I have just come in from digging your classic American hole.

As we all know, the Crow cannot grow vegetables. The Crow flunked both zucchini and radishes. They are vegetables, therefore they will not grow in Crow's garden. Last year and the year before, I fooled some tomatoes into thinking they were flowers by virtue of sticking them in a giant flowerpot sunk to its waist in the flowerbed. Tomatoes never were too long on brains, so the ruse worked.

Vegetables are foodstuffs. On this matter, we must surely agree. One would not refer to a fir tree as a vegetable, nor to your grandmother's rhododendron in such a wise, and surely even nasturtiums (although edible) are never referred to as being of the vegetable persuasion. A gourd is not edible. No matter how long you cook them, gourds remain as inedible as the day you picked them off the vine.

I have tried to grow gourds before, but they had apparently been keeping company with some vegetables and had heard rumors about Crow's garden. Rather than go against the trend, they simply did in Rome as Romans do and refused...flatly...to grow.

Given this history, you would wonder why the Crow would spend $1.49 on a package of mixed gourd seeds. It's because of global warming.

You see, I have the idea that I might be able to convince these rather decorative plants ("plants," mind you...not vegetables) that they have sufficient warmth and nutrients to be quite comfortable until maturity with their feet in the hole with which I began this tale. Yes, I will have to add more dirt to the hole because at present, it qualifies more as a pit than a plot of land, but the mole has been rather busy of late and I have no dearth of dirt. I just wish the little bugger would sift the rocks out, but never mind. He's doing the best he can with limited equipment.

Thus, the next phase is to build a gourd tower. I wish to provide well for my tenants. But that's a project for another day. Presently, I am content to admire in all its hopeful promise the hole where once stood a ragamuffin, wretchedly unlovely rose.

It had been too long, and evidence of that was all too apparent when I took the ancient Sherpa snowshoes down from their hook and the bindings shattered into one-inch long segments. I sighed heavily. At least I hadn't dressed for the occasion yet, but my good intentions were perforce shelved at that singular moment of product mortality. Realistically, I suppose thirty years was a reasonable life expectancy, especially considering the abuses they'd endured in my years as a ranger. Nevertheless, my old friends had untimely given up the ghost and now what was I to do?

Despite my unenviable status as a senior citizen, having a piece of outdoor equipment out of commission was more than I could bear. A quick check of my favorite outfitters and a careful analysis of the product reviews inclined me toward Cabela's, but budget was also to be considered. Was I really prepared to shell out a substantial sum on something I might use no more than three or four times a season over a limited number of years? I needed some factor to tip the scale. The solution was simple: with a new Cabela's retail store a mere hour and a half from home, I'd let late-season availability determine my course of action. I called. They had three pair of 21" Alaskan Outfitters in stock.

The Alaskan Outfitter is based on the original Sherpa design with an aluminum frame and neoprene deck. Not much new in the technology there, but bindings were another story. The Sherpas laced by means of a single continuous webbing strap which went from hook to hook, around the ankle once and through a toothed gripper. Given the action of walking, it was not uncommon for them to require frequent retightening and often, the boots would slide at an angle on the decking so that the shoes were no longer parallel to one another, resulting in a bird-walking step of toes pointing together. The cross-straps on the Alaskan Outfitters, however, are a heavy, wide, hard plastic which fastens down with ratchet action along teeth, similar to those ridged white plastic ties which can only be removed by cutting. The ratchet buckles are a positive-action snap-tight manufacture which distributes the load evenly across the boot at toe and instep. There is no danger of overtightening as there was with the webbing because the buckle will not fully close if you've tried to cinch it down too snugly. The buckles also have a quick release: snap up the tab, and the strap slips readily free of the ratchet.

Now all this technical stuff is well and good in its place on the market shelf, but what the shoes needed was a field trial. Possibly half my snowshoeing has been in the line of work and therefore subject to memories of heavy packs, inclement weather, and the necessity to arrive at my duty station in a timely manner. Going out for the day with only the winter survival essentials in a rucksack seemed almost frivolous, as well it should. I woke to four inches of new powder in the yard and a forecast only vaguely threatening, optimum conditions for evaluation. Time to have some fun!

