mumma yaga

 March 18, 2025 Rocky woke me about 1:30 am on the 14th of the month (the Ides of March!), and I caught the blood moon high in a clear, starry, sky. The blood moon is an eclipse, with the moon passing through the earth's shadow. It seems like such an astronomically (excuse the pun!) small window of opportunity that one wonders that it ever happens. ***** A friend of Rain does maple - that is, her family has trees and buckets and a big square kettle in an open maple shed, and each year they make syrup. The maple woman says that she does not run lines from the trees, because there is importance in the carrying of the full pails of "water" - the french is "l'eau" - from the forest down to the maple shed. There is magic in the process. It is a ritual, ephemeral, lasting only one or two weeks. It is only in these few days when the temperature fluctuates between frost and warmth, that the sap is good for cooking. Fire helps the magic, boiling the water in wide squ...

 March 11, 2024 Snow ghosts walk east like pilgrims, phantoms whirl in fury, rise cloudy into the frozen wind, sentient, smoke over the snow like Tash through the Narnia woods. the wind roars up the ridge, a furious ghost highway.  winter returned pretending it had never abated. melting, dripping, the snow lay old and done in heavy drifts and piles. rain fell to dispel as much of winter as it could, knowing spring was not come, laying plans. ***** This house is a ship in a sea of snow. The snow laps at the porch, snow fathoms deep, or only two feet, yet it keeps us from going to the ridge, or up the hill into the woods. The windows are portholes with the snow splashing like ocean waves.  Wind ripples the snow into waves, blue as water. ***** Yesterday, Rocky got me up at 5, Today it was 4! Yesterday, I thought he was going to be sick, but today I suspect mating season. Most of the winter he has kept off the fields because the snow is so deep, but now he can walk on the st...

 February 25,2025 The long cold has ended and today we are seeing temperatures of 7 or 8 above! Dripping everywhere and a pale, but warm sun! It was actually yesterday that the first hint happened. I heard a rumble like thunder. K said, "It's snow coming off the roof." I went in search of the avalanche: (The grid lines are the screen of the door!) I took this picture of  the woodshed, a week ago, after the winds drifted snow across. I dug a path through that afternoon. And I thought that was bad! So much for getting the last of the wood in! The wood that was on the porch is used up. October: This was a quarter of our supply. Now: Here is another avalanche in progress: This was at seven o'clock this morning: (a close-up of the overhang! two feet of it, coming off the narrow porch roof) The lead-in picture, at the top of the page, is from one pm., and this first overhang had fallen. This is the main section of the roof and if that snow all comes down we are trapped! He...

 February 19, 2025 For days we have watched, housebound, as the snow blew devils across the meadow.  ***** We have water! On day one, an unenthusiastic plumber came and then left us to find, dig out and open the well. On day three, our new landlord asked the former caretaker to come and have a look at the situation. Her husband knows a lot about water systems and she knows a lot about the vineyard. They started things rolling, re-checked all the things the plumber had checked, and brought a heater to put at the spot where they suspected the frozen piece of pipe was.  The fourth morning they opened the well and checked the pump, then turned on the system and we had running water again!  I was over the moon with relief and gratitude. I had asked the universe for good fortune, having no idea when things might get sorted, and the universe came through. We were blessed to receive kindness from so many: Rain brought buckets of water for the toilets, the farmers hiked to th...