A Lot Like Spring

 Each day yo-yo's between a taste of winter and a hint of spring. Yesterday (02/20/12) we were on the spring end of the see-saw. While it wasn't particularly warm (we topped out at just 41°) it was calm and wholly pleasant, nice enough to come and go in a jacket if one was quick about it.

 About 6:30 pm, I was already dressed in PJ's when I walked by the back door and saw a salmon-colored plume of clouds striking straight up from the garage roof. It was a jet contrail and it was just beginning to glow with sunset's salmon hues. I grabbed my camera, found my shoes, took a coat down from the hook and hurried out the door.

 "Watch out for the coyotes," Mom said. There had just minutes before been a story on the local news about the coyote population expanding. "Are they supposed to be dangerous?" I asked her through the closed bathroom door. "I don't know what they said. Just watch out for them," she answered.

 And so I pushed out into the cool night air and walked behind the garage.

 Here's the apricot shaft of light that seemed to stand vertically above the garage roof. A jet, traveling west I'll guess, left its exhaust marking its trail some minutes before and it has already begun to dissipate. The sun, already set for 20 minutes, is no more than a glow on the western horizon but still enough to cast a warm tone on the atmosphere above my head.

 Through a gap in the pines, the western sky is ablaze with contrails, criss-crossing at every angle. If they were all vertical - and they are not - they would give the impression of flames.

 If I move a little closer to that opening, I can see ominous clouds gathered in the northwest. They are not, of course, but merely made to look angry by the lack of sun. Mere minutes later, the contrail flame cools and fades back to whites and grays. The night begins to take over.

 And here, just before I go back inside, is the sky a little later, when the coloring sun has dropped far enough west to lose most of its influence on Farmersville's sky. The clouds and contrails darken alike and cast stormy shadows from above.

Yet a little later, when the sky had faded to black, I saw Venus commanding this same western sky,. brightly ablaze with its pure white and unmolested by any clouds. The atmosphere had wrung itself out, had cleared completely and the sky had become studded with stars. Orion moves ever west, soon to leave the nighttime sky until next fall.

 The coyotes? I heard not a whimper and came back indoors with all body parts intact. I am told by a nearby friend that an exceptionally large coyote was taken in the woods behind her house (not a mile from ours) and so there is proof that they are about and healthy. I suppose they would run from me if they saw me in the dark.I would have a similar reaction.

A Little Like Winter

 Though it is still cold, it is now snowing and calm, and so the greatest chill is gone from the air. I suppose the current temperature of freezing will rise to nearly 40° later today and melt what little snow (2/10") we received overnight. Though it was still snowing when my walk time came, I just pulled up my hood and headed out. The snow is falling from the south and so it gathered on the left side of my coat as I walked towards Sams, switched to the right side as I walked back out the lane. It all evens out. I am equally wet on both sides.

 I've always been intrigued by how last fall's Queen Anne's Lace gather the lightest of snows. Their flower heads, now months-dry, seem to reach like brittle fingers towards the sky and snatch every nearby flake as it falls. Where there is little snow on the ground, these flower heads seem to have been gathering in a heavy snowstorm.

 Nature must have a purpose in this way. Perhaps it conditions the seeds for next spring's planting?

 Two days ago, we dropped to 10° and Mom's second flood bedroom window (north-facing) was etched, when the day began, with a glorious coat of feathery ice, perhaps an indicator of our heating costs and an artistic triumph at the same time. How can mere molecules of water take on such intricate structures? A wide view shows the window as I first saw it from the bathroom.

 The day, in the background, has begun clear and crisp and the dark outline of the pines is etched against the blue sky. But here on the window, ice has been drawn in feathery shapes, all while we slept. These storm windows do not seem to leak air - we never feel a draft - and yet cold fingers of air apparently invade the space between the panes and write their message there with icy fingers.

 We would do well to replace the windows (probably installed in the 1960's when the house was bricked) but we paid an enormous fee to have the outside frames layered in aluminum, to protect the old wood, and it would mean starting over again with new windows. It is easier to pay slightly higher heating bills and be done with it.

 A close-up view of a small section of the pane, shows the delicate patterns left there. They truly mimic the feathers of birds and at their root, I imagine nature uses the same instructions for both. Nature repeats herself ad infinitum. It is almost a Darwinian thought: when a pattern is found to work here, it is used again there. But, no, these are not living creatures and the pattern is elemental, cast down at the core of nature herself.

 Now, hours later, the snow is slowing and the temperature has risen to 34° and our quick taste of winter has nearly ended. I button the pocket that contains my billfold and know that it can stay there a while longer.

