Winter is reaching its halfway point, and I have so many memories filed away in my soul-pockets for days like today. The last two days were amazingly spring-like here, with warm gusty winds filled with hints of the tropics. You could feel the plants and trees fighting their urges, peeking one eye out from their winter dream state before bracing again for the chilly night.
During the summer here I can't find enough hours to explore and watch all the activity. Even the short walk to the car is always charged with potential. Sometimes we'll scare a deer out of the driveway and get to watch it leap, white tail spread high and loud, snorting warnings to the rest of the herd. Or we'll run into the turkeys as they cross below the mailbox and disappear like ghosts the instant they hit the treeline.
I watched them with the binoculars yesterday as they foraged slowly in the leaves, up the hill on the other side of the spring. It brought back memories of the chickens, when the flock would spread out in their daily armies, meeting for mid-day naps to regroup and shift territories. It feels so quiet here without them, figuratively as well as literally. I watch the large hawk as he still visits, remembering his big meal in the coop.
I finally found a contact for the local youth baseball league and Brent is excited to start in March. We started practicing last weekend. Because I couldn't find the softballs, and the only store it town doesn't carry baseballs of any kind, we started out with a kinda-baseball-size-and-weight pink superball. It turned out to be a blessing, because I had seriously overestimated Brent's ability to wield a glove these days. Just on tossing from 10 feet, he had at least 5 good blows to the chest, two to the throat and one that somehow hit his cheek. I mean, if you're missing those throws, we're starting at square zero.
The small greenhouse is already filling with trays of seeds. My charts and garden lists fill the pages of a new notebook. Notes are scribbled in the corners as I try to find the balance in working the garden as organically as I can, but still retain a good harvest. I hope my lessons from last year pay off and that I'll be so sick of canning and freezing by next fall that I welcome the winter break.
For now, I'll keep enjoying the season's beauty as I can. The squirrels scatter off the deck in the mornings along with the snowbirds that like to hang out under the bushes. The large pileated woodpeckers can be seen from far away without the cover of leaves, drumming and talking back and forth to their mates. And I enjoy all the walks in the woods trying to talk above the crunching of the leaves, with no worry of cobwebs or snakes underfoot. Soon I'll be back playing in the dirt and warm sunshine, leaving the forest to its flurry of life, and thinking of the cool breezes from today.
