We are surrounded in white on white, cold on cold, the hunch and squeak of boots on packed snow beginning to sound like fingernails on a black-board made for chalk. 
The night before last was -11 (-23C), last night was -21( -30C). As I write just before dawn the temperature continues on its toboggan downwards, at speed. The air is unbreatheable. If I am out in it too long my nose freezes shut and my hands hurt no matter what, and I feel sick, my head aches all the time and the stars I am seeing are not the good kind. Just cold. 
I am very close to throwing my arms in the air and saying that’s it. I can’t do it anymore. My clothes are getting too thin. My brain is frozen solid. I have a permanent hunch. My animals … my poor animals. Though all except for the birds are bred for the cold I cannot bear it for them either.
But yesterday walking out of the barn, carrying my buckets, the sun was out, it was afternoon, I tilted my head up, drawn by an ancient response to sunlight and without any thought I closed my eyes and like magic, like something sliding through from a parallel universe, an-other world, I felt the lightest brush of warm from the sunlight on my face. And for the tiniest sparkle of a lateral moment I could smell the scent of the islands in that warm. 
Have you ever painted with watercolours. Maybe in an art class when you were small, or maybe you still do. Before you lay in the colour you wash the area with water, only where you want that colour to go though. Then with a touch you add the colour and it runs along the water trail. When I was a child I would make stripes across the sky and stack watery colours one above the other. This is how I see the air, in streams, with different temperatures and different temperaments and different speeds. Some horizontal, some rocking like waves, some twisting and folding, some shooting up and down, some volcanic, some flying across above us straight and strong as an arrow but not mixing, all in layers, just flowing through each other in their own water colour stream.
So I thought, yesterday afternoon as my face reached up further to that scent of home, why can’t a thread of Pacific air, with its scent of the sea, and the warm earth, and falling flowers, tattered and limping from its last leg on its long journey, why can’t this tiny pocket of the Pacific burst like tiny effervescent water bubbles up against my face.
It was absolutely still, a cone of silent stillness, hearing the blood in your veins still. The chickens cackle receded to a murmur, the paw of a cat lifted and softly slipped across his nose and back to the ground, the blink of a cows long ice filled lashes, the fold of an ear and the whispery wash of Pacific warm on that tiny piece of face held absolutely still, carefully nudged past with the merest caress and was gone.
We stood absolutely aware, alive, the animals and I, all our faces turned, that slight flare of the nostril, twitch of the gentle hoof, slow glance of a hen. Rustle of wool on beams of light.
Then we heard it.
A drop. The fall of a drop of melted ice. Its minuscule unassuming splash; a portent. A seer smiling in a tiny droplet. A toy parachute of diminutive pity.
The drop froze again as fast as it fell. The splash became a shatter. The narrow layer of promise slipped sideways and was gone. The cold closed in over the breach.
But we felt it. We heard it. There is a chink in winter’s armour. A pacific sigh slipped through. I have seen the chink and I have a little brass winter-bashing hammer. It is losing its hold. Soon we will begin to unfurl our fists from this ruthless winter. Not today. But soon. I promise.
You all have a lovely day.
Your friend on the farmy,
celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
71 responses to “A drop. A Promise.”
I am sending you a warm tropical night’s breath, the scent of warm soil and green, lush, growing things, the perfumes of jasmine, murraya and shell ginger winding around each other, splashed with the trickle of water over stones in my fountain. I am sending you warmth, air that is comfortable to breathe, ease of body from the 24C we are enjoying at 11pm, and a promise of brilliant sunshine tomorrow. If I could put all these things in an envelope and send them to you, so you could open it and inhale a breath of summer, I would…
Oh that would be a most worthy envelope.. you have the best scents in your garden.. c
Oh how I would love to feel that breath of warm pacific air on my face right now! It’s my birthday today and I keep wishing my Mum could have given birth to me in a nicer, warmer month. I am up a ladder trying to paint the kitchen after the mess from frozen pipes and big ‘Plumber’ men demolishing the walls to get to the pipes, singing “Happy Birthday to me”! At the same time trying to prepare for tomorrow, when the lovely weather man says 7 to 12 inches of snow, and keeps changing this and adding more inches – and still I am singing! And I will continue singing otherwise the tears could fall – but not today. When I feel low (as one often does on their birthday) I think of my friend Celi carrying on with her farmy through much worse than I am facing. And always with great words and pictures. Keeps my spirits high, thank you my friend
Hugs, Lyn
Well HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU, LYNDA., and. Be careful on that ladder. What a grim way to spend your special day.! I know how you feel–I’m a January baby.
