My neighbors and I frequently remark on how lucky we are to live with animals. Sometimes we are referring to mountain lions, bobcats, foxes, coyotes, or bears. Sometimes we are referring to elk or the deer that wander through our yards. Sometimes we are talking about our little dogs! I’m grateful for living with animals.
What a morning to wake up to alive! 22℉ overnight, snow on the mountains and in the yarden. And cozy inside once the sun rose after a small fire in the woodstove last evening.
Despite fierce winds last night, the aspen and other deciduous trees kept most of their leaves, glowing in a frozen landscape. Marigolds, salvias, agastaches, and all the other remaining flowers wilted.
Meanwhile, inside, the Tabasco pepper thrives in the sunroom with ripening fruits even as tiny blooms proliferate at the tips of new growth. A couple of orchids continue to bloom before their winter rest.
For dinner, I stuffed a pear. I was amazed at how beautifully the cookie scoop cleaned out the core, and grateful to Amy for giving me not only the scoop some years ago, but for sharing the recipe a few days ago on Instagram. Not all Instagram recipes turn out as well as they look, but this one did. I preheated the oven to 400℉ while I scooped, then stuffed the pear with Gorgonzola and topped with crumbled walnuts, a sprinkle of thyme, and some cracked pepper.
While the pear halves baked for about 18 minutes, I heated some honey. Next time, I’ll use more cheese, and bake a little lower so the walnuts don’t burn. Drizzled with hot honey, it was a gourmet taste treat–so simple, so delicious!
My living room looks so lovely without those two huge dog beds in it.
I’ve moved them outside for the morning while I vacuum and rearrange furniture to accommodate a new chair, my first ever grown-up recliner. Last year I bought a fairly expensive couch, hoping that I could recline on that and fulfill two needs with one piece of furniture, but it hasn’t worked out. Degeneration in my spine demands that I finally shell out for a real recliner with manual adjustments. Not electric, since I’m off the grid and can’t add another phantom load to the household power draw. Also, I hear the Colonel’s voice in my head: It’s just one more thing to go wrong.
So, I imagine that in a few years, when my precious dogs give up the furry ghost, there will be one and only one silver lining: My living room looks so lovely without those huge dog beds in it. Meanwhile, they’re outside (the dogs and the beds) basking in the one purely sunny day we’re expected to have all week, while I ready the house for what will no doubt become everybody’s favorite chair, despite my best efforts to keep it to myself.
Speaking of dogs on the furniture, Rosie has found her forever home, in a family with two children who especially wanted a rescue dog. Finally, she is home safe, and I got tingly and teary when I saw the pictures just this morning. Rosie flying after something a child threw, Rosie sleeping on her bed with her new little girl stretched out next to her, Rosie kissing her new children, and this one. Here she snuggles between her two children on the couch. I can’t imagine a happier ending! Or beginning, for Rosie the Dog.
I can still feel the love from this very special dog when I remember cuddling with her, her soft snout, her firm smooth body wiggling happily, her expressive eyes.
A six-inch snowfall last week drifted more than two feet in the driveway. So thankful for good neighbors Ken and Joe who both plowed with their tractors.
Houseplants and potted herbs in the sunroom belie the snow blanket outside.
We are forecast to receive 3″-10″ of snow in the next five days, down, thankfully, from the 6″-18″ predicted yesterday. While grateful for the bountiful moisture, I was dreading that much shoveling: the front door to the front gate, the back door to the back gate, compost pile, generator; a network of paths I’ve kept sort of clear all winter, furrows in the surrounding foot of snow, little trails we all use, the dogs, the deer, and I. When feeling extra energetic last month, I shoveled a path from the compost to the pond and back up to the house, and that has stayed worn down by the dogs and deer alone. So funny how even the deer prefer a shoveled path through crusty deep snow.
Despite continuing snowfall and cold temperatures, more and more birds each day are singing and chattering in the trees. Finches, ring-necked doves, piñon jays; last week a juniper titmouse and a nuthatch vied for the hole in the tortoise tree, while another nuthatch and three finches flitted around watching the contest. Redtails, ravens, and bald eagles are circling and perching. Spring is on the way. I can almost feel those crocuses starting to sprout underground.
There is a cluster of juniper trunks outside my kitchen window with a particularly dense canopy. I noticed something dark flicking and twitching high up in the branches several times last week, like a magpie or jay tail. Maybe magpies building a new nest? Finally I remembered while I was outside to go look. I stood in the center of the trunks which open out basket-like from a central base. I leaned back against one stave after another, circling the inside and searching the canopy for any sign of a nest. Nothing.