The Westside Road of Mt. Rainier National Park has long been a favorite with cross-country skiers and snowshoers, albeit frequently at odds with one another over who is destroying the other's track. Gated near the Park's Nisqually entrance, it affords a wide path for almost four miles until it reaches Fish Creek. There, conditions may limit further travel for the average hiker who does not care to risk crossing an icy stream on a footlog or tenuous snowbridge. In summer months, the gate is open, but vehicular access terminates at Dry Creek, a quarter mile short of the Fish Creek footbridge, and here Mt. Wow rises immediately to the west beside the road as an impressive jumble of boulders and outcrops, a stunning massif. Looking east, one sees the meadows of Mt. Ararat (named for a pile of timbers early explorers claimed were the remains of Noah's ark) sloping down to Tahoma Creek. This small valley has suffered a series of floods and mudflows in recent years, the potential for a major lahar justifying Park Service's decision to close the road at this point.

As I said, it had been too long, and I wondered if a trek up the Westside Road might be more than I could handle. The morning was crisp and what few weekend tracks there were had pretty much filled in with the night's snowfall. Occasionally beneath an overhanging branch the surface was glazed with hard ice, but for the most part, walking was casual, almost as if I was in boots on a dirt trail. A bit short of halfway, I was checked up short by a massive bull elk who eyed me for what I was, an intruder in his domain. There was no question of who owned the right-of-way; I spoke gently and continuously to him to let him know that I was no threat and after a period of minutes, he turned and bounded up the road, leaving great deep hoofprints. Finally, he turned and went down the embankment into forest, passing almost silently out of sight among the trees.

The night's snowfall was dry and fluffy. I scuffed along through it with clouds of spindrift rising at my toes and came to a subtle personal landmark rather sooner than I'd expected. How far was it to the nurse stump marking the trailless approach to Lake Allen? I questioned my memory, because it seemed I had arrived at it in near-record time. Here I made the first observation regarding the new snowshoes: they were easier to walk in than the old Sherpas, perhaps due to a one-inch difference in the width of the deck. This might not be critical to a six-foot man, but I am a full twelve inches shorter. The turnup at the toe is also more pronounced, so there was less "shovelling" with the tips and no significant accumulation of snow on the deck.

Now while I had been holding conversation with the elk, the two gentlemen who were allowing me to break trail for them had caught up and taken the lead when we started out again, laughingly saying it was their turn. I've done most of my snowshoeing alone and having a freshly trodden path was utterly delightful. Again, I came to the next landmark surprisingly soon, and not far behind my companions who had just settled in for a break at Dry Creek. After a snack and a photography session, the three of us set out again. When we reached Fish Creek a quarter mile further on, we all agreed that it was too dangerous to attempt to cross on the footlog since it had no handrail and was piled deep with snow which might conceal a layer of ice.

In the relative warmth of afternoon (still somewhat shy of 32°), snow tumbled from branches as I made my way back to the car, thoroughly pleased with the performance of the new snowshoes. Ten days later, I was out again, this time for a hike (as opposed to a walk on a snow-covered road). The second field trial was as successful as the first, but that's another story.

Evil thing that I am, I take great glee in what's happening out there right now. Typical of Memorial Day weekend in the Pacific Northwe't, it's raining. All those tourists are waking up in their tents to the sound of pitter-patter, pitter-patter on ripstop nylon, getting just a wee small taste of what Life In The Great Outdoors is *really* all about.

When I was working for the Park, one Memorial Day saw Ipsut Campground packed to overflowing despite a forecast for bad weather. There were tents pitched in the picnic area (not allowed), maniacs with axes hacking branches off living trees to build their fires (also not allowed), people camped illegally in the backcountry zones (obviously in contravention of the rules), and a handful of resigned rangers going dutifully about their business of smiling at all of them and trying to make the best of a Bad Thing.

Before Sunday was over, I'd been hailed on by end-of-thumb sized hailstones, drenched to the hide even through my Goretex (working hard and sweating underneath it in the Carbon River rainforest). I'd routed dogs off the trail, assigned illegal campers to more eco-friendly backcountry overflow sites, been menaced by a couple of drunks who didn't like me telling them they couldn't cut down trees.

