And so it begins.

And February ends.

This tiny aconite caught my eye amongst last year’s dead husks. (I really must clean up the beds.) A few days ago, it was but a cluster of tiny yellow balls, their diameter no larger than a nickel. This morning when I walked past, I noted they had unclenched like tiny fists and were basking in the winter sunlight.

Spring’s miniature vanguard.

It is after midnight. I let the dogs out and decided to bring in a log, though the house hardly needs more heat. Still, it is fine to be so warm after two months of cold and pain. With the winter’s frigid departure, the pain is ebbing. That is most welcome, as well.

Out in the midnight dark, the waxing half moon hung. It tilted in a kind of sardonic smile.

Pip, blinder and blinder, went the wrong way when I beckoned. I called again, louder. He turned and found his way to the steps and climbed them toward the porch light, which certainly must be summoning him.

The dogs went into their pen reluctantly. I knew they would have a coughing, wheezing fit after being stirred from inactivity, and so I did not wish to share my bed with them.

Now, back in bed, beneath piles of blankets and a comforter, I think of the moon smiling down at me.

“What fools these mortals be.”

When I got home this evening, the temperature was in the 50s. 

The white patches of snow on the brown earth beds seem to be shrinking before my eyes. Everywhere emerald fingers are pushing up from beneath the earth.

I decided I should split the remaining big logs from last year. Soon I must bring in this year’s wood to split and dry so it can be burned next winter. That will be a task. I hope my back and arms are up to it.

A few pulls on the cord and the splitter spluttered to life. The machine and I made quick work of it. The round logs groaned, cracked and “popped” into half-moon shapes.

When it was time to crawl into bed and pull one covering after another up to my chin, I decided to read a bit. The long neck lamp clamped to the headboard was waved to light up.

What am I reading? Fairy tales. With a twist. The Fairies Return: Or, New Tales for Old. This copy was deaccessioned from Michael Dirda’s collection. With such provenance, I decided to take it home. Why I chose it to be the last of seven books I read in February 2026, I know not. It started out slowly and inauspiciously. Published by Princeton, for God’s sake. The 38-page introduction was turgid and offputting. Joyless. Pedantic. The authors in the table of contents…

“These must be dreary tales. Clemence Dane, E. M. Delafield, Eric Linklater, Christina Stead… authors whose works I’ve handled many, many times, but damned if I ever sold one.”

Other writers are even more obscure. A few, like Lord Dunsany, are more mainstream (and marketable).

When you’re wrong, you’re wrong. I floated along with these Grimm 20th-century takes until the book somehow ended up splayed upon my chest for several evenings. The tales are cautionary—which can mean inspiring. These forgotten authors whose works I would never dream of cracking open sprang to life—like spring.

“Be careful what you wish for.”

… 

“Be careful what you wish for.”

… 

“Be careful…”

Now it is Friday morning. This day will almost certainly stink. Legal nonsense. It came out of nowhere. “You owe for a missed rent in 2020. If you don’t pay by this Tuesday, we will assess five years of late charges and we will be starting eviction procedures.”

?!?!

We haven’t received any bills or notices or warnings or… 

Just this verbal threat out of the blue.

Blindsided.

So now I need to get my lawyer involved and straighten things out.

Ridiculous.

This was yesterday. Late afternoon. I was on my way out to have dinner and see the grandson I haven’t seen since our Christmas get-together on January 3rd.

The day began with a 7 a.m. physical therapy appointment for my hamstring. When is the cure worse than the disease? I was given a good workout. The back of my thigh was massaged like a dough kneaded by a baker. I left aching, but “No pain, no gain.”

The day became one wasted hour after another.

Up at the house, the contractor was finally finishing painting the master bathroom. It has been a week.

“I didn’t know I would need to retake the drywall.”

It was further delayed by Monday’s snowstorm.

It is strange when a part of the house is so altered. I had to clear everything out. The framed stuff needed to come down.

Now to put it all back together.

The week was further marred by the death of my sectional conversation pit. I have spent so many happy hours on the recliners built into it that the black leather has become worn and cracked. Then one evening, the touchscreen that raises and lowers the recliners (and switches on the heater and massager—really!) died with the footrest in the upright position.

That has forced the issue of getting rid of the big piece of furniture so a replacement can be brought in.

I texted the contractor “Since you’re there, would you…”

So, my favorite comfort zone (after the bed) is going to the dump.

There were some interesting finds amongst the impossible masses of books set before me.

This glossy binding looked like some kind of Barnes and Noble gift edition of Melville.

When I looked inside, I discovered it was a modern rebind of a mid-19th century Putnam’s Magazine bound volume.

“What does this have to do with Herman Melville?”

Digging deeper, I found there were numerous stories credited to Salvator Tarnmoor. It turns out that is a pseudonym of Heman Melville. The stories are about the Galapagos Islands, which Melville visited as a sailor. 