Suddenly, scrabbling behind me, and up into the top shoots Topaz. Aha. The next day, I did see magpies working on their nest in the juniper out the bathroom window. Such fun to spy on them!
Preparing for the coming storm, I’ve started a 642 piece puzzle which promises to provide pleasure for many days. I love how some of the whimsy pieces overlap with their depictions, like the fallow deer, fox, giraffe, and elephant below. Thanks, Norma, for sending this one to your sister, and Pamela for sharing it! Easily shaping up to be one of my favorites. 
As I write, the dogs announce the truck from Lily and Rose backing up to the gate, right on schedule. This family-owned store in Delta sells quality fine furnishings, and will give you extra stuffing any time if you want to plump up any part of your chair. In short order, the new chair is in place, dogs and dog beds back inside, and I am reclining in luxury.
Though chaos and misery born of despots, climate change, ignorance, and greed swirl around the globe, all is right with my little world. My life today is one of the lucky ones: sunshine and firewood, a grilled cheese and sauerkraut sandwich, happy dogs and cats, a new chair, friends on the radio, flowers in the house and waiting patiently under snow. Some days I am more keenly aware that I or someone I love could die without a moment’s notice. So in this moment, I wallow in gratitude for many blessings.
When I woke this morning to an inch of fresh snow and a clear sky with bright sun, I thought of my friend who got thrown by her horse last week. She is couch-bound for a long time, and in a lot of pain with some fractures and other injuries. I can’t say for sure, but I imagine her body wasn’t the only part of her aching when she looked outside this morning. We ski together sometimes, and I think when she looked out at the snow-covered junipers in the sun, her heart ached to be out there sliding through the woods on her skis.
I feel a cold coming on, and it was bitter this morning, below 20 degrees. I could have done what I did the past few snowy grey days: made coffee and sat warmly in the living room, working on the computer or reading a book. But I thought of my friend wishing she could ski and being unable, and I hauled my lazy, grateful ass out of bed, dressed, went out into the glorious morning, and snapped on my skis. With the balmy weather the past month melting what little snow we’ve had this winter, we haven’t skied in six weeks.
There is nothing graceful about me skiing through sagebrush and juniper on eight inches of crusty snow. But the dogs were thrilled and beautiful, flying away and back to me kicking up powder as I stuttered along the Typewriter Trail to the rim of the canyon and back. Snow blew from the trees in sparkles through brilliant air. She would have loved it.
I wish she could have skied today. Even immobilized, she is an inspiration. Because she would have and I wouldn’t, because I could and she couldn’t, I skied this morning. This one’s for you, neighbor.
The return of bees to the early crocuses thrilled and salved my soul.
The first few days after the crocuses opened there were no bees. When I was outside and I paused the noise in my head for a moment and just listened, the silence was eerie. I felt so sad. The naturalizing irises and daffodils began to open, and they were empty. It’s all starting for you, I’ve done everything I can to make it good for you, so please come! I thought to the bees I knew were somewhere near. I saw plenty of flies, even some small fucking grasshoppers. On Valentine’s Day! It was too weird.
Chris called that morning. I was just heading out to hand-water some things. “Already?!” she said, aghast. “Your damn onions!” I said. “They dried out over winter in that hoop house.”
In truth it wasn’t just the onions. The whole spring bed, the border on the south side of the house with the early bulbs and groundcovers (the crocuses, naturalizing irises and tulips, the thymes, veronicas, mat penstemons, mat daisies) was desperate for snowmelt. My approach to this bed in particular is “Prolong snowmelt.” This year I began prolonging snowmelt in earnest the second week in February. In previous years I haven’t had to water until late March or April, rarely as late as May. For all the fun of the balmy weather we needed snow badly.
We talked as I watered, and the conversation quickly turned to the bees. She said, “I thought you might tell me about your ambivalence.” I knew it was going to come to this, I’ve just been putting it off. What are my deeper, more complex feelings about the loss, the death of the beehive? What are and were my responsibilities? How did I succeed and fail? What did I learn? Shall I choose to feel guilt?
Chris talked about really learning to let go, and being amazed every day at how much she thinks she knows and then finding out how little she really knows. I think it was her way of encouraging me not to feel guilty, and it helps, but I still have this fundamental feeling that it was my fault the hive died because I didn’t know enough; going into this project, I acted in confident ignorance rather than in a “beginner’s mind” spirit of learning. I’m still unpacking my feelings. Meanwhile, as we talked, I saw a bee in a crocus!