And then the windstorm came on Monday and dropped a huge cedar across the dead-end road, penning all the campers on the wrong side of it.

I remember so clearly running past the gathering line of cars, sprinting up to Ipsut to retrieve the three-foot chainsaw which was stored in the shed behind the ranger cabin, three miles from the fallen tree. I remember even more clearly running back down the road at the best lope I could manage, carting the beast which was almost as big as I was. As I began the last mile, a visitor in a very small car shouted out his window at me to say that he'd give me a ride as far as his little vehicle could travel beside the rest of the hordes stuck behind the tree, and we made about half a mile before coming to a tight place that he couldn't pass. I sprinted the remainder, handed the chainsaw off to trail crew, and in another hour or so, they'd managed to section the tree and haul away the parts so that even the grotesque Winnebagos could pass through.

I went back to housing, took a long, hot shower and my supervisor told me I could take the rest of the day off. Instead, I sat around the office writing reports (one of my favorite things to do).

Gosh, that was a fun Memorial Day! And some poor ranger bugger up there this morning is going through much the same thing: gathering a memory that will become fonder and fonder the farther away he gets from the time of the actual event.

"One-armed Crow, meet extension ladder."

"Extension ladder, meet One-armed Crow."

I can see right now that we're not going to hit it off. The wisteria wants pruning and half the ladder won't reach the nearest beam even when stood vertically. There are serious Issues here, and the Crow is accustomed to winning arguments.

The second half of the ladder had not seen the light of day since the house was painted, and that pre-dated the application of siding by a good ten years. Assembly required a bit of logic which no doubt provided the neighbours with some amusement as I stood glowering over the hooks with their diabolical gates, talking to myself volubly as is my customary wont when faced with a dilemma. I am not ashamed to admit this habit; it often serves to focus clinical observations. Yes, the problem yielded to several well-placed and deeply tinted words. The ladder's parts slid neatly and securely together and the next challenge of the project was ready to be met.

You may recall that a year and a half ago, I suffered a serious injury to my shoulder. Five and a half months of physical therapy restored 90 percent of its mobility, but muscles had atrophied and strength was not to be regained.

The first maneuver with intent to erect the ladder was awkward and I'd misjudged the center of balance by a clear foot or so. My five-foot height provided the fulcrum for a teeter-totter, and my head passed neatly between two rungs as the weight of the aluminum uprights crashed down on either side of my collarbone. The second try placed the top of the ladder in a mesh of braided wisteria vine. Progress! Jostling, tugging, shoving and twisting brought the frame to rest on the timbers of the carport and I made a preliminary ascent, lopping shears in hand. Bits of wisteria scattered to the ground under my careful ministrations as the ladder wobbled on the uneven surface which scarcely qualifies as a lawn. The larger stems felt tearing bites from the blades, too tough and woody for my weakened arm to sever with a single snip. The pile of trimmings grew, and the ladder's position had reached the end of its tenure. I guided it in a side-step to a better vantage point, up and down, back and forth, up and down until at last the task was done.

The ladder has been disassembled, replaced in its nest atop the rails of the garage door. The wisteria has room to breathe and grow and its scruffy dross has been piled to burn. It is with great satisfaction that I look out the window past its tidy stems, again victorious over that distasteful word, "can't."

Descartes walked into a bar one day and sat down at a table to do some serious philosophizing. The bartender approached him and asked if he'd like a beer.

"I think not," he said...

...and disappeared.

She called it "fish-eye pudding," my mother did: a name which not only aptly described the look of the stuff, but made it all the more fun for a little kid like me to eat. Clear and gelatinous, the "fish-eyes" suspended in the cream-coloured sea were the size of a fat pea, the surrounding custard sweet and fluffy with whipped egg whites.

I suppose in actuality, the "fish-eyes" had little taste in themselves. A starchy product processed from the root of the cassava and ground, they are better known as a thickener which carries other flavours excellently. Yet as they sat in my bowl, they were as much for entertainment as for edibility as I tried to isolate each one with my spoon and rank them in a line atop the pudding according to the size of each individual pearl. They refused to sink when pressed into the matrix, bobbing back to the surface like glass floats on a frothy ocean.

