Old Year, New Year

 "What the heck is this?" my sweetie asked. He was lying prone on the kitchen floor, peering under the refrigerator. "Give me something long."

I handed him some extra-long chopsticks.

"No, longer."

I handed him the fire poker from underneath the wood stove.

"It's brown. Ugh. What is this?" He held up a mummified pomegranate.

"Well, that's been there for at least a year," i said. "I only buy pomegranates for winter solstice, so...."

"A year? How about twenty?" he asked.

The old year dies today. All of us cheer "Hooray! Goodbye 2020. We are done with you. Goodbye. We can hardly wait to see the backside of this COVID year."

Another year of my life has gone. Everything i cherish will change and vanish. I cherish my life, and one year of it has vanished. I can see/feel the moments vanishing as i type these words. Each moment arising and passing, faster than i can say "pomegranate."

Clean Out Birdhouses Now

It's time to clean out your birdhouses. Yes, it's a bit counter-intuitive. You might think that birds would use nests to keep warm in the winter. No, they don't. Nests are for nesting in the spring. During the winter, birds are looking for places to roost, perhaps with others of their own kind. So clean those old nests out of the birdhouses now.

I'm always surprised to see bluebirds checking out my bluebird houses in March. Wait a minute! It's not even spring yet. I haven't done my spring cleaning and cleaned out the bluebird house. By the time i get around to it, later that day, or the next day, or the next week, Mrs. Bluebird has made her decision. She likes a nice clean house. That's the reason we want to clean out our birdhouses right now, while we are thinking about it and while we don't have much else to do in the garden.

Now is also a good time to clean out our own house. Time to let stuff go. Time to downsize. Time to give away stuff we haven't used in how many years?

Everything we cherish will change and vanish. Sometimes we make it vanish on purpose. Give away the too-small clothes. Pass some of those heirlooms on to the next generation.

Then the bluebirds of happiness will be much more likely to stick around.