Snow Days

January 27, 2026

We are having the most wonderful winter.

This is a piece of lace trim I used for my costume for our Solstrice Singers program this December. It so personifies what snowflakes are to me that I can't help but feel it brought on all the snow that still blankets the whole neighborhod three weeks later. Quite a few years ago now, in 2014, we had an epic winter. Since then the snow here has been so spotty and climate news so dire that I feared we would never see another like it in our region again. (Each fall I mourn in advance.) Yet here we are under 10" with a weekend storm on the way, and me watching the wood that has been sitting patiently in the breezeway these past three years dwindle fast away......

When nature gives you a gift of a day, how best to respond? On a very cold one, fires must be set up and lit, first. Break the ice on the fishpond fountain for the birds, and put out seed and mealworms. Shovel out for ourselves and tenants. Make broth for a soup or stew, make the soup or stew, make cookie dough- all the iconic winter things we get to do. Get everything ready so there's time to paint the full moon on the snow in the evening. Get out all winter work. One knits. One stays in and writes one's book.

There are certain projects the immersing into of which this time of year particularly lends itself to. One of my favorites is my Wildlife Folio, because the birds are up close and fairly reliably show up to model. It's a big and open-ended project that the vast worldwide trove of ornithological record keeping is not exactly dependent on but I like to have my own notes and references. And then of course this is the time to work on the paintings of them to use for my own book and calendar projects. This one I started a few years ago, a study of the blues of snow and sky and these particular birds. As all of outside looks like this this winter we'll use it for this season's home page.

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And as of today we have a new bird! If I'm right that this is a vireo then they've been here before but never at the feeders. Very olive-yellow-green. This one seems to like my peanut butter suet. Here she is-

January is a precious time for these sorts of creative endeavors as I wrote in a post of last year's. As usual it's taken the whole month just to set up. We take some down time from Christmas, then pull out all projects that had to be paused over the holidays, that have sat in corners and behind sofas all year. Optimism reigns in the belief that we'll actually get ahead of them before the onslaught of spring activity- planting, clean-up, spring festivals. Every morning it seems as though all is possible only to feel the onset of another day lost creep in if not well into creative work by midday. And just the normal tasks usually take that long! Yet somehow by teatime challenges have been met and by supper we've achieved some sense of accomplishment. (Generally I don't get any creative work done before 4 p.m.) And planting is just around the corner!

But for now- let's revel in piles of pillows of snow- [I know- everyone hates this- but I love it.]