“Gotta go!” I said, hung up the phone, and ran for the camera. For a few hours I was ecstatic.
The Bee Doctor told me two years ago that these bees chose me, and the reason was mine to figure out. All along my intention was for the hive to act as an incubator, to grow enough bees for them to swarm out into the forest and the canyon, year after year, to populate the wild. The experiment was to try to establish a hospitable habitat for wild bees, not for me to get honey. I hoped they would manage themselves appropriately with minimal intervention from me.
I forgot the beekeepers’ wisdom, “When in doubt, wait it out,” and I made a mistake at the end of their first summer. Their hive was pristine before I opened it that time. I flooded it with honey and dead bees, I stole their larvae accidentally, and they were righteously angry. I can’t help but wonder if I derailed their success in that one stupid move. They had been calm until then; after, they were defensive. I went in the following spring with the Bee Doctor, and he told me they were more ancient, more wild, than any other hive he’d seen around here. When we opened the hive he mentioned that some of their behavior was more like Africanized bees. “Don’t wig out,” he said, clarifying that it was just an example of their wildness, not that they were Africanized. But in that moment, they were cast in a more primal light for me. It’s the honeybee not the bear, but it’s still a wild and dangerous organism.
Perhaps I subconsciously arranged their demise with my reluctance to try again, to persevere with this hive. Last fall I did have, in the most private inarticulate place in me, the thought that maybe they would get honey-locked this spring and leave. I could start over with more mild-mannered bees. When I saw how few bees were in the dead hive, I hoped it was because they had swarmed. But then, a few days after pulling the last combs from the hive, I found this:
It pains me to share this picture. In front of the hive, behind the insulating straw bale, a mass of bee carcasses. Maybe they didn’t swarm. Maybe they were busy all summer and fall hauling out mite-killed bees, and that’s why there were fewer bees going into winter. Maybe there just weren’t enough healthy bees for the hive to survive.
How did the mites get into the hive, anyway? Where did they come from? Unfortunately, as one local beekeeper said, “The mites win all too often.” From what I’ve read, these mites arrived in this country in 1987, and spread rapidly through the wild honeybee hives. Originally parasites on another species of bee, Apis cerana, the mites jumped species, and Apis mellifera has not been able to cope well with them. In combination with neonicotinoid pesticides and possibly other environmental factors, the varroa mites are wiping out honeybees everywhere. I’ve read that they can travel from one hive to another on the bodies of drones, which are apparently allowed to enter any hive. In a sense, the mites are like a sexually transmitted epidemic. Once inside a hive they reproduce inside brood cells, raising a whole family in the time it takes a larval bee to mature, and compromising that bee’s health.
It’s time to really let go. I know today how much I don’t know about bees and how to keep them. If I’m going to continue to try to help save them, I’ve got to do it with Beginner’s Mind, and a lot more courage and skill. I hope that more good than bad has come out of my first foray into bee guardianing. Either way, I need to forgive myself my assumptions and mistakes with them and move on. Forgiving and moving on have never been easy for me, but I’m learning, and not just with the bees.
Honey candy, dense crystallized honey and comb.
The last honeycombs from the salvage operation, three on the right from the middle of the hive and four on the left from the front. There’s not much honey in the front combs, I may do something else with them.
Various stages in the honey salvage.
Experimenting with the best way to get the honey out of the combs.
I’ve got one loaded comb left to process. The honey is so thick it’s taking a long time to drip out of the combs. After slicing the caps off sections of comb and letting them drip, then flipping them over and letting the other side drip, I squish them and let them drip again. Not very efficient, but I get to lick my fingers a lot.
Meanwhile, outside I’ve been cutting back and raking paths and pruning shrubs and trees. This is the best place to be on any day in any season in the garden: I can look out with pleasure at what I’ve accomplished thus far, and simply sit with the joy of it, a dog rolling at my feet, far more done than undone at this point in the season, the whole garden vista ahead of schedule.
A bitter wind blew in a few days ago, ahead of the snowstorm that started yesterday morning. Evening grosbeaks peck in a frenzy at the sunflower feeder. The patio rug blows up with a thump against the table. I scramble to batten down the hatches. This constantly shifting spring weather heightens minute to minute uncertainty: A cold shadow falls over the yard with a bleak wind, the mood becomes more urgent; the sun blows free of the clouds and optimism surges. There is this apocalyptic deep fear: what will happen next? The clouds exacerbate that, the sun relieves it; being thirsty exacerbates it, a drink of water relieves it.
