Tuesday’s snowstorm kept me indoors all day. I did not go to the market nor to the post office. I cannot remember a day like that. I usually enjoy being out and about. It was an opportunity to do some much-needed puttering. I went through some bookshelves and set aside some books I intend to read or reread. At the end of the day the pile was so large, I made a sad observation. I will not live long enough.

I have boatloads of garden how-tos from the 1970s and 1980s. I must have read them all as there were markers and/or dog-eared dirty pages in all of them. I’m going nowhere in particular with this — there is so little material right now.

The seeds have all arrived and I started some. I’m eating the canned and frozen vegetables from last summer. I hacked away at a pile of manure and spread it on a few beds. The southern side of the mound had thawed just enough.

I hauled a few bales of hay around so that they would be at the ready for mulching in the spring.

I did clip a few forsythia twigs and have them in a vase. Hopefully, they will bloom within the week.

My friend Fala gifted me with some tulips. What a happy surprise. They took a few days to open and take me ahead a few weeks. Soon these cold dark days will be gone. Hope springs eternal.

Because I write by hand, there are some words simply impossible to decipher. Last week’s dinosaur kale variety should have been Lacinato, not lacinate. It is a proper name and probably Italian.

There is much news about this year’s flu season. An article in the Science Times section of The New York Times offered some hints about self-care in the event of exposure. We all know about hand washing, but who knew that at least a cup of water, juice, or soup every hour will keep the immune system at its strongest.

One other interesting fact was to be vertical as much as possible. The lungs work better when the patient is upright.

OMG! My mother was right. She was an unsympathetic health care provider. No matter what we had, she always said “Get up and do something — you’ll feel better.”

On a recent trip up Lambert’s Cove I noticed the cranberry bog completely flooded. I hate when I do not know everything. I need to read about cranberries. (Hope I have a book on them in my pile.)

I was going to comment on the Republican war on the FBI and the Justice Department to protect DJT. Aren’t they the law and order party, what with “Blue Lives Matter” and all? Then I realized I was going to chain myself to the sofa against my will to watch the State of the Union address.

So instead, let me leave you with the list of Arthur Schlesinger’s Most Important Books in Every Field of Knowledge. This was meant to give Americans some “cultural literacy” about our nation.

Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson; Speeches and Writings by Abraham Lincoln; Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville; The American Commonwealth by James Bryce; The Irony of American History by Reinhold Niebuhr; The Shock of Recognition by Edmund Wilson; An American Dilemma by Gunnar Myrdal; The Promise of American Life by Herbert Croly; Pragmatism by William James; The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams; and The American Language by H.L. Mencken.