With this post, my New Year’s resolution is complete. (Just in time to start working on a new one.) I promised myself in January that I’d pay more attention to the world immediately around me this year and would dedicate my first commentary of each month to that topic.
Although most of these comments have involved the natural world, I was putting things away for the winter earlier this week and began looking around my garden shed, full of implements I use to interact with the natural world nearest to me.
Two bicycles, a six-foot stepladder, a disassembled hardwood table, a folding lawn chair, a dozen or so currently unused plant stakes. Some beekeeping equipment, a veil, a smoker. Drop cloths repurposed from old shower curtains, two canoe paddles, two PFDs, several rolls of webbing, a copper bird feeder given to us as a wedding gift by Dave and Jeanne. A ten-pound sledge hammer, a splitting maul, a garden sifter, juggling clubs (I’m not that good), a couple old Clementine boxes, pliers, screwdrivers, two snow shovels, a manual lawn mower.
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Winter’s Tale
The long nights of the year are upon us and the diversity-celebrating, non-denominational holiday lights of Burlington wink on in the late afternoon as the sun sets not far from where it rises, off in the mountains to the south (first Green, then Adirondack).
The kitchen is the warmest room in the house, with the stove and oven, with steam, with light (sometimes with smoke) and everyone – even sullen teens – are drawn in. We are fortunate enough to eat in the kitchen, the only place worth eating in the winter, if you ask me.
The winter food – soups and stews, roasted meat and root vegetables – is what I think of as comfort food. I like the burger off the grill as much as the next middle-aged guy, but harvest food in a warm kitchen on a cold night near the Canadian border is what I call coming home.
Anyhow, this is not about food; it’s about time and how quickly it passes. Albert Einstein (supposedly) said, “You sit on a hot stove for a minute and you think it’s an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour and you think it’s a minute. That’s relativity.” He may not have said it. I saw on a calendar – “inspirational quote of the day” kind of thing – but it makes sense. If he didn’t say it, he should have.
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