Winter realities

It’s still winter in the Southern Hemisphere, something we’re certainly keenly aware of here in New Zealand, and the fact that meteorological Spring arrives one week from today doesn't exactly soften that reality. Maybe next week? This has been a more “normal” winter, which is probably why it’s seemed hard this year, and the realities of winter—the cold, the rain, the dampness—seemed a little more real this year.

Last year, our winter was unusually mild—often warm, even—and fairly dry. Spring was more or less “normal”, though maybe still a bit milder than other years. Our summer was unusually wet—including those three major storms with the first few weeks, and a lot of rain the rest of the season, too. Then Autumn, and a continuation of the rainy and stormy summer. I think those facts together have made this winter seem harsher than it really was: Despite more rain and storms than usual, overall, this winter has been more or less like they used to be. Unfortunately, those are also the sorts of winters I hate, especially when they’re wetter than normal. Still, I adapt.

As I’ve said before, mowing the lawns during winter can be a challenge because they’re so often wet. On the other hand, the fact that the cold weather makes the lawns grow more slowly means it’s usually possible to wait until things dry out at least a tiny bit before attempting to mow the grass. This is just one of the challenges of winter, and watching for a couple sunny days is necessary.

The photo up top is of the sofa arm nearest my chair in the living area. It has a tea towel I don’t use for much of anything on the arm to protect it from Leo: First thing every morning, he goes outside and when he comes back in, he wants to sleep in my lap. However, because the lawns are always heavily wet in the mornings (from rain, heavy dew, or both), his paws are soaked. The photo below is of my “lap blanket”, which he will lay down when he comes back inside from his morning rounds.

I started using the blanket my first winter in this house, because he was always coming in with wet, and often muddy, paws. I have a few such blankets, so I can wash them and not have to get my sweatpants wet or dirty—or my regular pants later in the day, because he loves laying in my lap, especially after being outside.

I added the towel not long ago because I noticed he was leaving wet paw prints on the sofa arm, and with the clay exposed on the bank (where he and the neighbours’ dogs catch up with each other), I knew I needed to protect the fabric so I don’t have to clean it. Whenever I’ve just finished mowing the lawn, he also tracks in grass clippings. The photo above shows the towel after I’d already shaken it once. Basically, the towel’s a kind of antimacassar, something I’d never even heard of until I moved to New Zealand and heard Nigel use the term—though I don’t remember why he did. He had to explain it to me.

Something I did almost as soon as I moved in was to put a bathmat I bought for our last house in front of the door to the patio that the dogs used. At the time, the “lawn” out back was mostly clay, and the matts helped protect the carpet a bit (I have two from the last house, so I always have one to use when the other has to be washed).

Finally, there’s a pretty much year-round issue of Leo tracking grass clippings into the house, however, in winter he tracks in much more because it sticks to his paws and undercarriage. I could vacuum every other day and probably not stay on top of it. Of course I’m not that diligent: Weekly is good enough for me, unless I don’t feel like it some week, in which case it gets worse. Of course.

On the outside of the house, the wet and damp weather makes all yardwork, not just mowing, difficult to do. In winter, the clay “soil” is heavy and dense, and in summer it like concrete, so there’s a sweet spot in spring and autumn in which it’s moist enough to dig, but not water-logged enough to make it too heavy to dig. I almost inevitably miss most of those sweet-spots every year, which is part of why landscaping has been such a physical challenge. This year, it’s also been cold, which makes the wetness and dampness feel even more unpleasant.

I hate being cold most of all, and my house often feels cold. The living area is pretty good, especially if I close the door to the rest of the house. However, the hallway and two of the bedrooms and main bathroom have no heat (I installed a heat pump in the main bedroom, but the en suite is unheated). When the sun is shining brightly, it heats up all the living spaces, but when it’s not—at night or on cloudy days—the house outside the living area can get quite cold.

There, too, I have adaptations: As the sun goes down, I close the doors to the toilet, main bathroom, and guest room. My office and the hallway are still cold, but not as bad as when I don’t close those doors. Yesterday, with the sun shining brightly, I turned on a micathermic heater in the hallway, which helped a LOT. They’re more energy-efficient than other electric space heaters, but free if I run one when the sun is shining.

I should add that absolutely none of this is new: At our last house, I put an old bathmat in front of the dog door on the ground level of our house, which is also where my office was located. I also used a micathermic heater in my office (and on really cold days/nights, I used another one in the rumpus room my office was attached to, the path to and from the rest of the house). The dogs also used to track in grass clippings, though we had a service take care of the mowing at that house.

While I’ve learned to adapt to the winters here in New Zealand, and as frustrating as the wetness and cold can be sometimes, it’s still infinitely better than the hell that was a Northern Illinois winter: It doesn’t snow in the upper North Island, we don’t get hard frosts in this part of the country, and it never gets even almost as cold. By comparison, we have it pretty easy. That doesn’t mean I hate winter here any less, though.

And that’s my biggest winter reality of all.

Related: “Autumnal realities”, my blog post from April of this year.

The grass clippings even stuck to Leo's toy bone.