Winter Blossoms
December descends on the northern end of the Sacramento Valley in its own way on its own time. This year, there are still many trees full of brightly-colored leaves, while others have lost all of their foliage to the winds and rain. But you know that the first fingers of winter have already taken hold in the chill air and the retreating sunshine. While there are still some days when it’s comfortable to ply the daily constitutional in shirt sleeves, the shirt is flannel.
Not knowing which trees are which and which do what when, I am hampered in describing exactly which leaves have left their branches bare and the view open to the trailer on the ridge below and down the road. On the other hand — indeed, one of the most glorious aspects of Northern California — there are flowers just now blooming, and others will continue to keep the garden colorful through March when official spring sprouts.
Winter air has a different smell to it; a scent of death and decay, of Nature turning in on herself. In other parts of the country, it gets too cold to rot, and everything hibernates until spring. Here thought, it rarely gets below freezing, even where we are situated at 1100 feet, and most days the mercury will climb toward fifty. Another delicious aspect of the climate is that it is not unusual for temperatures to break into the sixties during the dead of our winter, providing something of a respite from the otherwise cold and damp.
Mr.Cat has already donned his cold-weather coat; it might have been the surprise snowfall last month that buttoned the buttons on him early. His thick charcoal fur provides more than adequate comfort for the feckless feline, who enjoys the outside tremendously, especially knowing that he can come in any time he wants. He signals by scratching on the screens, until he’s heard.
Buster doesn’t seem bothered by the cold. Every night while we were on vacation he was offered the opportunity to sleep inside the house, which he does when we are home. But he declined, as he always does, while we are away. He still drags me down the road for our walk, which we do every day unless it’s pouring.
Outside my office window, where darling Linda has situated several rose bushes, a hummingbird is out for lunch. His luminescent green body laughs at the drab winter palate. I want to be a hummingbird when I come back. They get to fly around all day sucking out beautiful flowers and eating eight times their weight every day. Such a deal.
A fellow named Thoreau observed that "Many of the phenomena of Winter are suggestive of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. We are accustomed to hear this king described as a rude and boisterous tyrant; but with the gentleness of a lover he adorns the tresses of Summer." We cycle anew toward rebirth through this season of short daylight hours and deeper reflection. Perhaps this time we will appreciate the differences, and stop to smell the metaphors.
And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.