November and March are both ungenerous, grumpy months and both critical transition periods. November tends to be grey and overcast. Most colourful fall foliage has faded and fallen, it's cold and windy and dreary, leaving us to anticipate the wonderland beauty of a snowy landscape. By the time March rolls around we've had enough of winter. The snow is grimy and as it melts it reveals the presence of unsavoury detritus. It also, in the melting stage, becomes unstable and denaturized, turning to hard ice as it melts when days ricochet back and forth from mild to icy.

 

We're in one of those periods when November conspires with grudgingly departing winter to eke out what's left of the month in miserable atmospheric conditions. The thermometer plunged to -16C last night with a cutting wind and we were glad to find some warmth in bed where Jackie and Jillie earnestly convinced us we should be at half-past midnight. When Irving took them out to the backyard preparatory to going up to bed, there was the rabbit, in one corner of the fence, until he dashed by a startled Jillie.

 

 

When we came down for breakfast this morning, there was the rabbit, on the porch, ignoring the carrots and daintily selecting, like the squirrels, the chipmunks, the crows, the chickadees, the cardinals and the raccoons, peanuts. Peanuts seem to be every creature's favourite. For years when I used to take unshelled peanuts out to the ravine to deposit them in very specific spots in the crooks and hollows of trees, awaited by squirrels and crows, we would watch the crows watching us, then selecting peanuts to crack them open on hard surfaces.

It was -12C first thing in the morning, windy and flurrying which continued until the thermometer struggled all the way up to -10C. That is cold for March, but March often boasts it can be more miserable than that, if it wants to. Even, on occasion, influencing April. We're expecting March and Winter to decamp in several days' time, however, taking the icy cold and blasting winds with them, and hope not to be disappointed, but we're accustomed to it.

 

We console ourselves with comfort meals. Like last night, when we had a lentil-tomato soup, with whole-wheat-cheese focaccia bread, chunks of Gruyere cheese and mangoes for dessert. I tend to use an immersion blender with lentil soup, to reduce the chunks of cooked vegetables and the lentils to a thick slurry state. It was, truth to tell, very warming and flavourful. Oh, and tea, cup after cup of sweet, lemony tea. It's all I ever drink.

 

Today, of course is house-cleaning day, and it takes hours to get it all done. I take occasional breaks now and again, but don't really need to. I just like to peek at what's going on in social media. Although we took Jackie and Jillie out repeatedly to the backyard through the day, we bypassed a walk with them. No point trying for the ravine, since the hilly trails will be completely frozen over and too dangerous to navigate; we're not quite that foolhardy. As for walking on the street, for a trip 'around the block'; it just has no appeal for us.

When late afternoon rolls around Jackie and Jillie visit with me as I change from my 'work' clothes to leisure clothing. The long wool skirt I was changing into didn't smell to either of them like a hike through the ravine, but it was their vegetable salad they were interested in and anxious about. We soon fixed that.