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January might be a window into spring, or at least a tiny window-crack – if the snow were not falling and falling and falling. True, the saying is that the backbone of winter is broken in January, but this saying is maybe an incantation of our forefathers, to keep the mood up when only steadily emptying pots and tubs and bins and churns are there to see in the barn.

 

It may be difficult to get to the sea-shore in January if you haven’t the stamina to plod through the snowdrifts in the dune valleys. The sea is open of course but doesn’t steam any more. There are no swans but instead a woodpecker appears at the birdfeeder table in the yard at home. She-cat Ooper mewls especially fiercely at it through the window, as if complaining of her sad fate. The window-pane has been sad for some little birds too, as for instance for a poor nuthatch who rushed against this invisible barrier so that it turned its legs upwards and a drop of blood showed in the beak. But it was soon gone again.

 

And the environmental board officials inform us that people must not feed waterfowl. Otherwise they get used to it and won’t fly away. But isn’t this too a kind of natural selection? And what about the zoos? And feeding the birds in the yard too is more for the entertainment of backyard potterers, and their indulgence – look, I care for nature. How many birds stay alive thanks to this?

 

But the courtyard woodpecker that diligently knocked and knocked in the dry pine tops and then abruptly set its hopes to the birdfeeder suddenly has problems. Suddenly even hasn’t the strength to fly, huddles miserably on the feeder table, seemingly falls down into the yard, struggles on. Is it old age, or illness or the result of harmful habits?
Whatever, the next day it doesn’t knock any more. Which means that it is necessary to climb up on the roof and shovel down snow from there. Although the yard has enough and more of snow without this. Did our forefathers too climb up on top of their barns and stables and sheds to get the snow down from there? For some reason the Backyard Potterer has serious doubts about this and regrets that he didn’t build a barnhouse home for himself too.

But as compensation the sky grows spellbindingly beautiful, as it can only do in January. The southern aspect becomes reddish-yellow – or in more posh language, bright orange – but only when the sun is already in the west. So heaven drags itself and its colours wearily after the sun. And again snow is falling, silently.

But January can also be so mindless that one can’t understand whether it is winter or autumn. Anyway, it happens that in the middle of January rain suddenly starts falling after the quiet snowfall. But this is really nothing strange. Because what is rarer – rain in winter or snow in summer? The issue surely merits a serious environmental discussion. Firstly: what is more sustainable – rain in winter or snow in summer? Surely rain in winter. Secondly: what leaves the least ecological impact – rain in winter or snow in summer? Surely snow in summer. Thirdly: what is more acceptable – rain in winter or snow in summer? Depends on your clothing.

And finally: which helps to create more job opportunities – rain in winter or snow in summer? A major issue for an electoral debate.

 

It rains when the clouds no longer can hold on to the water vapour. It snows when the water vapour has held on especially stubbornly to the cloud. Snow is stubborn rain. Hail? Hail is angry rain.
Snow is more lasting than rain. Rain is rain only between cloud and earth. Then it changes into mud and puddles, rivers and lakes, seas and storms. Snow remains snow even on the ground. Remains, until it too turns into mud and puddles, rivers and lakes, seas and storms.
So the Backyard Potterer philosophized to the crested tit that stubbornly sits on the fat ball. 

Does even the tit feel that the winter sun is nearer than summertime sun? You can almost touch it with your hand. Coming through the haze of clouds, mid-day low, it has swelled and become diffusely large and close by. A big warped spruce creaks against the neighbour’s pine as it has done for years already. Is this growing together, symbiosis?

 

Oh well, why expound on that, better heat up the sauna before it gets dark. Sauna mustn’t be taken in the dark, all sorts of goblins and gnomes can slip in to visit. Sauna must be taken in daytime, and surely when there is snow to jump into. The sauna-goer’s place is not in a hole in the ice, after all he is no fish, but always in the snow. Interesting, why are those scouring bundles made of some kind of foreign sisal hemp? If only we could grow real hemp and plait a proper scourer out of that.

 

Towards the end of January the sea makes a face as if it were frozen. Without snow, and as if it had frozen in half a wave. No bird or any other animal. Snow compressed by the wind on the dune tops.

 

It looks as if the sun is mirrored on the ice surface but the sky is invisible. The sky is lost, gone, has moved away. The sun doesn’t really move a hair’s breadth, it stands still in one position, it is only first dark, then dusk, then dark. When Isaac Newton started to investigate what light really was he hadn’t much else to use than a ray of sun led through a prism. If Newton had been living in Estonia would he then have discovered what a rainbow is?