Surviving the Cold, Soaking up the Sun

We’ve been having a stretch of cold weather here in Washington, like so many other parts of the country. Nothing too horrible here, just a string of nights below 20 degrees and days that haven’t made it up above the freezing mark. Not very impressive if you live in a place like Minneapolis or Montana or upstate New York. My gosh, have you seen the footage on the Weather Channel showing what it looks like north of Syracuse in places like Oswego and Parish, New York? They’ve had more than 100 inches of snow since January, and it keeps on coming, along with high winds whipping off Lake Ontario. My sister went to college at Oswego, and I remember being incredulous when I saw the steel cables they string between buildings to help the students make their way to classes. Connie says they saved her more than once, which makes me glad I’m just coping with your basic mid-Atlantic snow-and-mixed-precipitation stuff.

Still, this is colder weather than we’ve had for a few winters. I’m afraid the rosemary shrub outside in my herb garden is probably done for by now. I keep planting rosemary although it isn’t supposed to grow in this zone. Most years my plants make it through the winter with no trouble, but when we get a stretch of sub-15-degree nights with wind, that’s it—I know I’ll be planting new seedlings next spring. My current shrub was five years old, so it had gotten big enough to bloom and really give a nice Mediterranean touch to the garden. Oh well. I knew I was pushing it.

Of course this current stretch can’t last much longer. Despite the cold, I can tell the days are getting longer and the sun higher now that we’re six weeks past the winter solstice. I’ve been amused to watch the animals in my back garden taking advantage of the stronger rays of the sun. The squirrels like to stretch out on the black asphalt shingles of our garden shed to sunbathe, and the dove family hangs out all in a row each afternoon on my back porch railing.

And inside the house my cat spends her very stressful day moving to follow the sunbeams on the floor. You know, cats are solar powered!