Sunday, November 29, 2015

It's Chilly Out There

November 29, 2015:  Out my front window.

Black-capped Chickadee on Hawthorn
Brrrrr.  It’s chilly out outside. We’ve had a hard frost the last three nights – nothing compared to the central Wisconsin winters I grew up with.  But I’ve lived here for over thirty years and I've gotten cushy.  Freezing seems chilly.  Hard to believe I used to sleep in an unheated bedroom with my window open until it got really cold.  As I remember, I had to keep the window open until 20 below zero, but perhaps time has only made it seem as cold as that.  I was the only member of the family sleeping upstairs, and my father wanted to just holler up from outside to wake me up.  I don’t think he had any idea how bone chilling that room was. Maybe I only needed to keep the window open until it got below zero.  I do remember it was COLD.

I even remember my sleepwear from those days.  Wool socks and a viyella nightgown sewn by my grandmother. Much to my surprise I found viyella on Wikipedia.  It was a blend and cotton and merino wool – “The first branded fabric in the world.”  Now the term relates to a fashion brand, but not when I was a little girl holding onto my toes.  Funny how I even remember the name of the fabric and that it had wool in it.  It never seemed warm enough for wool.

Those nightgowns make me smile even now.  ‘Posey’, as we called my grandmother, always started with a pattern, but she hated to waste fabric, so she’d find areas on the nightgown to add extra fabic:  a fuller collar, wider sleeves, more material in the body, and fortunately long enough to tuck around my feet when I curled up.  Posey sewed them by hand!  That makes her sound like some comfy woman from the hills, but, no.   Posey was a proper Bostonian.  Never wore a pair of pants in her life.  
The Living Room When I was a Little Girl
I remember once counting the blankets on my bed – 13.  If I’d had any sense I would have slipped in between them, but I didn’t.  I’d go to sleep trying to hold my cold toes.  By morning my bed was finally warm and I’d enjoy the beautiful patterns of frost crystals on my windows.  Then I’d dress as fast as I possibly could and run downstairs to toast myself at the wood stove.  The stove was taller than I was and my father would have a good fire going before he called me.
Sketched from my Living Room Window
So watching the chilly birds has sent my mind a-wandering.   They agree with me that it is chilly outside – they are all fluffed up.  Our Anna’s hummingbird was one of the first to arrive this morning.  He looked more like a colored egg with a long bill, than a hummingbird.  I noticed his feeder had ice crystals so I quickly warmed more nectar and hung another feeder.  Robins were early too.  They ignored the all the beautiful red fruit on our hawthorn until the fruit froze.  I suspect it softens the fruit … or maybe their need for calories just puts hawthorn on the menu when it gets cold.  Some of the robins made a point of sitting on their feet while feeding – keeping those toes warm just like me. 

Soon more fluff balls arrived:  house finches, juncos, a song sparrow, and a pair of towhees.  They all looked as if they tripled their weight in the last couple of days.  It’s wonderful how they can fluff their feathers to keep warm.  Most birds can settle onto their feet and keep them warm too.   The poor ol' heron has to settle for warming one foot at a time.

14 comments:

  1. Love your sweet chickadee as well as the "puff-balls!" While I don't want birds to suffer, those puffed up versions are some of my favorites. I was raised in Florida so I have NOTHING to compare to your cold, but I do remember having only one heat source in the house and that my parents turned off the heat at night. My brothers and I would all race to get dressed as quickly as possible in front of the heater and we'd do it in stages (most of the time) so no one had to stand away from the heat and freeze. Oddly, those are happy memories of a simpler time. Thanks for jogging my memory!

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    1. Feeling cold has so much to do with what we are used to. Years ago Dale and I went to Mexico in the winter. They Mexicans were all wearing sweaters while Dale and I thought we'd hit a heat wave.

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  2. Great post. Enjoyed reading it and thinking of my own youth sleeping in an attic, unheated or insulated, to get away from having to share a bedroom with my grandmother. This morning we also had an early visit from an Annna's Hummingbird. Appeared at our bedroom window looking for the feeder. Jeanette got up and took the feeder out to it's post.

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    1. ... and I ended up sleeping upstairs because I was tired of sharing a room with my brother. Since I was the one choosing to move, I got the cold room.

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  3. I used to roll up in a tight ball in my flannel nightgown and shiver until it was warmish, then reach out my toes an inch at a time, waiting each time until they were sort of warm before stretching out again. It took me a long time to get to sleep.
    My bedroom (and bed) in the drizzling Northwest rain forest were wet, not freezing. There was no heat, and condensation ran down the walls inside. Everything was damp, including the bed.
    Somehow, those are good memories!

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  4. Damp has a coldness that really sinks in. Dale and I have camped a lot in the Pacific Northwest. Sometimes Dale had the audacity to say crawling into the sleeping bag with me was like sleeping with locker meat! ..... but that is a good memory too.

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  5. Great post. Thanks for sharing your memories!

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  6. Bet you even miss the weight of all those blankets now that you no longer need them. Never had the regular sleeping experience like you, but remember sleeping on the screen porch cocooned in a flannel-lined sleeping bag on top of a cot in northern Idaho where summer took too long for me to arrive. I would pump my legs up and down to create friction and warmth.

    Don't recall ever seeing a tall stove like that one!

    Love the paintings and memories!

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    1. Hi Norma ... If you look carefully at the stove you can see about two feet of metal were added to the original stove. I never saw another one done that way.

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  8. I think this is my favorite bird sketch of yours with the red berries in it. Very striking. As cold as it was last week it's gone total opposite this week. My poor chickens don't know what's going on. :)

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  9. hi, elva, beautiful work and a lovely post! i'm typing with both hands from yesterday. I've started to wash a suture line with salt water in a left wrist. A caring publisher helen and sweet mentors say "concentrate on recovery for a while." I'm so blessed to be surrounded by such wonderful people like you! i'm getting better. Kind regards sadami

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