Did I believe they were really fish eyes? Yes, for a long time, I looked for any sign of ocular structure within their translucent orbs, eventually concluding that the spheres were simply lenses. My erroneous deduction did not hamper my willingness to lift my spoon repeatedly to mouth, however! Not the child who had once eaten thirteen angleworms!

Not for many years have I prepared this delightful dessert for myself because at best, the modern cook must make do with the eyes of minnows. Perhaps global warming or over-harvesting has destroyed the fishery. Today, true pearl tapioca is hard to find.

The air smelled of snow, a slightly metallic pinch in the nostrils, brazenly flying in the face of forecast rain. True to its promise, four inches of soft, white fluff covered both yard and highway when I woke, and the plows had not gone down. The tires of one passing car made no more than a murmur as they parted the virgin field, muffled in the deep, leaving no echo to drift above the padded asphalt. The stalking snow soon filled in the abandoned imprints, still falling in hushed, thick draperies when first light paled the grey horizon.

The path my feet cut as I walked in darkness through the scattering flakes is no longer visible beside either filbert or dogwood, and my route to the bird feeder has faded from the silent earth's map. The corner fencepost stands lonely, my visit to the wild lilac now forgotten by the moss-shrouded cedar rails. Not a trace of my pre-dawn meanderings is in evidence; no scuff, no divot, no hollow shows a reminder of my booted and bundled patrol.

The snowflakes count their seemingly infinite census as far as the eye can see, a cloth of diverse miracle thrown over forest and field in beautifully haphazard artfulness. Too often dismissed in a hasty world as nuisance, there is something hidden here, a gentle secret. Its meditation emerges from a quiet sky, as fragile as the whisper it speaks into the tin-scented air.

What is the true measure of a gift? Its monetary value? Hardly! The quality of its materials or craftsmanship? A child's drawing may be more cherished than an exquisite artwork in the proper eyes. The value of a gift is in the love of the giver, the heart behind the object, only to be recognized by the recipient.

As I held one wrapped package in my hands, my tears fell for fear it was not what I expected it to be, that I would tear off the paper to discover something not so much a part of the person as what I hoped for, that thing which would help me learn to share a part of his life foreign to me. The box lay in my fingers for long minutes as I tried to summon the strength not to be disappointed in whatever it contained because regardless, it would have been chosen with love. My hands shook as I carefully slit the tape with a thumbnail, wanting to preserve the precious paper which concealed my last, most special present, and I laid the green paper back with great care not to wrinkle or to do any damage.

A teardrop fell on the bedsheet as I saw only the back of a box which still hid its secret. I wiped another away, not wanting the spate of my emotion to leave a stain. Now I was convinced I knew in essence what the package contained. I turned it over. Clouds formed in my eyes and the rain came down, yet I still did not open the box as I tried to read between the rainbows in my tears. When at last I lifted the lid and saw what lay within, I could no longer keep grip on the last of my composure and broke into long, wrenching sobs over that for which I had longed, the core of my beloved's soul. God willing, some day I will fully comprehend the whole worth of this one so very special gift.

Today, I remember my mother. I walked away from her bedside on this date, almost to the hour, certain that morning would find nothing but her shell cast aside to be returned to the earth. How could I leave her?

Her spirit was weary of the world, had been so for years. Embittered, jaded, she lived a solitary and friendless life by choice, seldom setting foot beyond her door except as necessity demanded. She dwelt in books covering provocative political issues, in vituperative radio broadcasts, in a fantasy of conspiracy theories and government treacheries, and I often wondered how she could enjoy the anger and hate with which she surrounded herself from morning until late at night. She seemed to thrive on it and the way her obsession with it alienated those around her.

But at one time in her life, my mother had been another person. As I cared for her in her final weeks, stories came out, both good and bad, which helped me to understand how she had come to her present state. It was often difficult to sort embellishments from her stories, but a careful ear could hear the current which ran beneath them, a flow of truth and revelation which she may not have meant to release. I met the mother I had never known in those last two weeks. She too was acquainting herself with her daughter, and from this, a healing came. The rift which had erupted between us at my birth was bridged as we discovered each other to be human.

