafford's birth this week with a visit to Lewis and Clark College. He taught there for nearly 30 years, and the college library held an exhibit of poetry artifacts and a multimedia show of photos he took over the years. My takeaway: Poets sure hang out together a lot! I guess I imagined a more tortured, solitary labor, but Stafford and his contemporaries had a grand old time. Good for them!

Ole found the exhibit a bit dry.

He perked up, though, when we took the campus walk of notable Stafford sites. At each spot there was a placard with an applicable poem (I should have taken a picture of one!). The campus is really lovely--wooded nature paths and the grand M. Lloyd Frank Manor House at the center.
Ole was in top form, biking all over and attracting all sorts of attention from students. Stephanie and I nudged each other and chuckled every time he said her name, too, "Snephanie" in a cute nasal voice.

I'll end with one of Stafford's poems. He was writing a poem a day in the months leading up to his death in 1993 and they all have a calm and wise tone to them, but this one near the end is my favorite.

Signs of spring

Things are changing up here on the hill, and we've had some clues that spring is here. First I spotted this puddle jumper:

Then I noticed a couple of freshly-shorn goats soaking up the warm afternoon sun.

I brought in a few cuttings from the tree outside our dining room. They are Japanese andromeda and smell so wonderfully sweet--a real treat in March!

Seeds are coming up, too. It's our first time growing leeks, but I can already taste the future potato-leek soup.

Hey, are those bare feet? It must be spring!

And finally, the pinnacle of my spring rhapsody...baby chicks! Ole and I picked up eleven chicks at the local feed and seed last week. I love our little fluff balls. They're an assortment of breeds he refers to simply as black, brown, or yellow. Here's a yellow:

We sure are having fun with the chicks. A few times a day, we head down to the basement and Ole points and calls out which one or two he wants to play with and I retrieve them. He makes a little playpen with his legs or perches them on his arm. He wants so badly to run and play with them, hoping they'll take him up on a game of tag. Less than two weeks old, they already have distinct personalities: loud, flappy, feisty, shy. They'll surely be tame with all this attention, and maybe Ole will find a new friend.

Not spring yet, sigh.

My springtime overtures were premature. A nasty, very localized ice storm hit us last weekend and threw us for a loop. Pushed by the cold east wind, this late winter storm came on with a sudden severity, knocking out power, and caking on the ice. I'd already packed our winter boots away and stubbornly refused to get them out again, so we slipped around on the windblown ice. 

This is as close as we got to the ice covered trees. Brick sized chunks of ice were cracking and falling.

Really, Alex, this isn't a good time for tai chi. Oh wait, even the grass is slippery.

Welcoming, isn't it?

An inch of cartoonish textured ice coats the fence and birdhouse

But we've been getting along just fine indoors. I've expanded the fleet of cardboard box vehicles. Ole wanted to help me make this jeep, but I hedged, caught up in a crafty fervor. I put him in charge of the bumper while I cut and drew.

Beep beep!



Mantel cats

Nice goatee, snowman!

We sure enjoyed it while it was here, but the last of the snow is melting in the cold winter rain this week. It's dirty old snow now anyway, and we're already thinking about spring. I've been working on my seed order from Territorial all week and today I started some lettuce seeds, eager to try out the new grow lights I set up.
Plus this time of year, after spending so many hours indoors, I start to purge and spring clean. There have been a few trips to Goodwill to drop off so much stuff, and a concerted effort to clean this place up. Check out the shiny stovetop. Look fast, it won't stay this clean for long!

And as the weather slowly warms, we're getting out more. Mostly by taking advantage of breaks in the rain for a quick walk down the road. It seems to improve all our moods when we get some good outside time.

Taking in the view from atop his trusty bicycle.

I'll end with a familiar sight around here. The cat food bowl sits on the mantel because it's the only place the dog can't get to it. I'm so terrible about remembering to feed the cats twice a day every day, and often they have to remind me. Beware the icy stare of a hungry cat.

Don't move, I'll just decorate around you.

Wonderful windy winter storm

Mother Nature gave us a February surprise this week with a genuine snowstorm. It's been blowing and snowing for two days now and it looks like we're in for a couple more. The power went out that first night for about eight hours and we've just now gotten the house warmed up again. We're keeping warm with lots of layers, and I stocked up on food heartily before this all started, so we've been feasting our way through the cold.
The sun came out for a few hours this morning, so Ole and I bundled up and took Pepper outside for some snowy fun.


Excited! Note my "solution" for our drafty front door.

Hey, Mom, take a picture of my boot.

Keeping a stiff upper lip.

The hazy stripe is powdery snow whipping down our road at sixty miles an hour. I love the little drifts behind each mole hill in the yard.

After goofing around a bit in the yard, Ole made a beeline for the house. I'm pretty sure he was thinking about sitting by the fire and drinking hot cocoa.

All done.

Well, that explains it

We've been having trouble with our toaster lately. It's fairly new, even, so I griped about modern appliances that self-destruct and went into a whole rant about it. "When I was a kid," it starts, "they made things that last."
Well after a few days of funky toast, I finally looked down inside the toaster. This what I found:

"There's my car," said Ole, matter-of-factly.

Wintry picnic

We're back home after a great Christmas at the beach and now trying to find our winter groove.
We took a survey of the homestead on Tuesday, taking notice of winter's little details.

Hydrangeas are beautiful in every season.

Congratulations, Shorty! You've been promoted to head rooster.

Pepper peeks around the mossy tree at the chickens.

Love the red bark on this shrub (maybe a dogwood? I can't remember). Looks like someone has been munching on it, though.

Mischievous, isn't he?

After an hour or so of playing outside, I told little guy it was time to head inside for lunch.  "Mom," he said very calmly, "I don't want to go inside. I just want to stay outside all the time." We hammered out a compromise: If he came inside long enough for me to make lunch, we could have a wintry picnic outside. That's just what we did. Here we are dining al fresco in the neighboring cemetery.

Alphabets just taste better outside.

And for dessert, one of Grandma's gingerbread men. Nom nom nom.

Then it was time to run around and play!

Happy Winter!