December 21, 2025
Dear Chickens,
I know it’s the shortest day of the year. And that, lately, it’s generally been cold, overcast and gloomy. The worst laying conditions possible. Still–in the circumstances and all–you’re giving me an egg or so a day when all the experts say the four of you should be molting and resting. Today, there was one egg, a beautiful brown one Perfectly oval. Thanks so much. I need to make a custard to accompany another dish, for friends who will be visiting next week, and rest assured, you’ll get full credit for the “eggy-ness” of the finished product, when I finally get it together.
Merry Christmas!
Love, RWKJ.
I adore the change of seasons. I have friends around the world who live in places where it’s always warm, always colorful, always beautifully scented, and always vibrant. Just as I have friends who live in places where it’s always raining, always windy, always on the brink of everything turning into black mold, and always cold.
Neither is really my jam. It’s true there are a couple of months in midsummer, in this southwestern Pennsylvania spot, where it’s just too bloody hot and humid for human comfort but since–a couple of years ago–I invested in a few mini-splits in strategic rooms around the house, I have a little more control over that than in the previous sixty years I’ve lived in this climate so–sue me–it’s not such a big deal anymore.
In short, this is where I want to be.
The very great majority of the time.
Still, there are times that the Bard speaks for me, and I feel very much like Greasy Joan:
WHEN icicles hang by the wall
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail;
When blood is nipt, and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl
Tu-whit! tu-whoo! A merry note!
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.When all around the wind doth blow,
And coughing drowns the parson’s saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marian’s nose looks red and raw;
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl—
Then nightly sings the staring owl
Tu-whit! tu-whoo! A merry note!
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.–William Shakespeare
Although I wish I had the extensive staff enumerated in the piece. Really, it’s just me. (Or “I” as it should more properly be.) For all the roles delineated.
Coming up, in about a month, is the night described in what’s perhaps the loveliest poem ever written in the English language:
St. Agnes’ Eve—Ah, bitter chill it was!
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;
The hare limp’d trembling through the frozen grass,
And silent was the flock in woolly fold:
Numb were the Beadsman’s fingers, while he told
His rosary, and while his frosted breath,
Like pious incense from a censer old,
Seem’d taking flight for heaven, without a death
Past the sweet Virgin’s picture, while his prayer he saith.–John Keats
A pretty apt description, even for today. I hear the owls all the time, in the woods at the bottom of the field. Merlin tells me they’re barred owls. I’m sure they’re beautiful. And probably cold. The “flock” is in the barn and quiet. And a bit earlier, although I didn’t see a “hare,” I did see a squirrel traipsing through the “frozen grass.”
Lovely.
There’s another poem that regularly appears on the list of “best-loved Solstice poems” if you do a search. It’s by Christina Rossetti:
In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.. . .
What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.
Bit like Little Drummer Boy, only without all the annoying “Pa-Rum-Pum-Pum-Pum.”
And thus, as I’ve said before, when I’ve (somewhat irregularly) meditated on this time of year:
I come to the last stanza, and the last line, and I realize something I’ve always known, but which, in occasional bouts of self-absorption and misery, even just about things like the weather, I frequently forget: that the only thing that matters is what’s in my heart. That no matter how much or how little, in real terms I have or don’t, or how cold, or how miserable I feel, I am in charge of a heart. My heart. That I am free to give it, or withhold it, at will. And that if I fall on the side of “give,” if there is warmth and love and kindness there, it doesn’t really matter what the little weather station on top of my bookcase reports about the dire and ugly situation outside. Nor does my success or failure rate in living up to, or living down, the expectations of others matter all that much, either. Inside my heart, there is love, there is gratitude, there is warmth, there is kindness, and there is truth. And through them, with them, and in them, I find I can vanquish the “bleak midwinter,” after all.
Because in my heart–no matter the changing of the seasons–it is possible to always have summer.
Thank you, Lord.
Then the heart of Éowyn changed, or else at last she understood it. And suddenly her winter passed, and the sun shone on her.–J.R.R. Tolkien