In my mid-twenties, I had promised my mother that I would never put her in an old folks' home or send her off to hospital until it became absolutely necessary, so when her health failed, I brought her to live with me. She remained here all but her final three days. I had kept my vow to her, and as I left her bedside, I knew that she was grateful and wished to leave the earth in privacy, in solitude as was her way.

Winter's firstborn daylight lifted from behind the mountains and opened onto an unexpected snow, its glint and sparkle mirroring the last of fading stars. It had come under silent stealth with its solstice gift of untold beauty, on tiptoe in the night and with a hush of reverence for the Earth, and where it crept into pasture and pathway, only the trees watched and the creek muttered in its lazy sleep. Quiet flakes nestled in flocks; white caricatures of wrens huddled within arbors of barren branches, voiceless against moss and bark. The silvery stillness read a profound philosophy to its tardy witnesses: peace, the snow speaks peace in wordless wisdom.

The year now turns, and daylight gains against darkness. Unless on a subliminal level, I will not notice the first few minutes won until January begins to enter its second week when I will find myself recognizing evening's retreat as it skulks off with its tail between its legs. It is an Aboriginal awareness which comes upon me then, an epiphany of sunlight's minimal expansion, a sense of changing tide in the sea of hours, and I will find myself watching for the pussywillows' bud and the 'mouse-ears' on the Indian plum as surely as if I were dependent on them for sustenance.

Light. It was the first word of my vocabulary; light, the moon. Light, the secret of vision; light, the universal euphemism of theologies. It is light which brings us revelations, light which shows us the path. Light in all its mysteries nurtures us, protects us, heals us. We follow it, covet it, rejoice in it for the benefits it bestows. Light grows from this day forward, rooted in the solstice's dark earth.

Stories which were old when I was young, captured in pages yellowed with the years even then, take me down a sweet path of memories as I transcribe them to share with the heart of my soul. Childish though they may be in their fancies and quaintly illustrated in the manner of the times, they have a romance all their own which has been all but lost, picturesque and poetic and filled with the bright ideals of family and goodness.

In the ear of my mind, I can hear my mother's recitations of the poems echoing the previous generation as her voice read them aloud to me, my grandmother's inflections rising and falling in her intonation of phrase and meter as she herself had heard them. There is no hesitancy; the words flow of their own accord in the writer's stream as it bathes the imagination in its placid current, a navigation not beyond the skill of even the most clumsy oarsman. These are lullabies, a delicately turned cradle of poesy rocking in the gentle breeze of a caring mother's breath.

In the simpler times of eighty years ago, evening's firesides saw parents and children gathered 'round with such volumes as these which I have picked from my shelves, the coloured images vivid and the pages crisp, and no doubt the flickering light made its dance in eyes which delighted in the whimsical depictions. But their charm had not faded with the inks in the time of my own childhood, nor fallen into tatters along their edges as the chipped pages have done. Beneath the tape and threadbare bindings, their magic yet abides, waiting only for a voice to speak their spirit into a dear heart.

For the first time since the storm, I drove beyond the immediate neighbourhood and saw some of the havoc the winds had wreaked. In the space of five miles, I counted no fewer than eight or nine Douglas fir which had fallen across the highway, trees of twelve inches in girth or more and at least forty feet tall. Deeper in the forests lining the road, groups of trees had come down en masse and lay tangled like jackstraws, or had caught among sturdier branches and were leaning, precariously held aloft above a mat of broken limbs. The highway verges were thick with branches and twigs, the grass barely visible beneath their debris.

Another system is slated to bring even more wind and rain to the area tomorrow to add more to the state's growing list of weather woes. Although neither sustained winds nor gusts are forecast to be as intense as the last storm, there is still hidden potential for severe damage to property from hazards created when it swept through the area. Many residential locations in the Seattle area are still without power and roadways have not been cleared of fallen trees, nor have crews had time to remove those hung up on wires or in neighbouring limbs, increasing the likelihood of further electrical outages. Likewise, another bout of heavy rain may well choke rivers with logjams and take them more quickly to flood stage, particularly where levees were weakened by the previous spates.