Just yesterday morning when this snowstorm was starting.
Twenty-four hours later we have eight inches of snow. All the little flowers and shoots are buried, and getting a deep drink. More snow is expected later this week. What do we call the spell of spring that lasted almost a month and brought so many species out of their winter sleep? If the warm weather that follows the first cold spell in fall is called Indian Summer, what is the name of the first warm spell that precedes actual Spring?
I never thought I’d be grateful to live in Colorado because of the mild winter! Though we loved this balmy break in our short winter, everyone is celebrating the return of the snow. We think about “percent of normal” snowpack in the mountains, and what it means for our water this summer. Skiers are ecstatic with feet of new snow in the high country. Down here at 6800′ we welcome the moisture in fields, yards, gardens that were already drying out. The almost non-winter this year is as eerie as the absence of the bees. So with deep relief, after a brief frenzy of garden cleanup, I settle back into winter pace. When the snow melts again the garden will be well ahead of itself, and maybe the grasshoppers will have frozen.
Free at last, thank Dog, I’m free at last!
And once she was off the leash, Stellar just had to make her play.
Big goofball heeling for no reason.
A dark-eyed junco fluffs in the desert willow outside my office window.
A young buck mule deer passes in front of the lion gate after digging under snow and browsing in the garden.
Raven leads the way, leashed, on a forty minute ski this afternoon.
After our walk this morning Raven came inside and rolled onto her back, tentatively, for the first time since her surgery exposing her Jiggy-belly for a rub. Avoiding the incision I gently massaged her tummy on each side, and rubbed the little white star on her chest. She is 95% out of the woods, says Doc, after we skied through the woods early this afternoon. “I bet you never thought you’d be this excited to see a dog poop,” he added. So her system is functioning again, though sluggishly and painfully. “She’ll be sore for another week or so, she might strain a little and that’s okay. As long as she doesn’t strain and strain. Something can still go wrong in the next day or two, but she’s doing really well. You’ve done a great job.”
“So did you,” I said. “Oh, I just closed my eyes,” he said.
It’s been a full-time job, tending this little bad dog and her stitched up intestine. I’m exhausted. My usual exercise of walking them half a mile a day then letting them in and out as they like has burgeoned to well over two miles each day in three or four forced marches. This morning and evening we walked to the top of the driveway and back, more than half a mile each trip. In between, we skied up and back then continued on through the yard and out toward the canyon, another mile plus at a good clip. But even my skiing downhill is no more than a brisk walk for Raven, and she helped me up the hills. My hips are feeling it, and my left foot throbs, but my stamina has already increased, and I can feel those starches burning up.
Among the many benefits of our forced marches up and down the driveway is the beauty of the view.
Ice Canyon begins to earn its name at last this winter.
The snow so far this year has been great for cross-country. This year, I mean this whole winter, which seems like it’s been months but in fact actually started on time: We had a long mild autumn with only a couple of cold snaps, and snow and arctic blasts only began in earnest right around the solstice, the alleged first day of winter. It occurred to me today that in less than two months I’ll be photographing bees on crocuses. So no complaints here about this winter, which when it finally did arrive arrived with commitment. Snowpack in the mountains is above normal throughout most of the state, after alarmingly low measurements just a few weeks ago. But back to the snow down here, on the plateau.
It’s been crisp and dry, and ideal for skiing through the woods. Some years it’s just heavy and wet all winter, and sticks to the bottoms of skis and holds you back. Like so many things can, if you let them. This short bright season, we just glide along. I understand the allure of fresh powder for those crazy downhill skiers, it’s great for nordic as well. Brutally cold temperatures also help. But I’ve noticed before that ski conditions deteriorate as soon as I see snowfleas.
Yes, snowfleas. Those little pepper specks are living beings.
Maybe this year will be different. It was still plenty cold this afternoon when we encountered them. But usually they signify warmer weather, which means melty snow, which can impede skis. I didn’t believe in snowfleas when I first heard the word, but have since come to be quite fond of the little critters and greet them with delight. On closer inspection, they look almost like thistle seeds! But smaller, and they bounce. You don’t have to watch long before you see them popping and hopping off the snow. Also, they cannot kill your dog. In fact, snowfleas are beneficial arthropods, decomposers who live in the duff under trees and break down decaying matter, making its nutrients more accessible for growing plants. They are also prey to beetles, ants, and other tiny predators. Just one more species living its life among the rest of us, one more unique manifestation of the divine.
