What I Learned in February

February was a month that seemed to zip by in a whirlwind, even though it’s been cold and snowy almost every day all month long.  Here are some things I learned:

• Early in the month of February we had a night where there was a dense fog off the Lake, carried by a brisk breeze right to the top of the Hill.  The temperature was just right to create rime ice, which is a very special kind of frost where the moisture crystalizes in spikes away from the object it is adhering to.  It’s different than a hoar frost, and the result on the trees in the forest at the top of the hill was completely stunning.  I had never heard of rime ice before, so I had to do a little reading to find out more about it.
• At the piano I have been working on a difficult accompaniment for The Banana’s violin, and exploring the music of Martin Kutnowski and Dianne Goolkasian Rahbee.  I also have been working on a couple of pieces for my own personal enjoyment.
• Turkish Delight is a real thing!  I always thought it was some kind of delicious imaginary food made up by C.S. Lewis for The Chronicles of Narnia, but a friend of ours send a package of Turkish Delight to our family, and it turns out it is really a special kind of candy.  We had so much fun tasting it!  I’m not sure if it lived up to it’s role in the story, but it was super fun to taste.  There were three flavors in our box.  All of the candies were kind of like the texture of the inside of a gum drop, and they all had some kind of not-quite-as sweet as powdered sugar coating on them.  My personal favorite was the one that tasted like pears and had pieces of nuts in it.  There was also a red candy that tasted a lot like baby Tylenol, and a green candy that was collectively referred to as “toothpaste candy” by our family.  It had a flavor kind of like spearmint or wintergreen, so something of that sort.
• On the cello I learned several etudes and made some important progress on the Bach suite I’m working on.
• I learned that my three youngest kids are GREAT at shoveling my car out of the plow grade.  There is SO MUCH snow this winter.  The plow grades along the edge of the streets are so high and tall that turning into every intersection feels dangerous, and backing out of the driveway has really become an affair.  Because there was constant snow falling on the ground this month, I managed to get sucked into the plow grade and stuck at the end of the driveway while backing out  two days in a row last week, but my kids were great about digging me out.   We giggled about it a lot.
• I learned about the history of Czechoslovakia.  I was just curious.
• Reading the Devious Snail’s History Day website allowed me to learn all about the Osage Murders and the beginning of the FBI.  I found it rather fascinating, actually.
• The Banana needed to read about Shinrich Suzuki, for her History Day project, so we ended up purchasing an autobiography of his wife, Waltruad, which was a short read, but also really interesting.