Photo from IMBd.
I’m not sure why but the cold weather this week found me yearning for our old Monday morning song by the Sons of the Pioneers. Luckily you can find this kind of thing on the internet. I’ve played it several times over the past few days. It doesn’t warm me up physically, but gives me an inside warmth that comes with good memories.
Here’s another:
Just one more:
What warms your heart?
Today’s post comes to us from Port Huron Steve.
The debut broadcast of CBS Sunday Morning aired January 28, 1979. Because I was a fan of the host, Charles Kuralt, I made a point of watching that first show. I’ve seen many of the broadcasts that have aired in the 40 years since. While my life is mostly unstructured and variable, I try to catch that show. It pleases me to have something in the week that is fixed and predictable. Watching it has become a ritual for me.
Most of us have rituals. They can be annual (like how we celebrate Christmas) or monthly, weekly, daily or something altogether different. If I can believe his songs, a ritual for folksinger Greg Brown is drinking coffee in the morning. My parents couldn’t go to sleep until they had told each other, “I’ll see you in the morning.” Some people meditate. Many folks couldn’t feel right about a week that does not include going to church.
For several decades our family had just one ritual. On Saturday nights we gathered to enjoy the Prairie Home Companion broadcast. We were heartbroken when Garrison quit—was it two times or three?—and thrilled when he came back. I used to walk dogs with a woman who was close to Garrison. She assured me that he needed to do the show as badly as I needed to hear it.
In 2000 I acquired a puppy, an exceptionally affectionate English setter. Katie and I both needed exercise, so we adopted the daily ritual of hiking the off-leash dog park that lies between Minnehaha Falls and Fort Snelling. We had many friends there, human and canine. Our route took about an hour to walk. I used my time in the park to reflect on my life. I couldn’t afford a therapist with an office and a couch, so I relied on the park walks to help me sort out my past and make plans for the future. Katie and I walked that park virtually every day of her life for eleven years.
Like many fans of Trail Baboon, listening to The Morning Show was once an essential ritual for me. I remember thinking I couldn’t bear starting the day without the help of Dale and Tom. Even so, I always knew that someday the show—wonderful as it was—would come to an end. Shows do not live forever, although The Simpsons carries on as ever. The LGMS remains one ritual I’ve never been able to replace.
What role does ritual have in your life?
Today’s post comes to us from Ben.
I was at a funeral a few years ago. Probably this time of year and it was very very cold. At the graveside there was only a handful of people. The minister is a friend of mine and he was wearing a long black robe. Afterward, I asked him if he was wearing his long johns under there. He said, “I’m wearing everything I own under here”.
Come to think of it, I’ve been at the graveside for a few very very cold funerals. My mom says when her father died it was so cold the minister basically said, ‘Ashes to Ashes Dust to Dust Amen Let’s go’.
I have two personal cold stories.
The first was a below zero day with a wicked -70’s windchill and something broken on the feed bunk. I wore about 5 layers to fix it. As I recall, it wasn’t terrible and only took me an hour to fix. But anything outside in that kind of weather is terrible.
And back in 1996, daughter was 7 months old and was taking her colds very seriously at that age. She spent a week in NICU (Neo-natal intensive care) the first week of February and we had one of these cold waves. I won’t call it a ‘polar vortex’ because that term wasn’t around then. It was just cold.
Kelly spent most of the week at the hospital. I was still home dealing with chores and milking cows. (Curiously, I don’t recall where her older brother was. He may have been home with me or maybe he was at Grandma and Grandpas house.)
One night it was -42. I took a picture of the old, analog thermometer that hung in the mudroom. The one with the lead you ran out the window and it had the red liquid in it. And I remember thinking it’s a good thing it’s this style because the electronic ones only go to -40. And that same night an owl came into the garage and perched in the rafters. Somewhere is a picture of that too.
I’ve always thought, below -20 it just really doesn’t matter anymore.
Even at that, a barn full of cows is about the coziest spot in the world. I miss that.
What’s your favorite / worst cold weather story?
We had snow and ice fog on Saturday, and it stayed foggy all night. We came out of church Sunday morning to find the skies had cleared leaving a thick coating of frost on the trees. Every branch and tree needle was outlined in white. We take the same route home from church, past the college with its trees, past a pine tree covered butte that rises sharply a couple of blocks from our house. I have seen these same trees for 30 years, but the frost and brilliant blue sky illuminated them to make it seem I was noticing them for the first time. In an hour the wind came and blew it all away.
