This is the time of year to hear an early morning weather report on the radio that tells you there will be wind chill way below zero; that snow will arrive after noon time and continue throughout the night. I love that report!

There is something about planning a shut-in-day that directs me to a project that doesn’t usually get done due to lack of time. Things in the category of “I’ll have time to do it” include such dull jobs as polishing the silver in the spoon rack on the wall; sorting all the photographs that have accumulated during the past two years and putting the best of them into the albums; or, as happened today, going through the big double bookcases to look for a coy of How to Clean Just About Everything. It is a small, thin book that gets squeezed between a couple of large volumes and defies one to find it.

After only about ten minutes of looking, I didn’t care whether I found it or not. I had settled back in the captain’s chair, next to the bookcase, and was happily going through first one, then another of my E.B. White books, looking for a favorite story about the “raccoon tree” from E.B. White. I found a Noel Perrone book out of place and when I put it back with the others by this favorite author, I soon had filled most of an hour reading excerpts and hoping he will write anther in the series he started, many years ago, titled First, Second, Third and Last Person Rural. He was married to the former Ann Lindbergh and wrote a sad account of love and loss and loneliness when she died several years ago.

With the afternoon half gone, I gave up on any other plan and began to “straighten out” the two to three hundred books – ones I could not part with after I had read them. I managed to find two novels to send on to the summer book fair. The others I rearranged and grouped together by author or topic or those with historical content. It was with a sense of “I can’t believe it” that I picked a special new book from the shelf, Front Row At The White House by that well-known White House Correspondent, Helen Thomas. Laurie gave it to me for my birthday last October, and before I finished it, I was suddenly in the hospital and it got put aside. My evening is taken care of for tonight!

If you are a giver of books for birthdays or Christmas, a volume that is sure to interest a male or female recipient is Spring Snows by Castle Freeman, Jr, who writes about the season of New England from The Old Farmer’s Almanac. The author touches on all kinds of things related to country life, from the “first” bird in the spring, to maple sugar and chain saws and flowers and frogs, and …

My Christmas books have left the TV turned off for all except the UConn basketball games (both teams) and several news programs. I mentioned before that I began to read Jim Calhoun’s book, Dare to Dream, from the back page to the middle, then  I turned it around and read it from front to back. Susan and Allan gave it to me and will read it next – they also are UConn basketball fans.

Another Christmas book from Laurie is Bird News by E. Vernon Laux. It isn’t the sort of book the title might suggest. As the cover says, it is about “vagrants and visitors on a peculiar Island,” namely Martha’s Vineyard. But anyone who has a love affair with Nantucket, or lives there, should read it, too. It is a very interesting account of a year in the life of birds on the island, their arrival and departure and life in-between. Typical of the text, which is not exactly a diary but a friendly essay, is the arrival one spring of a record-breaking number of birds.

The author notes that one birder friend called his wife on a cellular phone and said to forget church this morning, there are birds dripping from the trees. This book overlooks a year of the activity of many kinds of birds, makes an occasional reference to what’s happening in Rhode Island or Nantucket or Block Island. I will send this one in the “loan” bag to Joy Yates in Minnesota – her daughter lives on Nantucket. We have such a good time swapping books and other written materials – a happy kind of small book club!

If you can still enjoy another book about Connecticut basketball – get a copy of Husky Mania  by Jim Shea of Harwinton, a Hartford Courant writer for several years.

The extreme cold this past week has caused much activity at the birdfeeders. No new varieties are out there, but the mocking bird is still around and fun to watch.

Wendy and Michael did my grocery shopping this week and got a large bag of mixed seeds; my list didn’t specify what amount. I’m glad there is enough to go for a month or so. The juncos and a few sparrows are ground feeders and don’t frequent the hanging feeders which are filled with sunflower seeds. Michael filled the water dish that night, also. The water evaporates in the heated dish. This very cold weather, and the birds drink a lot, too. If it isn’t kept fully covered it doesn’t do as good a job.

Last week the author of the closing quote was Colin Powell.

What poet wrote-

“Tree at my window, window tree,

My sash is lowered when night comes on;

But let there never be a curtain drawn

Between you and me”?