Driving Miss Mary

I know how Hoke Colburn felt. Behind him, in the mirror, sat Daisy Werthan barking out orders.

 My mirror shows me a similar character: Miss Mary.

 Mom has always sat in right rear seat of any car we've ever driven. It is her place. When Dad died, I asked her if she'd like to move up front with me. It'd be easier to get in and out of the car there. We'd sit side by side and the conversation would be easier. We wouldn't have to be forever handing things back and forth.

 "No, I like it here," she said. "All my stuff is here."

 Thus the conversation about relocating ended.

 "I'll feel like a chauffeur," I told her. "Too bad," she answered.

 So as we tool about town, I sit alone. Driving. Humming. She sits alone. Reading. Sleeping.

 With the mirror, though, I can watch the progress of her book. I'll begin to see her listing left, slowly shifting down in the seat until she is no longer visible. When I can no longer see the top of her hair, I know that she is sound asleep. It is a rare acknowledgement of trust, her sleeping while I drive.

 Mostly the rear seat is a sort of throne where she can arrange the next stop, make mention of some sight beside the road, plan the next day's meals. I watch her survey her kingdom from there.

 Beside her, on the floor, is a box which contains her usual necessities, a sort of portable beauty parlor. It contains tweezers and clippers. A favorite drive-time pastime is to tweeze errant hair from her eyebrows, a dangerous activity while speeding down the road. "You'll put an eye out if I have to stop quickly," I tell her. "I have to do this here, The light is better," she replies.

 She keeps a roll of paper towels handy, too. No idea when they'll be needed to clean up some mess, else staunch the flow of blood if the tweezers go terribly wrong at 55 miles per hour.

 To her credit, she keeps the square foot of floor beneath her feet impeccably clean. She keeps a rag rug there, folded just so, and she'll whip it out now and again and shake it when we reach the garage.

 "Let's go to the grocery in New Lebanon," she says. "Then we can stop at the library in Germantown."

 I follow the instructions like a cabbie. After all, I'm drivin' Miss Mary.

Three Bottles

 We've been a wine-making mood. Trouble is, we make it far faster than we drink it. What's wrong here?

 Wine is not something we regularly have with meals. I tend to drink a small glass infrequently at bedtime and that's about it. I enjoy making it, love the bubbling sound on the kitchen counter, love walking by a jug-in-progress, thinking of those busy yeast cells lapping up sugar, spitting out alcohol and carbon dioxide. It's an entire manufacturing plant that fits in a gallon container.

 Mom, meanwhile, has seen fit to "make room" for our recent production. We have an area under one kitchen counter that is tall enough for large bottles and it is where we store items from the grocery - cranberry juice, vegetable oil and the like - until they're ready for us. It's the perfect spot for bottles of wine: cool, dark, undisturbed.

 So while I'm sitting on the sofa reading, I hear bottles clanking. Mom's emptying that space, sitting groceries on the counter top, pulling out older bottles of wine, Rock 'n Rye and white lightning, and putting them aside for dusting and eventual relocation in the same space. It pays to rotate the stock.

 That's when I walked to the kitchen to see what she was doing. With the outside light flooding through three bottles of apricot wine - all made in 2008 - I was taken aback by their beauty. What a lovely gold they've become! The wine was placed in old bottles, each thoroughly washed, and labeled crudely. They were never planned for long-term storage. Most have become gifts.

 They are, perhaps, first a feast for my eyes. I picked up each bottle, felt its cool glass, dusted it before sitting it back down. Mom will organize our stock, place the oldest to the front, tuck the newest grape to the rear where we'll pull them to the light years from now. Unlike me, each will become better with age.

 Perhaps I'll learn a lesson and the newest wine won't last three years? Last evening, I lifted a small glass down from the kitchen cabinet, poured a few ounces of the dark purple liquid in it and carried it to the sofa where I pulled the quilt across my lap, opened my book and enjoyed the exquisite quiet. The latest wine is medium dry - perfect in my estimation. I don't want a dessert at bedtime.

 And so, I think the current wine isn't going to need the space for long. I'm enjoying it first with my eyes but a warm belly at bedtime is a close second.

A Spoonful of Sugar

 I never prepare a cup of tea that I don't think of my beloved maternal grandmother, Catherine Paulsen. In her later years, still living alone on Riverview Avenue in Miamisburg, I'd often stop on my way to classes at Miami University. I'd have evening class at the Middletown campus and, heading south anyway, I'd stop at grandma's for warm conversation and hot tea.

