The Blue Moon Rises

What a pleasant surprise to see the sun emerge by late afternoon, while light snow was still falling. The skies cleared for the sunset and the moonrise. We watched the full moon rise over the white pines behind our house. Feels like an auspicious end to the decade -- may the next 10 years be more peaceful.

The Blue Moon Rises Over Our Backyard

A Woodland Mouse

What a joy to step outside this afternoon into bright sunshine and actually feel warm. Not that the temperature is higher today. The difference is the wind. The wild wind of yesterday is gone (for now). One little fellow did not make it through another winter season. I found him lying beneath our retaining wall along the driveway.

Peromyscus, a woodland mouse

These little woodland mice are hardy winter creatures. So, although his body was intact, it is likely that something dropped a meal by mistake. They are cute little things, when you hold them in the palm of your hand and stroke their soft fur. Their numbers are plentiful, which is good for the other animals that eat them -- hawks, owls, foxes, and coyotes. We have at least one resident mouse that makes a nest in the snow blower each summer. Now we check and clean the blower before the first snowstorm. Even then it is tricky getting all the hay and other nest material out of the engine!

Four front toes and long whiskers

The commonly seen tracks of woodland mice, Peromyscus

A Wild Wind

The skies are clear tonight, making it that much colder with winds gusting to 40 mph and temperatures creeping toward zero. The moon is inching toward full. This might be the last night to see it in this phase. A big winter storm is brewing for the New Year.

Our trip to Vermont over Christmas resulted in one casualty -- a muffler clamp. By the time we reached home on Sunday the car was sounding like a hot rod. Our local mechanic fixed us up today, but I had to walk 2 miles in the cold wind to get the car. I bundled in long underwear and wind pants, my warmest hat and gloves, and multiple layers of sweater, fleece and coat. Bella waited patiently (not) as I struggled into all my gear. She was ready to go in the same winter wear as her summer wear.

Dogs are amazing and frustrating. They have no idea how cold it is and expect us to take them out just as often, which we do. Rain, sleet, snow, or sun we venture out. Forty below wind chill or 100 degrees we venture out. I think Bella and Aria prefer the cold to the heat. Aria, the 12+ year old Shepherd is happy as a clam lying in the cold snow on a sunny Saturday. Bella trots along oblivious to the cold wind.

The odd thing though is that in the house they want their cozy beds. Aria sleeps on a large futon at night and various sofas during the day (we indulge the 12 year old!). Bella curls up on a soft dog bed next to my desk. Both don't mind lying next to one of the radiators. Bella would love to curl up in bed with us, but she was banished last spring after she got a little possessive about the pillows.

The wind is howling outside, while we are all curled up snug in the house. If I have to go out again it will take me 10 minutes to get dressed, while the dogs will be ready, quick as the wind.

Meltwater

Mother Nature is toying with the weather over the holidays. A dusting of snow, rain, fog, sleet, cold winds, calm days, fluctuating temperatures. We arrived home yesterday to temperatures in the mid-40s. Most of the snow has melted or turned to ice.

Bella and I revisited what has become our regular walk on the Sweet Trail in town. The trail offers enough ups and downs and twists and turns to provide a good workout for both of us. The woods felt different today, compared to a week ago. Today I could smell the wood air, what the Japanese call shinrin-yoku. The smell of wet, decaying leaves permeated the woods. Droplets of moisture hung from every twig. A weak sun, shrouded by a thin layer of gray clouds, was at least higher in the sky.

A week ago we walked confidently on the frozen wetlands. Today, the thinning, gray ice looked ominous, and the wetland edges had thawed completely. Last week in the cold winter air and among snow covered trees, the woods were silent. As soon as we neared the wetland today, I heard the meltwater rushing from the pond down through the woods to the bigger wetland below.

It felt like a March day, when the vernal pools begin to thaw and you listen intently for the first wood frogs to "quack" from the still partly frozen pools. The woods have the same shinrin-yoku. Yet this is still December. Months of winter lie ahead. Cold temperatures are returning as soon as tonight; as low as zero degrees by Tuesday. Look for the blue moon on New Year's Eve -- the second full moon of the month, although Mother Nature may foil the viewing. Snow is predicted that night.

In the Land of Gnomes

Here we are in the land of

gnomes, fairies, and trolls for Christmas.