This old chestnut may prove wrong before this winter has run its course in Washington state:

Whether the weather be cold
Or whether the weather be hot,
We'll weather the weather
Whatever the weather,
Whether we like it or not.

As my power continues to flicker on and off, I have yet to hear from two friends in Flatland. One lives on urban property with several large, old trees standing quite near the house, the other in a more open suburban setting and both in the infamous Puget Sound Convergence Zone. Stories trickle in through other acquaintances, representing Flatland as something akin to a war zone and I begin to think we folk here in this narrow, sheltered valley came off lucky.

It sometimes works that way. Several years ago, 88 MPH gusts raked through a home weather station on a lake not far from home, yet not a breeze over 10 MPH disturbed my trees. The wind came directly from the south and sheared across the river's mouth where it dumps into the reservoir, but where the river's channel lies, a range of hills afforded us full protection. A southwesterly wind might have torn off shingles and uprooted trees as this last storm did, or the rare easterly which is infamous for its destructive capabilities, yet gusts from due south are rare and more kindly.

The bulk of our weather comes in from the coast of Oregon near Astoria, sweeping across the flat relief of central southwest Washington where several major rivers begin to spread out in anticipation of the sea. There is not much to blunt the force of a storm until it comes spang up against the Cascade Range or the Mountain itself, which means it races across some of the most densely populated areas of the state. It is not surprising that over a million people lost power in this last storm. The wonder is that the number was no higher and the damage no greater, given the intensity of the winds which I am told peaked at 135 MPH. This valley certainly saw nothing so severe.

Washington is having more than its share of extreme weather this winter, balancing out a mild and dry summer with torrential rains and ravaging winds. Totted up at the end of the year, I think you'll find our seasonal averages and means fairly close to normal, surprisingly enough, when half the year's end's glass is poured into the empty one which began it.

Forty hours without power, twenty-four without a landline phone, and I got off easy. Never mind that the longest I'd been without lights previously was a mere 18 hours, as opposed to those in that same storm who lost theirs for up to two weeks. It's one of the benefits of living in an area where a small number of customers is served by a small, well-prepared company as opposed to the consortiums and their huge clientele. Although our lines run miles through timber country, the repair crews have fewer feet of wire in which to pinpoint a problem.

As I walked around the neighbourhood yesterday morning, I saw everywhere evidence of what I had heard in the night. Dozens of trees, both alder and Doug fir, had snapped twenty feet up their trunks and lay in splinters and tangled boughs. One ancient snag had gone down roots and all, the massive foot upturned and the body sprawled across a disused road. Twigs, boughs and branches littered yards and verges like confetti. I was thoroughly amused at the highway department's solution to remove the debris when their fleet of sweepers was deployed to more critical areas: they sent the snowplows down!

With propane at a premium and no idea how long I might be sitting in the dark with no heat, I kept the house near 60° during the daytime, lowering the flame when I turned in for bed on a mattress beside the hearth. By morning, the room was chilly at a temperature at least ten degrees less, but my only regret was not dragging out my expedition-weight sleeping bag. Instead, I bundled up in wool longjohns and curled up in a catlike ball beneath half a dozen layers of fleece blanket. Lack of light was not really an issue. Whenever I was on the cell phone, I kept candles or a propane Coleman burning, and when I wanted to see to work on needlework, I simply put on a backpacker's halogen headlamp and stitched merrily away.

Getting through an unpleasant situation like this is largely a matter of the mind. You might as well enjoy the adventure, pretend you're camping out or on a climb because cussing about it isn't going to make it any better. Now if only I could have instilled that philosophy into the cat!

So many times, the forecast of blustery winds and snow peters out in a fizzle of rain, but under the threat of a Winter Storm Warning, the skies have gone coal-black and the breeze is stiffening its resolve as it makes a practice run through the wind chimes. I've battened all my hatches for this latest of Pacific Northwest weather systems, tucked away in the safety of the garage all blowable objects save the metal awning of the kitchen porch. The water jugs are filled, an extra pot of coffee made, Coleman and kerosene lanterns stand at the ready, and the propane tank is nearly full. Foodstuffs are provisioned (although I may tire of a fish diet if we're in for the long haul), so what have I forgotten? Oh! A five-gallon bucket for the convenience! And now even that is drawn from the well. The house is prepared.

