quaint vignettes from my charming rural idyll

It is quaintly snowing here at rancho FirstNations this morning.
Behold:

...the rancho at 6:am.
Actually it was quaintly snowing then. Now, it is a baby blizard. We have a full on northeaster wind howling down the Frazier valley and the snow is drifting and packing.
The rancho is mostly uninsulated. What that means is that some portions have some insulation in stupid places like over half a ceiling of a closet and one wall, but most don't. Like eighty percent-type most. Like the entire original house section.
Which faces due northeast.
This means that the back half of our house is colder than a dead eskimos' dick, a witches tit in a brass bra and a whores' heart. And the master bedroom is the coldest of all, placed as it is in the apex of the triangle facing northeast... followed by the bathroom and the kitchen. And the kitchen is where Command Central is, so I'm sitting here inside a heap of ultrafleece blogging with only the tips of my fingies and my nose sticking out.
'Oh gosh', wished the starry-eyed young dumbass, 'it would be SOOOOOOOO ultra cool to live in a historic farmhouse.'
Be careful what you wish for, my darlings.

There is a frozen puddle just beyond the back fence, in back of the garage where in warmer weather the blue herons like to fish and wade. The steady winds have blown the ice to a high polish, and it resembles a slab of black obsidian lying in the snow. The weather has brought out tiny, tiny birds in their hundreds...a tiny little needle-beaked grey and black thing hardly bigger than a female hummingbird, and they are merrily boucing round the gutters and windowframes and the branches of my trees like popcorn. They seem to be finding something of interest to pick at on the ice, because they wait in ranks on the wire of the fence to take their turns inspecting it. While the latecomers wait, the one's whose turn is up hop down to pick at the surface, and as they pick, facing into the wind, the wind is blowing them steadily, steadily backwards along the length of the puddle like little skaters.

The night before the snow started I woke up to the sound of a frog. Down behind the foundation just under my bedroom window, this little frog creaking his little frog song was the only sound I heard for miles and miles around. He will gradually make his way around to the south side of the foundation, under the front porch, and for the rest of the winter he will sing his creaky song every time rain threatens, as he does every year.

Our Thanksgiving was wonderful. For the first time in awhile we had the place to ourselves. The Yummy Biker and I made a meal I would have been proud to serve Careme.
The Biker went down the street and stole some apples off a tree in front of a vacant house. He made an applesauce out of them that would have made a stone saint cry. I could devote an entire post to the perfection of ingredients, method and flavour that was this applesauce. My house smelled like the land of the Blessed all day long, y'all. And just for something to do while he was waiting he threw together two pies and a lasagne for the next day.

He is MINE. He is TAKEN. Back WAY OFF.

I made a sauce and a small loin of pork, and added in a couple of small ears of local corn from this autumn. There was stuffing too, just a neutral one to catch the sauce and the juices.
Now that sounds simple enough, right?
But it was perfect.
Perfectly made perfect ingredients, perfectly combined, perfectly executed. If I do say so myself, he and I know our food backwards, forwards, inside and out. We are one of those rare combinations in the kitchen where the sum is astronomically greater than the parts. Nobody eats better than us on the holidays.
Anyone can bathe things in spices and gravy and call it yummy, but when you can compose a meal where all the ingredients are perfectly in balance? That's a gift. When you can do in in harmony with another person, that's just a damn miracle.

ALL MINE, bitches.

Now I have to go into the other half of the house and thaw out my fingers. Try and stay warm today, northerners! (Southern Hemispherians? Go suck my socks.)