D'vorahDavida
Yetzirah

I have labored long here inside my new home, sparing no effort in making it feel like my own space. The obsessive cleaning, I admit had other components, psychologically speaking… but I was also re-awakening a closed and sleeping, cobweb covered dwelling that had forgotten what tender loving care felt like. Then began the long process of finding the right places for all my things, dressing windows, hanging quilts, arranging furniture and setting up the kitchen in a way that worked for me. Along the way, I found my junk drawer, and no, it's not in the white chest of drawers. I KNEW that wasn't the place! And just as all these indoor things were being completed, the storms came upon us. Snow and wind, and then the bitter cold that has transformed those first layers of fluffy snowflakes into crystalized white cement. It has made walking around the yard into a treacherous business for man and beast alike. The snow covered the ground, before I could get acquainted with it. We only had the most cursory of introductions. I had this plan to take a chair and go out to my garden plot and sit inside the fence and listen to what, if anything, it had to say to me. Perhaps it has a long held desire to become an herb garden, or a Zen garden, or a wild edibles garden.  But since it's covered in a thick icy slab that prevents me from initiating my "get to know you" rendezvous, I am left waiting for answers. Because the garden is unavailable for consultation, my need for making a connection to the earth was reaching the desperate phase. That is until yesterday. Just by the back door, there is a patch of ground that caught my eye. The ash bucket sits there and its occasional load of hot ashes from the wood stove has kept a little area free of snow. There are some rocks someone put there as decoration.  One looks like obsidian. They do not inspire me to tell you the truth, and I want to move them elsewhere as soon as I can. I have this vision of a little trellis with sweet peas climbing on it. Perhaps some alyssum , and pansies, or marigolds, or a garden gnome, or maybe my outdoor fountain. Though I don't know where the pump is. It didn't make it up here somehow. I have the bucket and the copper tubing, but the pump? Alas, it is missing. But never mind, I want to stake my claim to the outdoor part of my new place in the world. And I plan to start right outside the back door. A day's work will do it and it's a modest project to get my hands in the dirt. But the little corner is being held hostage by the Wolf Days of winter, and that wolf is fierce and strong right now. Every morning, when I get up to start the fire, to fight back the bone chilling cold that has crept into the house while I was sleeping, I have a mantra.  And while Bruce is waking up to start his day [and ours too come to think of it, for we can't do much until he has spread some warmth around the corners of the house]  I say it out loud.  I'm putting it out there to whomever is listening... "It won't be winter forever."