March is certainly in like a lion. Well over a foot of snow Friday night through Saturday. We woke up to the rattle of the plow, assuring that the mouth of our driveway would be completely blocked. Chickens couldn’t leave coops and my book event was canceled, so we pulled up the flannel sheets for…
Author: Melissa Perley
The Light Returns
Last weekend I had a rehearsal for a string quartet performance that I’m part of and, as we were finishing and I was folding up music stands, I realized that although it was 5:00, it was still pretty light outside. In Vermont, most of our winter is spent in relative hibernation. Some of this is…
Beautiful Beasts
Winters can be difficult on our animals. Mrs. Chubbers, our head ewe, is getting older. She walks with a slight but persistent limp and has become long in the tooth, making it harder for her to chew. In the darker months I run my hand over her white back, and when I add weight into…
My Grandfather’s Grandfather
One of my cello students wasn’t able to make their lesson today giving me an unexpected hour. Snow has just started falling outside so I am taking the seat next to the wood stove to write. All three dogs are on their sides on the wood floor, happy, as I am, to be near the…
Doorway To Magic
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…
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…