Believe it, or not.
While they are always there in the fertile decay of the forest floor, at an astounding density of a hundred thousand or more per square yard, you can really only see them in the snow, when they sometimes rise to the surface. Why? I’m not sure anybody knows. Snowfleas remind me there is so much I don’t yet and may never know about the world we inhabit. Divine mystery can be immense or tiny.
Pamela grating nutmeg on farm fresh eggnog in the ancestral Cantonese punchbowl.
“Farm hands,” she says as I turn the camera on her, grating nutmeg onto the eggnog. Two gallons, at least, of deep yellow, delectable concoction, consisting largely of homegrown eggs and liquor. The Bad Dog Ranch girls came early to mix the eggnog in the ancestral punchbowl that I’ve talked about but have not used since I’ve lived here. In the family since the late 1800’s, it’s one of those heirlooms that only came on out very special occasions. It’s been in a trunk for twenty years. Poor thing. Like an opal it needs to breathe, to see the sun from time to time. The punchbowl had a very nice afternoon, did a great job, and got a lot of admiring attention.
The Holiday Cookie Exchange has quickly become a favorite tradition in the past few years up here on the mesa. Each woman brings a couple of dozen cookies, and a tin or tub to take home that many. People pull out all the cookie stops with some of their creations. This year we had seventeen lovely women from all three towns and the valleys and mesas scattered among them. There were occasional hijinks from the dogs, who were otherwise gracious. Snow lay across the land outside, still tall on every twig, on fences, outlining everything white, but paths and patios were clear; the ground was so warm when the storm hit last night that snow didn’t stick too much to bricks and concrete. I knew we’d be warm inside, all our happy warm energy, and kept the door to the mudroom open, where boots filled the floor and coats, hats, and bags were stacked on every surface.
Green tea – white chocolate sugar cookies
Earl Grey shortbread
Salted Nut Roll Bars, with a frisson of marshmallow.
Delectable handmade Pizzelles, with a garnis of pecan sandies.
Classic assortment
Chocolate Kisses, like a cross between a truffle and shortbread.
Perfect Molasses cookies.
Three-nut baklava, yum.
Kahlua chocolate shortbread
A delicious surprise, club crackers magically toasted with almonds, brown sugar and butter.
It wasn’t possible to taste even one of each kind of cookie, there were just too many. Most had labels; there was a small table devoted to gluten-free offerings. Fortunately, some people brought spiced nuts, ham biscuits, apples and cheese and crackers, to balance the sugar fiesta. The holiday music of my childhood, choral and instrumental Christmas works, played in the background of waves of conversation. All that sweeping and rearranging furniture paid off, creating lots of smaller sitting and standing areas, so that seventeen broke into five or six more intimate groupings, rearranging themselves through the afternoon, and each got to visit with all. Our stories wove together, catching up the threads of the neighborhood, the past weeks and months of our lives since we’d last seen each other, pulling the safety net of love in our community a little tighter this winter day.
Everyone also got to fill their tubs or plates with more cookies than they brought, and somehow there were still dozens left over. How did that happen? The math didn’t add up but the sense of plenty flowed through us.
“Old hands,” said one of them as I was taking pictures. “We all have old hands,” I said. And lucky to have them, I thought. The stories they could tell. The meals they’ve prepared, the fences they’ve built, the babies they’ve held. The lives they’ve lived, these hands all gathered here around this generosity of cookies.
Well, all of us have old hands or farm hands or both, except for the one beautiful daughter who came, a young mother herself, and she brought a baby! With the baby snugged to her chest in a cozy wrap, Rocky couldn’t get enough of them both. If he’s ever seen a baby that young it was when he was a baby himself. He was fascinated, and maybe a little jealous. The big catahoulas, bouncy as Tiggers, relegated upstairs or outside for the whole afternoon, were jealous of the littlest dog, who got to sit on the lap with the baby. But several people took a break from the cookies and walked out through the snowy woods to the canyon rim; the big dogs got their joy escorting guests on their walks. I wallowed in gratitude all afternoon.
Marla brought a beautiful strudel for dessert! Like anyone needed dessert. And it was gone in no time. Some people went home, saying “I need a nap!” Some people took their nap in situ.
The baby behaved as well as the dogs, as cloudy afternoon wore on to dusk. People drifted off as they needed to leave, to check on a puppy, to feed a husband, to get home before dark; half a dozen stayed to watch the last of the Broncos game on TV. Suddenly it felt like any holiday I ever spent with family growing up, sitting around chatting and laughing, sated, with the soft drone of a football game (even though we were all women, it struck me sweetly) lulling everyone off to sleep.
