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PHOTO FRIDAY:  C o l d

With images of cold, air temperature comes to mind first, but the Pacific NW has been unseasonably warm and sunny this year.  In fact, a record-breaking dry and sunny Autumn so far with no signs of cold or rain coming soon.  Which is so okay by me, as I have actually been able to enjoy watching the
'Turning of the Trees'.

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My father was a logger and before we bought the chicken ranch where we grew up, he wanted so to fulfill a life-long dream of singularly building a log cabin with own his bare hands.  He did. But before he could install panes of glass, the snows hit.  That first winter we spent in the cabin was cold! 

My older brothers remember that winter better than I.  Days & nights of trying to warm ourselves by the old 50-gallon drum we called our wood stove:  First warming our backsides then turning to warm our faces.  We brought our beds closer & closer to the center of the cabin at night where the hot stove burned.

  

This is the best example of cold in my memory.  My bare-legs with snow nearby. With mother it was a dress most of the time, regardless.  Looking close at the smaller snapshot, we still hadn't  windows in by the next summer, but mother saw to it that we did not spend another winter in that cabin.

 The 16th green of a golf course is near our yard... IS our front yard, actually.  Last winter we were smiling at a group of golfers outside our window,  putting orange balls in the snow without the benefit of gloves.  Wearing wet jeans & tennis shoes - but seemingly having great fun!

So on these warm days, cold appears on the inside

Yesterday, my hubby came in from working in the warm out-of-doors:  frosty iced tea was waiting.

A favorite treat in our home - as was it for my children growing up - frozen blueberries and milk. Cold enough to give you a brain freeze.

                                                                                                                                                    photo by heidi schley

‘Goodbye, and keep cold’ 

No orchard's the worse for the wintriest storm;

But one thing about it, it mustn't get warm.

"How often already you've had to be told,

Keep cold, young orchard. Good-bye and keep cold.

Dread fifty above more than fifty below."

I have to be gone for a season or so.

My business awhile is with different trees,

Less carefully nourished, less fruitful than these,

And such as is done to their wood with an axe—

Maples and birches and tamaracks.

I wish I could promise to lie in the night

And think of an orchard's arboreal plight

When slowly (and nobody comes with a light)

Its heart sinks lower under the sod.

But something has to be left to God.   

                                                                             Robert Frost