Cold Truths

Only a maniac would be outside on a day when the polar vortex is in town and the air temperature is 3 degrees F but the wind makes it feel like minus 17. We did not get the inches of snow predicted and the sun came out long enough to melt the slush but the bitter, killing cold and wind arrived, just as the weather people said it would.

I am not a maniac, at least not where cold is concerned. I could not even bring out the garbage, much less go looking for birds out in the field.

My favorite winter bird picture. Our snow is gone but the cold remains.
(Margo D. Beller)

Instead, I look out the window.

I have been leaving the feeders out for the past week, sure the bears would be finally hibernating. Today I am sure they are because that is what I feel like doing, too. I have fleece over my pajamas, top and bottom, ready to go back to bed at a moment's notice. First, I go to my sunny office, open the curtains for more warmth than what my hard-working furnace is providing and listen to Bach.

From there I hear cardinals outside, perhaps poking around the hedges behind the deer netting for what they can scare up. I have no doubt they have also been at the house feeder. When I looked out earlier I saw a titmouse fly in. It was all puffed up to keep warm air under its feathers the way you or I would put on many layers to keep our body heat trapped inside. When I put out seed it is the type that has a high fat content to provide energy and thus warmth. Suet has an even higher fat content because suet is rendered fat.

In the past I might've gone out.
Not today. (Margo D. Beller)

It is the coldest day I've experienced in years. It makes me anxious: Will the furnace keep working? Will I be warm enough? Why do I feel the deep need to go outside and get out of the house when I know being outside could literally mean death?

There's an advantage to being a "bird brain" and not having the capacity to worry over the whys and wherefores. You eat and find shelter from the wind and hungry predators or you die. It's as basic as that. When I watch the birds in the bitter cold I feel sorry. I think of homeless human beings and those who are forced by circumstance to have to go out on a day like this and work to make a living and I feel pity for them and anger at the weather, the government officials who can't or won't do the things necessary to make the world better, the state of our world itself. Mostly, I just feel frustrated.

I continue to listen to Bach to stay calm. I see the bare tree branches blowing around, glad we did not lose power so the furnace can keep going. I allow the sun rays to hit me in the eyes because the light and warmth make me feel better. Not even a turkey vulture is flying around now looking for its carrion meal. I think of the last time I fell outdoors, slow to get up. On a day like this that carrion could be me.

Another single-digit cold night is expected but tomorrow is predicted to be "warmer," in the upper 20s. It could be worse, I guess. For now, to use a phrase that has become all too prevalent in a mainly negative way, I shelter in place.

Hot Enough For Ya?

I have lost count of the number of extremely hot and humid days we have had in my part of northern New Jersey, part of the New York City metropolitan area, this week. Four? Five? Does it matter when the prediction is for more of the same?

I suppose temperatures 10 degrees above the normal for this time of August and humidity more likely in a tropical rain forest than the former temperate zone that is New Jersey is a good thing - compared with killing floods once again striking Louisiana a few short years after Hurricane Katrina.

How bad has it been? So bad that finally, after four years of working at home in an office that faces southwest, MH and I bought curtains and rods and he spotted and assisted me as I installed them all. Yes, I used a power drill. Yes, I stood atop a step ladder hoping I would not topple over. Yes, I used a level to make sure everything was straight.

Office curtains Aug. 2016 (Margo D. Beller)

It was only this morning I realized the patterns don't exactly match. However, the room is dark and helping the AC and fan make it cooler.

The heat and humidity have not stopped the goldfinches and chickadees from visiting the dwindling thistle seed in the sock feeder. I have not been able to stand on the enclosed porch for very long, even with a fan on, to see if the refreshed hummingbird feeder is drawing anything, although I notice the joe-pye weed is flowering and that has brought the bees.

Meanwhile, the same heat and humidity that makes me feel like the walking dead until I put the house AC on is doing wonderful things to the plants I have outside in the sun and on that enclosed porch.

The cannas, which are tropical plants, have grown large and their foliage is bigger than dinner plates. They are also sending up flower shoots, red trumpets that will be attractive to hummingbirds and others. The orchid I keep on the back porch has been loving the humidity and showing me its three white flowers all summer, and the Chinese evergreen is sprouting new leaves, something it doesn't do much when it is inside for the winter in a heat-dried house.

But it is the peppers that have really thrived.

I have one plant I planned to keep alive over the winter inside until I discovered it was infested with white flies. It got moved to the one sunny spot on the enclosed porch until it became too cold, at which point the worst foliage was removed and it was brought back inside and kept in a dim corner apart from the other plants until I could finally put it back in its usual sunny outside spot - at which point the temperature dropped. So this plant has been through a lot and I finally cut off the top of it and hoped for the best.