As much as I love a good windstorm, the trees to the west of me pose a menace to the house. My huge Doug fir was topped of its schoolmarms years ago, but even so, the new growth now towers twenty feet above the parent trunk and one ancient branch projects out toward the carport, thick as my waist at its junction with the tree. Yet the firs on the undeveloped neighbouring property are those which most greatly concern me, since several are of a height greater than the distance to my bedroom roof. I fret under the punishing winds when they come from the east to bow those evergreens westward, because it is as the gusts die suddenly that backlash snaps trunks and sends the giants of the forest to the ground.

The house has its share of wind-inflicted scars. The biggest storm windows failed to live up to their reputation some years ago and were removed by gusts and shattered on the sidewalk, never to be replaced in the warped frame which had turned them loose. So too, the unsupported kitchen awning once took wing and sent me scampering after its parts as they gambolled across the highway. In a stop-gap measure which held for the duration of the season's rampant weather, I tied the bent and twisted aluminum slats back together with wire, then later put up a more sturdy type of roof and anchored it to the ground.

The wind is gaining confidence as it plays the chimes now, readying for a concert. The cold rain hints that snow is following, and perhaps at blizzard force. I am snug for the moment with heat, water, food and light provisioned, and all would seem secure, except perhaps my jangling nerves. This one is going to be a doozy.

I'd swear they're in cahoots, those two with their "no fondling, peeking, poking, shaking, rattling or hefting" prohibitions regarding Christmas presents, and "they" know exactly who I mean, don't they? I smell teamwork in this scheme to tantalize and tease me. Consciously or unconsciously, I suspect you two have had your heads together, working out a plot. Now were I of a mind to, I'm sure I could find a loophole in those injunctions. Let me consider this a minute. There surely must be some way to adhere strictly to the letter of the law...

The truth is that I relish the anticipation, and the few times I've accidentally 'busted' someone's surprise by guessing correctly when thin wrappings or weight or sound gave a gift away have been disappointing, so I try to be careful; I really, truly do. Equally as much as your presents make me glad of heart, so do I enjoy your pleasure at witnessing my honest delight in finding something unexpected in my hands when the bows and paper have been cast aside. I would not detract from that for all the world by chancing an inadvertent revelation.

Yet I must wonder: No hefting? No shaking? None at all? Hmph! My reputation must precede me, that you lay down such stringent edicts and cruel embargos. Numbered boxes? One-each-day restrictions? Could you please submit a printed copy of the rules? Ha! Well, you missed a lick when you didn't mention going through a third party, and my agent is even now considering how best to apply her teeth to tissue and patting those enticing strands of curling ribbon with her paws.

But no...I will discourage the cat's curious advances, for I see your games for what they truly are: your extraordinary and original way of making this Christmas one which I will cherish as a gift in itself.

A Noel of Small Birds

All the birds of winter gather in to find a shelter,
Begging for a bit of food and warmth in the cold weather.
From their homes in barren trees, sparrows go, and chickadees,
Finches search for bright berries, flying back with treasure.
From a journey returning laden, they sing merrily.
Song fills the sky and the snow is so white, and red's the rowan tree.
Gifts of Man shall help in need, crumbs of bread and scattered seed:
Thankful small birds all, indeed! Merry to a feather!
Singing, soaring over the forest, freely they shall fly.
Dance on the wind over moorland and glen in the sparkling winter sky.
All the birds of winter gather in to find a shelter,
Begging for a bit of food and warmth in the cold weather.
All along the hedgerow gay, birdsong beckons in the day,
From the holly and the bay, and the hoary heather.
Tiny birds take wing to go wassailing. Questing they shall go.
Thicket and bush for the moment are hushed by the silence of the snow.
Masters of their frosty hall, they announce the minstrel's call,
Pleasure to accord to all, singing all together.
Thus their carol rises unbounded, joyful hearts in flight.
Echoing trills lie like mist on the hills on a starry winter night.

