Feedin’ The Stove

During the cold snap last week we kept the woodstove in high gear, ‘round the clock.
Feeding a woodstove is one of those things I never could have dreamed would become such an essential part of our lives. Late summer our first year here someone asked how we were going to heat the house that winter. We looked around for the thermostat---it had never occurred to us a house could come without heat.

A week later we got our first woodstove, a leaky two burner box that wasn’t too efficient. Really cold nights we’d sleep as close to it as we could. By morning the fire would have burned out out and the bucket of water we kept in the room just in case was frozen solid.


From then on I’ve spent part of every fall or winter cutting wood for the stove. First few years I did it all with a 17-inch bow saw, we couldn’t afford better. Cutting wood took up most weekends.

Prosperity and common sense brought us much better and more efficient stoves. A chain saw has made the work easier. Cutting wood is always a good excuse to spend a day outdoors, getting exercise, outside.
And I’ve learned all kinds of practical things. I scout the woods in summer for trees to cut. Can make a tree fall in any direction, and some won’t no matter how carefully you plan. It’s always the gas or file or wedge or sledge or chain I need that I left behind.

Know all the trees now, and to burn polar or maple when it’s not that cold, and save the hickory and oak for deep winter. Elm and persimmon won’t split, locust will, and it will put out heat but won’t leave coals. Cherry throws some colors as it burns, the nutwoods and cedar smell great as they burn. That hissing and pop in the fire is some poor bug who thought he’d found a safe home in the log.

And, there’s nothing better than coming in out of the cold to a room with the woodstove roaring.

Rainbow Hunting

A rainbow is always a welcome surprise. But over the years I’ve learned to recognize when conditions are absolutely right, and thereby increase chances of catching one.

We were unloading the truck yesterday afternoon in a cold rain, but to the south and west patches of blue could be seen breaking through the clouds. And no sooner had the rain moved north then the sun was shining on us.

Good time for a rainbow, I remarked to my on. Soon as I searched upward he shouted “There it is,” directing my attention further down toward the horizon.

And what a rainbow it was! Not only were the colors especially bright, a double rainbow taking shape. And this this rainbow was near enough, there was enough drizzle in the air, we could glimpse where it touched down in the field above and to our left, and further down, in a wide arc, near the bottom of the holler. “

“There’s the gold!” my son joked, pointing where the hues kissed the ground. We stood a full minute or more admiring the colors and curve before I thought of taking a picture. By the time I hobbled to the house and back with a camera, it was starting to fade, the bow breaking up. But you can see where it touches down if you study the left side of the picture closely.

And as for rainbow hunting, here’s what I’ve learned. They only appear when the sun and rain-bearing clouds are on opposite sides of the sky.

Best chances are when the sun in shining in the morning as rain is approaching from the West, or in the afternoon, as the sun breaks through the clouds just after a storm has moved through and the dark clouds can be seen to the east.

Even when you expect to see one, it’s a cause to smile.

Spring In Winter

Hasn’t been much of winter yet. Except for a few days of below 10 nightly lows to start the New Year, it’s been unseasonably warm since fall. I guess its a continuance of the cyclicly higher temps which made last summer such a scorcher. But it seems, at least for now, the drought is behind us. Rain has been falling with some regularity since fall, the earth is damp. Grasses are starting to assume more green, and there’s green showing even in the woods. Out front of my office the daffodils—others call them jonquils or buttercups— have pierced the ground with the tips of their spears. That might be a month early, give or take a week.

I wouldn’t count winter out, yet. Two months more could bring us snows; the worst snowstorm we ever saw fell almost mid-March, gone n days. But Winter warmth like this carried tow dangers: when the weather changes, and it inevitably will, the transition is usually ushered in with violent thunderstorms, even tornadoes. And if the warmth continues too long, or isn’t broken up with prolong spells of serious cold, we end up with an early spring and the prospects of a killing frost like we had last Easter. It was a hard freeze, really, that robbed the warming season of all its glory.

So while I greet the green as sure sign spring’s to come, I hope it doesn’t arrive too soon.