I thoroughly enjoyed last weekend’s storm. I was able to pick quite a bit of food from my garden before the snow started. I dug up frozen shovels of carrots and threw them on the ground several times in order to bust loose the actual roots.

I picked a huge amount of kale and enough lettuce for two days. These last two items were from the unheated hoop house.

Since I am overly cautious when facing a possible power outage, I scurried about filling buckets and jars with water. Not all of you face this dilemma if you have town water. Those of us with our own wells would have no way to get at that water without electricity.

I am so fortunate at times like these to have woodstoves. Heat is never an issue for me. I pity the thousands who were in the dark and cold.

Since we never did lose any power, I went happily about my business — washing vegetables, making soup, kneading bread, and enjoyed my house.

The next day the sun came out on a beautiful winter wonderland. The snow was light, fluffy and easy to shovel.

The hens are completely disoriented in snow. I do not think they can see. I spread some wood ashes to give them some sense of their world.

By Tuesday the temperature had climbed into the upper 40s and melting took place in earnest.

I spent Sunday afternoon organizing the attached-to-my-house greenhouse. What a train wreck. All sorts of end of the summer items had been tossed there with no aforethought. There were some bags of potting mixture left from last spring. I plugged in the propagating mats and got right to it. I seeded leeks, onions and some perennial monarda. I filled several flats with field peas in order to get some fresh shoots to add to salads in a few weeks.

Like an insane person, I purchased a 50-pound bag of field pea seeds several years ago. Remarkably, they are still viable. Nature is grand. I appreciate and marvel at the potential for life packed into a tiny seed.

Allow me a brief digression. The giant company Monsanto has modified a gene and calls it the Terminator. It prevents a plant from producing a viable seed. A farmer would have to purchase new seed every year rather than save his own.

A few weeks ago I complained about my ignorance concerning the songs of birds. Laurie Clements brought a book over that matches songs with all sorts of birds. Her mother’s best friend Marcia Merrill sent it along. Thanks so much. I will return it at some point. Laurie’s mom and Marcia have been next door neighbors since 1950. I love that.

There is a large yellow house at the top of the hill in Chilmark right before the Aquinnah town line. Rumor has it that Diana Ross lived there in the seventies. Anyway, there is a privet hedge along the State Road border of the property. A few years ago in late winter someone cut it within an inch of its life — two or three feet from the ground. It’s back to its original height of maybe 10 feet and looking pretty good.

Honestly, one could not make up some of the news I’ve heard coming out of the presidential campaigns. Two in particular deserve some ink.

During Sarah Palin’s rambling endorsement of The Donald, she was asked about the trouble between her eldest son and the police. It seems, he beat up his girlfriend while intoxicated and waved around an assault rifle. Don’t get me started about only being charged with a misdemeanor. Sarah Palin blamed it on — you guessed it — President Obama. His apparent lack of respect for our veterans caused the incident???

I thought I had heard everything until later that week a Mike Bickle, some apocalyptic preacher, endorsed Ted Cruz with another rambling speech about the forerunner of the anti-Christ. He said that person is Oprah. Wow!

What’s to become of us?