Italia peppers, Aug. 2016 (Margo D. Beller)

Well, below are two of the three fruits I have picked from this plant once the peppers turned red. (This is a sweet pepper and gets sweeter when redder.) The top pepper is what I usually get, most summers. The bottom is a monster that is the biggest I've ever grown.

Peppers, even sweet peppers like these, like it hot. I'm not sure if the humidity is helping them directly but the nightly thunderstorms we've been having during this period have kept down the white flies and the aphids that usually bother my other plants.

At the farm markets, the tomatoes have started coming in and I have several on the window sill to ripen. The zucchinis are huge and somehow, despite the heat, there is still lettuce and cucumbers and even rainbow chard to be had.

The people who don't believe in global warming say, "It's summer. Get over it." Those who see this tropical weather as unnatural hope it doesn't foretell a return of the polar vortex and above-average snow this winter, as some predict.

As usual, there is good and bad with everything. So as the plants thrive, I wilt.

Desperately Seeking Signs of Life

We've had a hard frost and the ground is frozen. There is still snow on the ground in spots, remnants of our most recent blizzard. Cold is a given in February and the birds are eating seed and suet to give them the fat they need to survive another day.

Blizzard, January 2016 (Margo D. Beller)

 The cold has brought a female hairy woodpecker to the suet. Unlike her smaller cousin the downy, this woodpecker takes big hacks at the frozen suet cake until she breaks off a piece she can take elsewhere and either eat or cache. The same is true for the male redbellied woodpecker who comes next. These two big woodpeckers soften up the suet for the smaller downys with their tiny but hard taps.

I see all this from a chair on my northeast-facing enclosed porch. Despite being able to see my breath, sitting in the sun with my warm robe and my coat on I am very comfortable. It is the first time I've been able to sit out here this winter.

February is a strange time in the northern hemisphere. In the year I was born my February birth day was the coldest day that year. Even with the clear evidence of global warming and it being an "El Nino" year, we awake to temperatures in the low to mid 20s and consider that a good thing. We've had very few night temperatures in the single digits this 2015-2016 season, which is a blessing compared with last year when the polar cold had us in its grip. Of course, that could change in a hurry. Daily we hear of another potential snowstorm, another visit from the Polar Vortex.

In a reversal from the autumn pattern, the cold allows me to leave the four feeders outside overnight because the bears are hibernating. However, I must take the hanging water cooler inside so it doesn't become a block of ice.

But if you need a sign that winter will end at some point and spring warmth will return, you can find it in February.

February is when you suddenly realize you're not shutting the sun room's shades at 4:30 pm but almost an hour later. You discover you no longer wake to pitch dark at 7am. The plants overwintering on enclosed porch are now getting several hours of direct sunlight where before they were lucky to get 30 min. because the sun is coming up earlier and its arc from east to west is changing to give us more light.

My favorite photo of a cardinal pair in winter. (Margo D. Beller)

If you like man-made signs, while the football season has been prolonged into February - it's Super Bowl Sunday as I write, the secular American Thanksgiving - we can look forward to baseball's pitchers and catchers showing up in Florida and Arizona to give us renewed hope.

Things are changing for the birds, too. After the blizzard, temperatures rose above freezing for about a week and then heavy rain took down most of the snow. Suddenly there was birdsong - cardinals, titmice and house finches in particular. More daylight and temperatures above freezing started them thinking of spring and what a bird does in spring - find a mate.

The cold had already made the usually skittish cardinals more assertive about dislodging the sparrows and the finches to get some seed. They had to be or they'd have died.

But they are more territorial. They want my yard, with its usually stable food source, as their territory when it comes time to mate and breed young. At the house feeder one dawn, a male cardinal sat on one side and a female on the other. Usually one would chase off the other. Was this a pair? A second male flew in and dislodged the female; the first male took off after him. Yes, the female and the first male are a pair.

Under the frozen ground, the daffodils, ornamental onions and, I hope, the glory of the snow I planted late last year are waiting for the signal to start growing. The warmer than usual December into January fooled some of the daffodils into poking their noses above ground. This happens every winter. Despite the eventual snow and cold the flowers will come back.

Skunk cabbage (Margo D. Beller)

Along the stream banks, the skunk cabbage is also waiting for the signal. Most people don't notice skunk cabbage, and if they are smart they don't step on it or they'll get a noseful of why it has that name. I like it because it is something green growing after a season of white. It's a sign we survived another winter.

Yes, there will come a point in the middle of the year when the heat and humidity will get to me, the daffodils will have faded, the grass will desperately need to be mowed and the weeds will overrun the garden despite my best efforts. But right now I am happy to see some signs of life in the middle of this dead season.