Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Stillmeadow - February

Well, here we are on the last day of February, and I still haven't used the snowshoes Tom and I bought last year. I brought them up from the cellar, and placed them next to the swing on the terrace, positive, absolutely positive that we would walk the fields of snow on our trusty snowshoes. But, no. My excuse is that I need to buy some snow pants, not the nylon or whatever the new material is, but wool. That's what I had for years, but I 'outgrew' them, and need a new pair. Why didn't I buy them last spring, summer, or fall so I would be ready when the snow arrived? This is who makes them. The price has gone up considerably in 40+ years! I plan to order some in the next few days, and I plan to put on those snowshoes next fall as soon as it snows. Of course it may well snow some more this winter, but somehow that doesn't count in my book. By the end of February, the old-timers used to say "the back of winter is broken."

These thoughts were floating around in my head as I read Gladys Taber's February entry in The Book of Stillmeadow. I reminded myself of Gladys. She isn't afraid to note her shortcomings either. Gladys and I are rather anachronisms in these times of everyone putting their best face forward on social media. No little foibles show up there!
I never have been adept at focusing opera glasses. Just as I get the right end to my eye, and screw the things up, whatever I am viewing moves away and I only see blurs and table legs.
and
I always mean to file my sheets according to size, but they never get filed correctly. The twin size play hide and seek with me every week at Stillmeadow, where we have all sizes of beds and all kinds of sheets. Flushed and unhappy, I am always lugging piles of the wrong size up and down stairs.
When her companion Jill says that "this is the time of year to reorganize everything in terms of what is oftenest used." Gladys admits that
She is certainly right, and if I were an organizing person I should instantly wrestle with the jammed-up china cupboards and pack up those dishes never picked up except to dust. ... The trouble is that as I pick up a cracked ironstone plate, I get to admiring the glaze and the way the edge is scalloped, and I think it is nice to look at with the candlelight glimmering on the soft finish - and back goes the plate in the same old spot.
Gladys talks about the seed catalogues that overflow the mailbox this time of year. I remember reading that sentiment often in the past ten to twenty years, but now I never hear anyone talking or writing about it. That must be because we can order online now. I'm also lucky that my favorite, local-ish company offers its seeds in my Co-op store. But I do miss the days of a pile of catalogues to look through.
There's never so fair a garden as the one that grows during a blizzard - on the colorful pages of the seed books. ... Nothing ever comes up and looks like any picture.
A quote I used once here is from this book, as she writes of the brightness of the February sun. I say frequently during the month that there is no sun in any month that can match it. Is it because we have been starved for the sun from November through January? The sun, even when it comes out in those dark months tends to be rather weak. Welcome, but not startling beautiful. The February sun tells us that spring is coming regardless of the temperature or the snow on the ground.
After Valentine's Day we can really feel that winter is on the downgrade. A few more blizzards, perhaps, but definitely March will arrive. There will be a certain day when the air comes in over the hills with a different feeling. It's an intangible thing, known only to folks who have had hard winters, and it is exciting and wonderful. One morning you poke your nose out and you know all of a sudden that there will be another spring. You smell it in the air, and no matter how deep the snow is, you think nothing of it. You dash out without your arctics and Mackinaw and catch a raging cold, but no matter - spring is coming! Tallyho!
And thus, Gladys ends this month's entry.

20 comments:

  1. Happy Spring Nan! Gladys IS a lot like you (or I guess it would be vise-versa) ... even though you block-indent your quotes just like a good writer is supposed to do, I often forget that I'm not reading your original work because it sounds like you! And that is a sincere compliment. Bill used to tell me he smelled spring (he thinks it was chlorophyll in the emerging plants), but it couldn't have been the same in our mildish Oregon climate as what you (or was it Gladys?) talk about after a hard winter !

