The wind began to blow last night. If it is hard enough that you can hear it pushing against the outside walls, maybe it is trying to get closer to the wood stove. I leaned my head back against the couch and watched the trees swaying in the blue shadow of moonlight. The wind was…
Author: Melissa Perley
Finding And Losing The Music
We’ve had several snowstorms in the past week, lovely: light snow piling on top of the skating rink that is our driveway, a remnant of the odd January rain. I have been donning my googles to drive the ATV in hopeless, high pursuit of Muir each morning. I learned the hard way that even light…
Welcome Home
We are about to get new neighbors. Our house sits at the end of a dead end road. The land and woods surrounding us is ours. In giving directions to customers coming to the shop in January, we are able to tell them if they run into the snowbank- they’ve gone too far. Here, the…
Pete’s Gone
January in Vermont is a challenging month; the holidays are over. Gone are the colorful lights, businesses covered in red bows and greenery, and egg nog. What comes now are the long days of winter. We are just past a few days of lovely snow chased by a day of solid rain. The oil and…
White Noise
There is a time in the night when you are your most real. Sometimes I find myself caught in a place that is between sleep and wake, where I am conscious of breathing, aware of the fact that I need to turn over to give my left hip a break and where my eyes remain…
New Year In The Blue House
There ought to be a mandate for fireworks as the year changes. Not so much because it is special, more so as to shake us. The New Year falls close to the solstice. It does, as it should, create a stirring in our hibernation. Tucked deep in thought rather than clipping fields, I find myself…
Still
The weather was not traditionally “Christmas-y” two weeks before the holiday. We had unseasonably warm temperatures leaving only traces of earlier snow spilling into darkened crevices in the woods. Any precipitation fell in drops rather than flakes. We braced ourselves for a green (brown) Christmas. We planned on taking the week of Christmas off, knowing…
Solstice
The snow starting to quietly fall yesterday, as if someone flipped a switch. It arrived without a fanfareof great winds, a soft gift, and it continued through the day piling about six inches before dinner. Ipulled on boots after dark and headed out to settle animals for the night. Although Paul had cleared thedriveway with…
Gifts
The trees are strung, the lights are lit. We have wreaths on each outside door and a jumble of sleigh bells swinging from the door handle whenever someone enters the house. December. Every year we host a neighborhood gathering. In Covid, we had everyone outside: we rented a large space heater to warm the garage,…
Gratitude
Yesterday we spent the day transforming the house from fall to winter celebrations. We cut the two Christmas trees that we had tagged in October: a cold, wet drizzle falling, reminding us that it was still November. The dogs stuck their heads out the window as we drove through town, making us look a bit…
Wrapping Up
It is the week of Thanksgiving. Snow is on the ground. Temperatures will plummet to fourteen degrees tomorrow night. I pile wood into the stove and take my place beside it to write: my brain filled with details of Thanksgiving dinner. My hands perpetually smell like the Music garlic we grew. I take delight in…
Change
It is November in Vermont. The in-between, stick season. Autumn: time for long sleeves, hats (the warm, not cute kind) and mittens. However, this past week was in the seventies. I stubbornly continued to dress for pre-winter and, although I did grin and bear it, I admit I perspired. We can’t really call this a…
All Hallows Eve
Muir is sitting next to the front steps. Guided by intuition, he knows I have the ATV key in my front pocket and chores to do I walk past him and he trots along behind me to the lower hay storage. He lies down and looks up as I swing myself onto the seat, start…
Bending
The red and orange leaves are down. The remaining are gold of Beech & Poplar and rust of Oak. While there is an emptiness that arrives with their departure, there is also brilliance as the sun flits through those still hanging in there. The lowly Poplar is the first to leaf out and the last…
Boys On The Field
By the time I am done teaching at six each evening it is heavy dusk. Not quite full-on dark, but getting there. I walked down the road to gather sheep and stood by the garden looking up at a melon sky surrounding a fringe of clouds still lit by a far away sun. As I…