 I never knew her to be much of a tea drinker but for these evening soiree's. She loved coffee, dark and black, but settled on decaffeinated through necessity. For me, though, when I stopped for a brief visit, it would be tea. She'd fire up her natural gas stove and in no time she'd have boiling water and a cup of tea ready.

 I didn't know it then - or perhaps I really did - that her time left was short. She was first diagnosed with breast cancer in the early years of the 1960's and it was to return again and again like an uninvited guest. She always maintained a positive attitude. Truth be told, she was a fighter. I saw a fire in her eyes early on.

So, tea in hand, we'd enjoy a short visit and talk about the things grandmothers and grandchildren talk about. They were never heavy conversations, just expressions of unspoken love. Time and tea together was enough.

She was never physical in the sense that she hugged me or kissed me much. And yet I knew her love for me knew no bounds. When I was sick with strep throat, so seriously sick that our family couldn't predict my eventual recovery, she gave money in my name to a religious charity, hoping that it might bring me health. The donation is all the more memorable because money was the one thing she had so little of. To give it away was unheard of.

 I remember, as much as she wasn't a kisser, always leaning in for a parting peck on her cheek. She would invariably turn her head, place her cheek toward my lips and accept the offering in good grace. I remember to this day how cool her skin was. I sense the same thing in my own mother when I tuck her into bed each night.

 If we are not a family that shows physical love, an undercurrent flows strongly. We know that we are there for one another and the strength is in the knowing.

 When I saw my grandmother alive for the last time, she was nearly comatose, in a hospital bed in 1969. I looked at the urine bag hanging low on the frame, watching the slow drip of a life ebbing away. She did not turn her cool cheek to me that last night but I remember it was positioned correctly atop the pillow for a final kiss.

 I still think, after all these years, "Thanks for the tea, Grandma."

[Pictured: A cup of Bigelow Lemon/Ginger Tea to which I've added a full spoonful of sugar and a slice of lemon Mom and I brought home from Pizza Hut on Sunday. It is sweet and lemony. Every swallow reminds me of my grandmother.]

Apple Jack

 The grape wine of November 23 is racked and bottled. With a clean, empty gallon jug on our counter, we decided to move ahead and make some apple wine (apple jack). It's as easy as the grape. In fact, follow the same recipe I gave here but replace the two cans of Welch's with two cans of frozen apple juice (we're using Kroger's brand).

 Less than a day after starting the wine, the bottle sits belching on our kitchen counter. By last evening it was bubbling at a rate of two per second. When I took this shot, the sun was setting and bathing the bottle with a pretty orange glow, complimenting the color of the apple-wine-to-be.

 Earlier in the day, I shot a short 11 second video of how quickly the must was fermenting. It reminds me of a just-poured soda, fizzing quite furiously. You can watch the tiny bubbles of CO2 rise to the top and then exit through the fermentation lock (the plastic gizmo stuck into the top of the bottle). Here's how it looked:

 If this follows the same timetable as the grape, I figure we'll be bottling it in late April, just in time for spring yard work to begin. A small glass of apple jack late in the day may be just the thing we need to relax.

Spring Comes Early

 It is February 1 and the calendar shows another seven weeks of winter. But this one's been different. In fact, there hasn't been any winter. My total snowfall still adds up to a single inch.

 Today was another exceptional day. We topped out at 62°. The record high for this date was 64° in 1989. The average temperature for today was 54°; the normal is 29°. Crazy weather we're having.

 For one who is forever watching the sky, I've seen plenty of beautiful clouds. But none, I suppose, have been any prettier than these today. Mostly they have been high wispy cirrus, mares tails that sweep across the sky like ghostly brooms. There are the dainty white fair-weather cumulus, too. At times the sky is nearly overcast; at other times it is almost clear. At all times it is beautiful.

 What is water? What is sky? Today the two are the same pure blue. It is nearly calm, too, so the air is as peaceful as a late spring day, one that causes you to tarry, never hurry about. That three-dimensional sky feels as though one could be sucked right up into it. Lose balance for a second and you risk falling up.

 This is my favorite shot of the day. I love how the cirrus are angled and how the sweep of the white pine follows the line of the clouds. I love the deep blacks, the crystal blue, the frothy whites. It is a celestial ocean there over our heads. What seashore offers a more compelling view than this? We swim in an atmospheric sea.

 As I arrive back home from the Farmersville-Jackson Twp. Joint Park, I see that Pinehaven's sky is equally stunning. To the northwest, cirrus almost obscure the blue. And yet as the day becomes late, I don't care. It was enough to have the sunny hours we already enjoyed. I cannot ask for more.