What have you been noticing lately?
I read an article yesterday that reported that increasing numbers of school districts are doing away with school cancellations due to bad weather by providing on-line assignments for students when they can’t get to school. Teachers can also be available by computer for lessons, resources, and support. They can do video conferencing for group assignments. These districts have to provide all students computer notebooks so they can access their homework when the weather keeps them at home. I loved snow days when I was a child. I don’t know how I would have felt if I knew a snow day just meant doing school work at home. A snow day always felt like a gift.
What are some memorable snow days (or other bad weather days) that you remember? What do you think of this new trend?
Sometime yesterday between 8 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. I lost my winter attitude! It was exactly the same temperature when I went to work as when I exited my building at the end of the day. I had on the same clothes, wore the same jacket. But on the way home and doing errands I was COLD. I turned up the heater in the car, rubbed my hands together and even sat on my hands at one stoplight. I’m afraid it’s going to be a long winter for me this year.
What’s your favorite way to keep warm?
There was a beautiful full moon last night-The Hunter’s Moon. It is the second full moon of autumn, and was named by the Algonquin tribes as the moon for the time to go hunting and prepare for winter. The sky was quite clear and the moon was huge as I drove home from work at 7:00. It had an orange tint. The night before last it was almost full, and there were wavy wisps of clouds in front of the moon, making it look like the perfect backdrop for a a witch on a broom.
Tell about all the books, plays, stories, poems, and music you know of that are concerned with the moon. What are your own moon stories? Why is the moon so inspiring?
My father’s extended family hails from the north woods, so even though I grew up in St. Louis, I experienced the Minnesota/Wisconsin climate from an early age. When it was time to look at colleges I announced to my parents that I would only go to a college in Minnesota or Wisconsin. When college/grad school was over for me and wasband, we hightailed it to the Twin Cities. I’ve been here every since.
This morning, I noticed it was snowing at about 8 a.m. and my mood jumped up a couple of notches just seeing it. I love snow and cold. Spring, summer and autumn are nice but winter is my season of choice. I love visiting tropical locales but I don’t think I would happy in a place that didn’t have winter.
I took pictures all morning and even though I knew that snow in mid-October wouldn’t last, I was a little wistful when it stopped around noon.
Of course, this is seriously early for snow, so I didn’t start pulling out big sweaters and coats just yet. And I still wore my zorries to the gym and the grocery store!
What is your favorite seasonal transition? Have you transitioned to your winter clothes yet?
I am always amazed at the deceitfulness of people who sell plants through catalogs and greenhouses. It is easy to be fooled into buying plants that just won’t work in your climate zone if you don’t know your flora. The most recent scam up here is the marketing of hydrangea macrophllya, a group of hydrangeas that just won’t grow here but are probably the prettiest ones for stunning shades of pink and blue. They are tempting, but it is just too cold here, and unless you are prepared to mulch pretty heavily in the winter, they just won’t do much after the first year. We have tremendous luck with hydrangea arborescens (the big, white, poofy ones) and hydrangea paniculata (ones with pointy flowers that often turn pink at the end of summer).
Hybrid tea roses were marketed for years as good to zone 4, but now are sold with the disclaimer that they are only good to zone 5. They really only do well here if you cap them with rose cones in the fall and mulch heavily. We used to have lots of tea roses, but we got pretty tired of all the fuss. We planted Morden roses from Manitoba instead. They are very cold hardy. We have a few hybrid teas in the yard that do well since we seem to have created a micro-climate in the yard with shrubs and fences that keeps temperatures a little warmer than in other parts of the yard. The pictures below show a hybrid tea we never cap or mulch that comes back every year and is a really stunner.
A couple of years ago we bought two Morden roses that were supposed to be only four feet tall at the most. One turned out to be a climbing rose that had multiple, six foot long branches. It was not labeled as a climbing rose. It was in a part of the yard that wouldn’t have supported a trellis, so it flopped around and got tangled in everything around it. It mercifully died last winter so we dug it up, providing room for one nearby that we assumed was a four feet tall rose as it had been labeled. As you can see in the next photo, it, too, is starting to act like something else.
It is a little hard to see, but the rose put out a couple of stems that were at least seven feet tall. Husband cut them off after I took the photo. I hope this was just a fluke. I just don’t know who in the plant world to trust anymore.
Who do you trust? When have you had something that didn’t turn out the way it was supposed to? When has a plant fooled you?
Three clues:
Where is VS? Give me three clues to a place you’d like to visit!
Trail Baboon 