When the ground is bare and the temperatures are in the teens and the weatherman declares there’s a 100% chance of snow, it’s time to suit up and head outside and clean up the mess from the last storm and put away the stuff you didn’t put away before the last time it snowed. And cover up the stuff that can’t be put away but can be covered up with a tarp or an old piece of sheet metal. So much to do! Got the repaired tractor tire back on and headed up to Finley Lane. Cut the trees off the orchard fence that came down last week. Cleaned up various long, black strips of landscape fabric that used to be keeping down weeds between the rows of nursery trees and had become airborne in the wind storm and wound up (literally) in tangled piles along the fence. Yes, and cleaned up a few more wood piles, including more kindling. You can always use more kindling. Went to the local store and picked up a couple things we need before the snow. The clerk, who’s been there now thirty years or so— maybe since the store opened and that would be forty—asked me, “Do you like the cold?”