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The Artist’s
Almanac
February 2005
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Winter is beaten, and
knows it.
Now the five o’clock
commute is by daylight. Early jonquils bloom and tulips are up;
wintersweet perfumes the fencerows and grass greens up with every
thaw.
Grass, not a weather
forecast, is what our local groundhog is about when he emerges from
his dirt mound in our yard February 2nd. What he might have found
fifty years ago was our cook’s husband, James, waiting for him with
a scoped rifle and a hot iron skillet.
We raised our own
fruits and vegetables and killed our own meat. While I never enjoyed
groundhog or possum, I savored all fruits in their seasons: damsons,
blackberries, grapes, peaches, pears, and tart green Lodi cooking
apples baked into pies. Summer brought to table new potatoes with
peas, beans and squash, fresh roasting ears slathered with churned
butter, watermelons and cantaloupes, fresh sorghum on hot biscuits,
and strawberry shortcakes topped with whipped cream from the family
cow. In the fall we killed hogs and feasted on backstrip with
homemade sour kraut, putting back bacon, hams and souse for
February.
Today we choose apples
from Australia, grapes from Chile, Salmon from Alaska, fresh
pineapple from Hawaii, and tomatoes or strawberries from Mexico. Our
conveniences are made in China and our gas heat comes from Texas.
The Kentucky coal which we once hauled to the grate in dirty
scuttles is now converted into clean electricity to light our nights
and our television sets, where we watch others frolic in the surf of
exotic places. But we don’t need to leave home to swim in indoor
Olympic pools or work out on heated, padded tracks.
Today the rarest
delicacies are local vine ripened Tennessee tomatoes, tart local
cooking apples or red cherries for pies and fresh Portland
strawberries. The exotic is become the commonplace; local produce
the rarity.
Sighted strolling along our street this past June
Einstein tells us that
time and space are just different dimensions of the same universe. I
first heard the Babel of foreign tongues while serving in the army
of the United Nations during the Korean War. Now I see these people
and hear their languages on the streets of my hometown. Most of our
restaurants are Mexican or Chinese and a knowledge of Spanish is
necessary to direct gardeners or construction workers. It is no
longer necessary to board a plane in order to find variety.
If people change,
don’t our surroundings as well? Once we were limited to rabbit,
quail, and dove and the highest excitement was a midnight adventure
by lanternlight for coon or foxes. Now the coyotes, whose chilling
choruses rise to join every siren from an ambulance, have wiped out
the quail and fox and we think twice before walking alone at night.
Coons ravage our trashcans and eat our cats’ food and squirrels deny
us pears from our tree. Deer, once unknown, now pester us for
handouts and are hazardous to drivers. Wild turkeys strut and admire
their reflections in our living room windows. The animals know they
are no longer hunted for food.
The big cat shown
above is a Serval, imported from Africa by his owner, who was unable
to keep him caged. This fellow has no scruples about hunting for
rabbits and birds. Fortunately, he did not have a mate and he was
soon trapped and returned to his cage.
Then, this week we
found our national symbol, a bald eagle, had returned for his second
visit to our place.
Our environment
changes. Variety is not got only by travel, but by waiting as well,
for the world to come to us.
“Change is the master
key”, and we have it here, especially the weather. I feel sorry for
Floridians who live in flat country with little seasonal change.
Here we live in a no-mans land with some of the most extreme weather
conditions of both the frozen north and the gulf south, with
tornadoes to boot. Whatever the weather, it will change.
February is a month of
change. On a clear sunny day this month you may see forever, your
view unobstructed by leaves, clear into sunny spring. Then at night
the north wind returns and we light the lamps and the fire and enjoy
quiet reading.
Perhaps amidst all our
changes, the weather itself is changing, though few of us live long
enough to qualify as witnesses. Fifty-four years ago, on February 2,
1951, I went outside to read the mercury at 20 below zero. We had 12
inches of snow, which first began to thaw, then refroze, forming an
ice crust thick enough to walk and skate upon. But for twenty-five
winters now we have experienced neither substantial snow nor long
periods of sub-zero temperature.
Perhaps the global
warming warnings are right. I hope not. That would mean that
Florida, too, had moved to Tennessee and that we had lost our
February.
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