The work was first published as “The Encantadas, or Enchanted Isles” under the pseudonym “Salvator R. Tarnmoor,” in three installments in Putnam’s Monthly Magazine for March, April, and May, 1854. Melville earned $50 for each installment. It appeared in The Piazza Tales published by Dix & Edwards in May 1856 in the United States and in June in Britain. Neither that collection of short stories nor “The Encantadas” as a separate item was reprinted during Melville’s lifetime.
—Wikipedia

Bizarre.

Another surprise was this Lives of the Most Eminent French Writers by Mrs. Shelley, published in 1840.

A large group of beautiful Easton Press sci-fi, fantasy and horror came in, as beautiful as fine furniture.

From Dune to Anne Rice.

A large lot of M. P. Shiel reprints were rediscovered. We bought out the publisher years ago. The large lot—all shrink-wrapped, filling six or more carts—has been in boxes since we moved here in 2014.

Now to figure out what to do with them.

M. P. Shiel has a cult following—but it is a small cult.

Sometimes you can get too much of a good thing.

Monday, February 23rd.

There was a snow show before dawn this morning.

Warm in my bed, I had a ringside seat.

It wasn’t completely unexpected. Through Sunday there was rain all day, and I thought perhaps we would miss yet another snow.

Nope. After I left work, the rain began to turn to white stuff.

When I got home, I was tired. I bought some wine on the way—Bonny Doon Le Cigare Volant (Flying Saucer).

I loved this winery 30 years ago. Made a couple pilgrimages there. Now it seems to be fading. I really found their website highly amusing when such things were novel.

I set the box on the cast iron wood ring on the porch and went in to let the dogs out. Late that night—actually, early in the morning—I let them out again. The box was still there, and there was a little snow on it.

“My laptop!”

I’ve ruined a few electronic things by allowing them to get wet. Most recently, I spilt a little wine on the control screen of my reclining conversation pit. It is an “L” shaped couch configuration. I spend a lot of time on it. Watching movies, mostly. The letter on the two seats I use is worn and cracked. Now the raised footrest is frozen in midair. I was angry at first, irately wondering if it could be repaired, but now I see the mistake as an opportunity to replace it with something nearly identical.

I carried the box in and took the laptop to the loveseat across from the woodstove so it could dry faster. Returning to the box, I discovered that one of the two quarter-pound hot dogs I’d brought home for the dogs to share was missing. Then I recalled the fox prints in the snow below the porch and surmised the Cani must have smelled the food, come up the steps, and pinched one of the sausages.

The winds came howling in the later wee hours.

The birds came with the dawn’s first light. All the seed had been buried by the snow. I tossed out a few more scoops, and a few dozen birds flocked to my porch roof.

I’ve had to add a lot more seed to keep up with the demand and make up for the seed that has been buried by the blowing snow.

I built a good fire last night.

The house is warm.

Apparently things are pretty normal down in the valley. The snow didn’t stick to the roads, and the warehouse opened at 7 a.m. with no issues. I suppose I should get up and plow. The temperature will rise above freezing soon, and the steep drive down the mountain may melt to bare wetness soon.

But the bed feels so good. Warm. Soft. Three old dogs snoring softly next to me.

I ended up plowing my way down yet again. There was about four inches. It was plowing event number… I’ve lost track. Fortunately, despite all the rain before the snow, there wasn’t ice beneath. The temperature was rising. It was about 33 or 34 degrees. With each pass down or up the mountain, the remaining snow became wetter until it was soft slush. The pavement was becoming wet. 

After heading back inside for a shower, I drove the snow-covered big black pickup down. The mile-long gravel drive beyond the end of my pavement had not been plowed, but gravity (driving downhill) and the truck’s nubby tires meant the descent was not too stressful. When I reached the bottom, it was like a different climate. Any snow there had melted off. The roads were dry. When I got to work, all was normal.

I was pretty late, thanks to all the fun and games. But I’d done so much over the weekend, there was nothing pressing.

It is Tuesday. I have a physical therapy appointment for my thigh at 7 a.m., so I can’t linger in bed. The Jack Russells—blind, hacking, perhaps growing senile—need their medication.

“Let’s see… Pip gets half of this pill once a day. Merry gets half of that pill twice a day. He also gets the white oblong pill every other day. Pip gets the red and white capsule twice a day. They both get the cough medicine pill twice a day. Is that it?”

I need to stir their food up—mixing the canned with the dry.

Coffee this morning. I need a jolt.

February 24th. A lost month. I wonder how bad our numbers will be?

I’ve read five books this month. I might finish a sixth. Every day, I read so many titles and title pages and copyright pages and emails and texts and bills and forms… but I usually manage two or three pages of whatever I’m reading before I’m asleep.

The bathroom has been torn up since last Wednesday. What was to be simple got more complicated. That and the weather delays and the weekend meant that the master has been entirely emptied for almost a week. Strange to have a room without any stuff in it. That’s not my modus operandi.

Now it is Friday.

The last day of February is tomorrow.

Good riddance.

A month of cold and pain.

The valley down below is blanketed in fog and low clouds. The rampant overdevelopment of this once bucolic county is obscured.

When the sun comes out and burns off the fog covering, the shoddy cramped developments will be revealed.

At night now there are hundreds of lights burning all the time.