Thank you! When you live alone, you do what you can when you can, and birthdays are much the same as any day. I’ll celebrate when the weather gets warmer!
Happy, happy birthday Lyn. Here, I send you a puff of warm Pacific air just for you, although it’s quickly becoming a puff of hot, hot humid air, full of the scents of summer.
Happy Birthday darling girl, I hope your daughter comes soon enough to save you from further ladder work. I hate birthdays, esp since my Mum died. Birthdays are no good without a Mum. But ah well. there you are. Did you find the cable for your camera? Hope you are onto the glass of wine and feet up part of your day.. c
I’ll take it!! I love hot and humid, pref any day to cold and so dry everything is electric!
Thank you for the birthday wishes.
There is hope. There really is. I am clinging to that as I am sure you are. What a lovely piece today. You made me feel that spring is coming and that it will all be well again.
I empathise with your feelings. We’ve had a very mild winter this year, but we have had some real industrial strength winters that left me feeling beyond hope. But somehow Mother Nature seems to redeem herself at the 11th hour. Just when you think that you can’t possibly survive one more dark, grey day, she sends you a gloriously blue, sunny day to revive your spirits. And yes, just as happened to you, at the very point of throwing in the towel over the deep freeze, she sent a message that the sun is gaining strength and spring WILL come.
Hang in there – you and the animals will get through this.
wow.
i wish i could send you some warm tropical air….scented with sweet flowers and the warmth of sunshine.
i really do not understand this topsy-turvy weather world we are all living in right now. everyone i talk to blames it on that crazy polar vortex….
http://www.npr.org/2014/02/10/274785969/looking-to-escape-the-polar-vortex-head-north-to-alaska
wishing you warmth. [whisky might help but it’s no good for farm animals….]
hang in there celi! next week the tide turns and the rest of february is supposed to be above normal.
Just read about your lovely italian bread on your blog , once again i was not allowed to comment but it looks great! A warmer feb sounds fantastic, can you imagine!.. c
You need a snow suit girl 🙂 I don’t mean one of the skiing bunny suits but a real “space suit” that you can work in. The kind you see guys who are always working outside in. It’s most important that you keep the small of your back warm and your head; then you can embrace the cold and laugh in its face.
Here’s a site you may like that shows the jetstream and global temperatures and such.
http://cci-reanalyzer.org/DailySummary/index_ds.php
Looks like warm air will get to you before us.
I wear quilted bib overalls and my carrhart jacket over a hoodie, over three long sleeved t’s and then all the long underwear.. my body is not cold, though i have seen those carrhart over-alls and am tempted! A proper snow suit would be just the thing.. so are you making croissants this morning? I desperately want some of your croissants..
haha! In the winter we only bake on Thursday and Friday, so you’ll have to wait till then. I am particularly proud our our croissants. We’ve had customers sample them fresh from the oven and say in all honesty they are better than anything from France 🙂 Mind you it was the Austrians who invented croissants.
Once again, your prose is poetic, though I’d prefer you to be writing about real warmth and sunshine than dreaming about it! I can’t send you good weather – we are still awash, so I will simply send my wishes for you to find the strength to put up with it long enough to see the real Spring which can’t be too far away.
Love
ViV x
well i was thanking you again this morning viv, with my hattie forming a tunnel of warm around my face, So much warmer.. c
Here’s to warm air and sunshine! We are about to get socked in with an ice storm. Winter will be over soon…it really will. Be careful out there.
Hang in there – our days are getting shorter and our nights a little cooler. We are sliding into Autumn and the sun must be on its way back to you 🙂 Laura
Wonderwoman…Spring will soon be here..just you wait and see
This ridiculous winter has gone on for far too long!!! Stay warm and safe there.
I feel the pain of the cold, too. It also gives me headaches. Sunday, I made myself envision the slight colors of spring….the yellow-ish greens creeping out of the ground into the outer branches of the trees. It is coming.
I think it is, I try to feel the changes rather than read the weather forecast, and even though it is most dreadfully cold there is a wish in the air.. c
Those icicles hanging from the roof look so cold I almost imagine you in the Arctic.
I do so hope the thaw and warmer temps reach you soon.
Come back to NZ! Or, even better, to Western Australia. Thinking of you Ceci x