winter | Gladsome Lights

Something I’d like to do in 2011 is read more poetry than I did last year. I’m printing out quite a few I like and hope to spend time with, and will keep my new friends in a notebook handy. I have an old three-ring binder that can’t hold another sheet, and I’ll like to get re-acquainted with some of those verses, too. As I was browsing my computer collection I ran across one that I’d like to have written myself this morning.

Today’s a nipping day, a biting day;

In which one wants a shawl,

A veil, a cloak, and other wraps:

I cannot ope to everyone who taps,

And let the draughts come whistling thro’ my hall;

Come bounding and surrounding me,

Come buffeting, astounding me,

Nipping and clipping thro’ my wraps and all.

From ‘Winter: My Secret’, Christina Rossetti.

When winter is in the air, what is the important thing to do? Lay in a supply of firewood.

We live in a drafty house, but thank God, we have a good wood stove and we don’t have many days that wood burning is banned. Last year I broke the law (isn’t it unconstitutional anyway?) a couple of times when I really needed that cheery fire to make the “barn” a hospitable place. We are on the fringes of the area where wood smoke is a problem, so I like to think it doesn’t actually apply to us.

Yesterday we got a big load of fuel delivered, and P. was around to help carry and stack.

When we do get temperatures that make us turn on the furnace, my chore time will shift from gardening to fire-tending. It’s my job to build the fires and keep them burning. And if I don’t, my phlegmatic self becomes more so, and the urge to climb in bed with a book just to warm the bones presses on my mind.

Mr. Glad found one log that was particularly curvy and pretty.