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    1. The nicest compliment you could give me!! Thank you, Sallie. Not spring here yet, but very spring-like. It has been a good winter. Plenty of snow for the ski/snowboard slopes and thus the local businesses, but not too fierce in terms of weather. Saw first robins a month earlier than usual. Oregon gets flowers maybe 4 months ahead of us! But there must be a smell most everywhere that gets even a bit cooler weather than in summer.

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  2. It is very cold here; we've had the coldest night of this winter on Wednesday, according to the main news on TV. In my area, it has not snowed any more, but the northern parts of Germany have snow, and they are not used to it that much (the "northern" bit usually meaning their weather is wetter than ours, not necessarily colder).
    Still, as you say, spring is definitely on its way, as I have also been showing on my blog. As for the thought of winter's back being broken, that sounds rather painful! I prefer thinking of winter slowly retreating, letting spring take its place.

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    1. You're right! Some of the old phrases are better not looked at too closely. haha

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  3. Spring for me means wildflowers. I'm so ready for them. We've had a lot of rain and in our part of the world, February rain means April wildflowers - usually anyway. And I agree with Sallie - the quotes do sound like you - though the idea of not sorting the sheets by size kind of gives me shivers. I sort everything. LOL

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    1. I hope there are still some bluebonnets when we are there! I don't sort much. Well, that said, I do alphabetize my music and my spices. ha!

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  4. Nan! The Book of Stillmeadow is right here beside me as I type! On top of two others, of those from a special shelf of her books. One of my dear friends calls me Gladys sometimes. Does that mean we may be kindred spirits, Nan? I hope so.

    I've claimed two particular mentors in my life. Gladys is one and Dee Hardie the other, but Gladys is who taught me how to love home.

    Everyone of your quotes above is dear to me. She is always one that would sit at my Who would you want to have dinner with? table. And I think I would place you there too!

    Dewena

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    1. Oh my gosh, have you and I talked about Dee Hardie before???????? I am so fond of the Lambs and Hollyhocks book. I loaned my copy to a good friend years ago, and I just can't ask for it back. I'm going to go see Mr and Mrs Amazon and buy another copy. I think that in that book she talks about her son Todd selling something he made - was it lozenges? He lived in Vermont, and they were available at the health food store I visited in the 1970s and 80s. And then he went into beekeeping and we bought our honey from him. The UPS man would come with 60 pound tubs. Later we went over to his place and bought directly from him. Now he is into mead, I think, in another town in Vermont. I have always felt we were kindred spirits. Rather than dinner, I'd like to sit around a wood stove with the people that I feel I know - Laurie Colwin and Gladys would top the list of my 'homey' people, but how I would love to be in the presence of Virginia Woolf and PG Wodehouse. And yes, you! And many people I know only through blogging and old lists I used to be on.

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  5. I've only used snow shoes once (in Colorado when visiting friends) and I loved them! Never got around to buying a pair when we lived in Nebraska, but they wouldn't get much use here on the coast anyway. Even with the predicted snow later tonight! I'm still surprised we get snow here!

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    1. They are really fun. It's lovely to be able to walk right on the snow. Next year or bust!

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  6. I've never used snow shoes. I miss snow!

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    1. I would, too, if I didn't have it. It is my happy weather.

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  7. I enjoyed your review and the quotes. Yes get the woolen pants and enjoy the snow shoes.

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    1. Thank you. And now I will have to because there are people holding me to it! haha

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  8. How nice to come across a fellow Gladys Taber fan. I love pulling her books off the shelf for a visit. We, too, say we've "broken winter's back". I can smell the dirt waking up here on our little farm.

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    1. Thanks for coming by and leaving me a note! I smelled that dirt too until we got a bit of snow this week! I will be over to visit your blog.

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  9. Hey there Nan. I've been away, but want you to know I've been reading Gladys since the first of the year too. I don't have your book, but "Stillmeadow and Sugarbridge" is also written monthly, so I'm up with you all and enjoying this re-read as much as the first time.

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    1. Good to see your name here! I love S and S. Really one of my favorites. I have a lot of quotes in my quote book that I wrote down from that book. I must read it again, too.

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