We went through November, December, January and most ofFebruary with no snow at all most days and nights and once in a while, adusting that vanished by noon.  Now we’ve had two snows that not only were considerable but have stuck around so we keep getting snow on snow.  This is after several thaws and not just the crocuses sticking up but some early daffodils making green spears.  Snow is predicted to fall all day today and then again Sunday into Monday.  This goes on while the birds, the squirrels, the plants are all thinking of spring. Me too.  I have been starting seeds.  The cole crops I started have all sprouted.  This week I put seeds into peat 6-packs including Oriental eggplant, Italian-style eggplant, frying peppers, 3 kinds of Bell peppers and cayenne peppers. They will go into the bay window for at least the next month.

Here the snow is pristine and seems to glow.  The problem for me is that I cannot get a snow boot on over Das Boot.  But the hardy seedlings had to go out to the greenhouse as they were already getting a little leggy in the bay window.  But if the greenhouse gets too warm or too cold, I can see the problem from a probe connected to a thermometer in the living room, but how do I get to the greenhouse?  I have to work that out not tomorrow but at once.  I’m wondering if putting  layer of kitty litter down on the matt, the step and the dirt could get me safely to the greenhouse and back.

I’m going through old files and discarding lots of aging paper.  I have also found things that were lost, like an old short story I had wanted to put in THE COST OF LUNCH,ETC.

but couldn’t find. It needs work, anyhow, but I’m glad to have it back.  I’ve found a lot of poemsI never finished, or never could finish, that I should either work on or discard.  I’m trying valiantly to declutter but now I’ill never fully succeed. I’m attached to things I shouldn’t, like a few little china animals my brother brought back from Japan and gave me when he returned from WWII and theMarines.

I have many cookbooks and 19 folders of recipes on my computer.  Thursday night I was faced with a piece of meat that had lost its identification in the freezer.  We thawed it and I decided to treat it like chuck although it had much less fat.  I looked for recipes for stewing beef on my computer.  Every recipe sounded good but I lacked at least one of the principle ingredients. Finally I decided I could and would improvise.  I browned it, browned onions and garlic, added a jar of our own canned tomatoes and our Italian tomato sauce, some of the pesto I froze last summer, white wine and brown rice.  I turned down the heat to a simmer, added oregano, cinnamon and fine herbs.  I simmered it for two hours, added half a lb of our frozen green beans.  At six it was ready.  I had two helpings.  I thought there’d be enough for a second meal, but Woody really enjoyed finishing it off.  Yesterday I baked salmon with a pesto topping.  Served it with baked butternut squash spiced up and green beans velouté topped with Gruyere cheese and panko crumbs.  Tonight Woody will broil a steak, weather permitting.  Depends on whether it’s snowing hard.  I hate to broil steaks inside –the downstairs gets smoky.

eIn the drawer where I’m going through the old poems, a lot of my life is stored.  I wrote many very political and radical poems during my involvement in the anti-war [Vietnam] that were never published, although I read them at fundraisers for Students for Democratic Society.  I also found political poems from my high school years.  Also love poems to ex husbands, old lovers and poems to who the bloody hell was that?  Was I really that into him? Or was I just using him as a painter uses an artist’s model [which I worked at in my 20’s] to cook up a poem?  I’ll never know. Some are rescueable; most not.