Friends would gleefully have my guts for garters if they didn't benefit from the fact that unlike them, I start assembling my next-year's Christmas presents before this one has passed its mark on the calendar. No last-minute rushes for this kid! No scrabbling through the shelves or elbowing through crowds to find that special gift for Aunt Matilda or Uncle Walter, only to come upon the perfect solution broken in a picked-over pile of goods.

Call me old-fashioned if you will, but I believe the Christmas season is much better spent in love of friends and family instead of traffic hassles or check-out lines. What better way than to begin with handcrafting a unique item seated by the fire in the soft glow of the lighted tree as my mother often did with a needle in her fingers, picking fine stitches in doll clothes for her child? Likewise, in the dim light of his shop, my father bent his back at the workbench through holiday vacation, painstakingly dovetailing corners or mounting the tiny brass fittings which embodied the worth of his labour in the wooden boxes he built with such meticulous pride. Both parents used their skills to make care-filled gifts which, if not of the same quality mass-production might have supplied were obviously produced with the recipient in mind and heart. It was the ethic and the effort which was bestowed on neighbours and relatives with a value far greater than any pricetag could show, the priceless gift of hours of being in the mind of the artisan.

The threat of a lump of coal in the stocking of a bad little girl could only have set me on the Road to Ruin, my budding interest in geology having already manifested itself in the stone-filled pockets of my jacket or my school skirts. Unlike most kids on the playground, I was not content to hunt for 'wishing rocks' (those with a complete band of quartz encircling their diameter) but preferred to spend class recess labouriously picking tiny garnets out of a schist boulder with a pin. Although the largest of my finds could not have been a quarter inch across, I proudly added it to my collection right beside a one-inch beauty which had been a gift from an adult friend. Yet it was that lump of coal I longed for, and for more than one reason.

It didn't help that a few miles from our home was a lapidarist's shop which my mother occasionally visited in connection with her own unrelated business. I would tag along and stand goggle-eyed, staring at the museum-quality specimens lining the walls and shelves, dreaming of explorations with pick and hammer in exotic locations like Brazil. There was nothing on my maple dresser to match the deep bowls of amethyst crystals which came from that country, nothing in the bookcase headboard of my bed to parallel the staurolite crosses or the glittering pyrites, no rainbow-banded agates, no synthetic boules nor rough star sapphires, and certainly no coal.

From this delightful shop, I obtained my first copy of "Rocks and Minerals: A Golden Nature Guide" at the expense of several months' allowance. I learned from its pages what specific gravity meant, how to rank a specimen on the Mohs scale of hardness with only a few rudimentary tools, read with fascination about blowpipe tests and bead tests (both beyond my amateur abilities). I pored over the little volume for hours, committing crystal shapes to memory, hoping some day to find them in the field. Seeing my keen fascination with the subject, the proprietor always made time to talk to me, and sometimes (but not often) he would offer some small but fine specimen at a substantial markdown to my mother or an exchange of goods at the asking price.

Yet as Tennessee Ernie Ford was singing "Sixteen Tons" on the radio, the store's shelves held no lumps of coal, much to my dismay. It was not until my mother accidentally discovered a coal yard that we were able to obtain samples of sub-B bituminous, picked up free along the roadside where one of the massive trucks had spilled part of its load as it turned into the driveway. One small chunk went into my collection, and the other larger one was used to grow a Depression Plant, an experience/experiment every child should be allowed to enjoy at least once.

You will not actually need a lump of coal for this project. The plant (a fragile, coral-like growth) may also be grown on a brick, a chunk of landscaping pumice or any similar porous material.

Materials:
A lump of coal approximately 3 inches square
A dish at least 2" tall and 6" in diameter
4 Tbsp. non-iodized salt
4 Tbsp. laundry bluing
4 Tbsp. water
1 Tbsp. non-sudsing ammonia (I have used sudsy and it still works)

Combine liquid ingredients and salt and pour over coal in the dish. Add a little salt each day to continue the growth. A few drops of mercurochrome may be added to give colour.