Alba's Obituary

 Here is Alba Rossi's obituary. 

Today has been really very nice. We had sunshine for most of the day and warmish temperatures in the 20s. One would think it would be hard to find something to complain about, but the wind was still darned unpleasant. It lessened as the day went on, but when I was outside early this morning, it felt really cold.

My turkey friends came by this afternoon. They have not been around at all during the cold, windy weather we've had recently, but today they meandered across my lawn and spent quite a bit of time under the spruce trees at the front of the house and then investigated the apple trees. They scratch and dig in the snow to find seeds and grubs, leaving the area well roughed up. Until today, I had only one set of animal tracks within sight of my house - a deer, I suspect. Now there are tracks are all over the place! I think the turkeys pick up fallen seeds that the chickadees and nuthatches leave. They always take their seeds to a nearby tree to crack it open and often bits or sometimes the whole thing falls to the ground. They do a good job of picking them up, but I'm sure they miss some that the turkeys find. Still no evidence of squirrels at my bird feeder!

Today I did more file purging. I'm finding papers, clippings, cards and letters I had forgotten, and of course these often bring back memories. I've shed an occasional tear and had some laughs as well. Late this afternoon I tugged the big plastic tub full of discarded paper out of my small office space and scooted it out the back door into the garage ready for recycling. I have another batch ready for shredding, and still have one more file drawer to clean out.

Jamie reminded me that some of the paper might be useful for starting a fire in my backyard fire pit at some point. I like that idea, but the conditions have to be just right: I want to do it when there's snow on the ground so there's no danger of starting a grass or forest fire, but it has to be warm enough to be comfortable to sit out there and roast marshmallows or make s'mores, and the wind has to be just right so it doesn't blow smoke towards the house or my nearby neighbors. There is a fair amount of brush piled up there so it will be a pretty big deal, at least until it gets burned down a bit. 

When Fred and I first came here to live, we took out a lot of the very large soft wood trees. At the time we were advised to leave the limbs and junk wood that remained after the logs were skidded away in place to nourish the land. That seemed like a fine idea except they were left  helter-skelter, blocking our walking paths and it really looked awful. So that summer we both worked hard making large piles  where there were openings, and as soon as we had snow on the ground, we systematically set fire to them. It  was a chore, but we were able to reclaim our paths and open spaces so it was possible to walk through our property without climbing over heaps of brush. I've found that a lot of those limbs, especially the ones laid down to make a roadway to keep machinery from sinking into the earth when the logs were being hauled out, last literally for years. I bet some of them are still preserved in mud up there on the hillside. 

We'll see. In the meantime, it's still winter and we are expecting more snow tomorrow and much colder temperatures later in the week. I measured almost 3 inches of light, fluffy snow this morning. There were clouds of that dry snow blowing off the trees as the sun was rising. And so it goes. That's winter for you!