Suddenly this week the pond has thawed, revealing goldfish still thriving underneath. Amy the Fish still lives! She and her three surviving cohorts are at least four, maybe five years old, and have filled the pond with their progeny.
A few rays of sunlight through the darkling clouds, a wedge of blue sky behind wispies. We’ve all been grateful for the precipitation that’s come this winter, both here and in the high country. It bodes well for our next growing season. But I think I speak for everyone when I say Welcome! to the first glimpse of our mother star in what seems like at least a month.
Elk browse the junipers and winterfat right outside the yard fence.
Ice Canyon freezes and melts with this oddly fluctuating winter.
Today I walked all the way to the canyon by myself, with the dogs of course, and with ski poles, for the first time in two weeks. Yesterday I walked there with a friend, and the day before took the dogs halfway. At the beginning of the week I tried, and could only make it a few steps past the gate, but I let the dogs run loose in the woods for awhile because they desperately needed the exercise.
My next try, on Friday, I walked through slush to the first chair, the dogs so good they wouldn’t go farther without me. To get them more exercise I continued a few steps on, but still they stuck with me better than average. A few steps more, I rounded the first corner downhill and found the kindness and compassion banner, strips of cotton, ribbon and paint made by a friend long ago, that had hung at the house for fifteen years until it was faded, bedraggled; I finally hung it in a tree in the woods last year. Whether nibbled by elk or shredded by weather it now lay in tatters on the ground, just the top few inches still intact. I brought it home and lay it in the compost bin, ashes to ashes.
The next day, when my friend showed up to walk, she brought a rainbow streamer, an accidental replacement, which we hung on the same twig where the banner gave up the ghost. It’s the little things that make my day.
Two weeks ago I woke up dizzy. After several dark days where I could barely open my eyes or leave the bed, I saw a few doctors, took a few supplements, and it began to improve incrementally after a week. Apparently it’s a virus that comes around every few years, and several others in the community are suffering with it as well. If you’re ever inclined to hurl a curse at someone, wishing them dizzy would be a wicked one.
Friday night, two other friends generously hosted a Love-In for Valentine’s Day, which went over well with a bunch of us both with and without sweethearts. It was a great equalizer and the party was full of love, warm red decor, and delicious food. Old friends were reunited, new friends were made. One couple even brought flowers for our hair. A day that began in dark separation concluded in bright togetherness.
So many of them do.
Gordon grazes at the hors d’oeuvres table.
A winter’s afternoon, a group of women bake some cookies, bring them all to a friend’s table, drink some punch, eat some cheese, eat some cookies, cluster in twos and threes in heartfelt conversation, play a game, laugh and laugh and laugh, eat some cookies, drink some coffee, laugh and talk and play some more, then circle the table filling their tins with an exquisite assortment of holiday treats: vanilla creme sandwich cookies, Kahlua and chocolate wafers, Earl Grey shortbread, Chocolate oatmeal Snowdrops, chocolate curry candy, red velvet cookies, gingersnap candy, Aspen Bark candy, chocolate nut cranberry clusters, Butternuts, lemon macaroons, Ghirardelli chocolate cookies, almond macaroons, cranberry-white chocolate-pecan cookies, chocolate meringues, peppermint meringues, and, oops, not pictured, cranberry bark, marijuana gingersnaps, orange blossom balls, and almond-quinoa shortbread. They fill their tins with treats and their hearts with hugs and set off into the cold dusk as the waxing moon rises on a snow-sparkled landscape. Things that can’t be beat.
East from the patio, agave pods cling to the stalk, mountains shrouded in clouds.
With a small fire in the wood stove, all day, and a white cloud outside. Light snow falling off and on, a thin crust of ice on things this afternoon. It’s an inside day, and soft as… a snowflake, a down pillow, a requiem. A black and white day, starting with vintage news coverage of Kennedy’s assassination. Back when anchors had time to process the news they were delivering on TV. Then classic rock on KVNF all day, interspersing dishes and sweeping and stoking the fire with writing toward my 50,000 words in November. Morning Rounds didn’t happen til almost five o’clock; an owl whoooed out through foggy junipers somewhere toward the canyon, softness continued to fall.
Beehive under birch in lightly falling snow.
Blue Avena grass, dusted.
May all beings be free from suffering.
Stellar poses by the Lion gate as snow quickens.