Windy Day

The wind is actually howling today, with leaves flying horizontally through the air. The goats were in the pasture running after the falling leaves as if they were potato chips flying down from the heavens above. It was quite humorous to watch.

This fall wind feels a bit more like a winter wind. It's a cold wind that stings your hands and face. The smoke from the wood stove is dancing down to the earth and back up and around the chimney as if it were a whirling dervish. The howling sounds make me close my eyes and imagine the blizzards of my childhood. I never minded blizzards as a child, in fact my sister and I viewed them as great fun. No school the next day, always a cup of hot chocolate and on very cold nights my mother and grandmother would add the warmth of their fur coats to our pile of blankets on our bed. Until I was 6 years old, we lived in a big Victorian house was heated with coal and it was nearly impossible to keep that house warm. The bathroom was in the north corner of the house and it was always freezing in there. You didn't dilly dally in winter that is for sure. When we moved a few houses down, we felt so blessed to have gas heat that kept the entire house warm, unless it was 20 below with a wind chill to make it feel 50 below, then it became a battle with nature that was almost impossible to win.

In the house we live in, when we moved here, there was NO insulation, just walls made of 1"x12" boards, covered with wooden siding on the outside and sheet rock on the inside. It was cold and we so often wondered what life was like for the folks that built this house as there wasn't even siding or sheet rock on the walls. Just bat and board walls. Three rooms all in a row. It must have been so cold at times and so hot in the summer.

Today, we are toasty warm, wood stove doing its job, walls insulated, the attic all insulated too. Cozy as can be. Winter is on its way and we are prepared. Life is good, isn't it ?