Spending the holiday with my 5 and 6 year-old nieces, who are full of wonder, laughter and play, makes everyone feel younger. We skated on the fire pond, swung on the new community swing-set, walked the paths that wind through the open space, tossed a squishy ball into the basketball hoop, and zipped along the zip line. The latter is strung between two pines, in the woods where the barred owl hooted on Christmas Eve.

We are in Charlotte, Vermont at my sister's cohousing community (read more about the Champlain Valley Cohousing here and here). Their energy efficient house, completed last winter, has a total electric bill for the year of - $150. That is minus $150. They are feeding energy back into the grid from their rooftop photovoltaic panels. The walls are a foot thick and the heat is solely from wood (a masonry fireplace), so you really can hear a pin drop. How nice not to have an oil burner furnace kicking on every hour and the radiators ticking and knocking, as in our house.

A Merry Christmas from the land of gnomes tucked into the woods and fields above Lake Champlain.

A Mix of Seasons

Another sign of Spring (only 87 days to go) appeared yesterday: two seed catalogs in the mailbox. Page after page shows succulent multicolored tomatoes and bell peppers; greens of all types -- mesclun, mustards, microgreens, summer lettuce, ruffled, red and festive mixes; smooth, bulbous eggplants; oh so sweet peas; bright flowers. Seed catalogs are a marketer's delight. Who can resist a packet of each type of nasturtium?

These colorful catalogs are a gardener's treasure-trove too, especially when winter is just underway and the arctic wind continues to blow. Turning to the catalog I imagine stepping out across the lawn in bare feet to wiggle my toes in the soft garden soil on the first warm spring day. I can taste a cherry tomato -- warmed by the summer sun and plucked fresh -- and feel the seeds squirt out my mouth. I can smell thick slices of eggplant grilling on the deck. In between batches of Christmas cookies baking in the oven, I leaf through the catalog to catch a glimpse of summers past and future.

After the cookies cooled, Bella and I retraced the steps of our walk on the Solstice. The deer, coyote, and mice had done the same, many times over. When we set out the temperature was below twenty, colder than Monday. Today though, the sun is shining. Even the chickadees were whistling a sweeter tune under a bright sun. As we walked the wind waned. I sense a change in weather. These past weeks of sub-freezing temperatures have left the wetlands frozen solid. We wandered farther out to cast our view across the beaver pond. A warming trend may soften the ice, so we take great pleasure in our walk on frozen ice today.

The heron nests are silent now.
In the stillness of winter,
one can almost hear the croaks of young herons
from nesting seasons past.

Winterberry bursting with holiday cheer.

Solitude

A White Winter Day

The woods are white with snow -- soft, sugar-white snow. Bella and I set off on this first day of winter for a mid-morning hike on the Sweet Trail. A coyote trotted ahead of us, a few hours earlier. Fresh deer tracks crossed our path, their trail lead from the wetland up the slope into the oaks. Atop Jeff's Hill the wind rushed through the canopy and swirled down around us. We dipped down behind the hill and into a hemlock glade. The wind now thwarted by the thick hemlock boughs.

The woods are still. We pass more fresh animal trails. A female fisher surely bounded up and over this large boulder not long before we passed by.

She was looking for one of the red squirrels that scampered among the hemlock or the white-footed mice, now snug in their burrows. These woodland mice, crossed from stone outcrop to stone outcrop, tree trunk to tree trunk, fallen limb to fallen limb. Their passing noted only by the tracks: two small prints bisected by the long thin tail drag.

An unseen, lone coyote wandered around wetland edges and large boulders, under fallen trees, and out to a silent beaver lodge. Back in the solitude of the hemlock forest, I pause to absorb the quiet. A small flock of chickadees flits overhead, gleaning hemlock seeds and overwintering insects. I hear their thin chips as they communicate something to each other. Small bird tracks -- the chickadees? -- leave an artistic impression beneath the high bush blueberries at the marsh edge.

Winter arrived several weeks ago, long before its proclaimed day. Freezing temperatures and cold arctic winds have been with us for days. A layer of ice lies beneath the fresh layer of powdery snow. Bella is sure-footed bounding through the forest on her four legs. I am more tentative on my two, but stable in my yak-trax-clad boots.

Getting outdoors, bundled against the wind, is the only way to enjoy winter. And knowing that spring is already on its way -- tomorrow will be two seconds longer and there is only 89 days until the Spring Equinox. A long winter is still the shortest of the four seasons.

A Merry Winter Solstice to All!