![\"Incoming_6-5-2016Stripweb\"](\"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Incoming_6-5-2016Stripweb.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The weather forecast predicted a low of 48\u00b0F. and a high the next day near 62\u00b0 with partly cloudy skies. I sat on the cement apron under my awning, reading one of my manuscripts, a novel I was planning to publish the following month. Around me, a few wasps and hornets still sipped at the water saucers put out expressly for them. Others worked at the dried beef strips provided them because\u00a0their normal fare of garden insect pests was long since depleted.<\/p>\n
Out in the garden, my tomato plants were heavy with green tomatoes slow to ripen, everything else having been harvested, except for a couple of winter squash and pumpkins. We had yet to have a frost.<\/p>\n
These were the lazy days of autumn, when you get a lull between the heavy work of a summer spent preparing for winter and the miserably hard work that ice and snow brings to the north country. It\u2019s my favorite time of year, not too hot, but not yet cold enough to warrant wearing a shirt over my t-shirt.\u00a0 My mom calls them \u2018gravy days\u2019, and it\u2019s an apt term.<\/p>\n
Happily occupied on finding where reader flow could falter in the novel, I ignored the first nudge.\u00a0 And the second.\u00a0 When I got up to get a cup of coffee, though, the nudge became impossible to ignore.\u00a0 I groaned.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t want to and reminded myself that NOAA (the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration) was predicting continued mild weather.<\/p>\n
The nudge turned into an insistent pressure, like a nag, but silent, just known\u2026like when your mom is watching you from across the room when you haven\u2019t done your homework or your chores, yet.<\/p>\n
Okay!\u00a0 Enough, already!<\/em><\/p>\n The pressure backed off, but its presence didn\u2019t leave.\u00a0 I got dressed to go over to the local farm store where they keep a supply of straw on hand.\u00a0 Starting up the truck, I felt my usual, pragmatic terseness about giving up my afternoon for something that, while it needed to be done before the freeze, certainly wasn\u2019t critical right now. The thought of the empty fuel containers came to mind, and I groaned.\u00a0 Got out.\u00a0 Got them.\u00a0 Tied them in the back.\u00a0 The neighbor was outside lighting his barbeque as I pulled past his place.\u00a0 He waved.\u00a0 I waved back.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t argue with my nudges. I\u2019ve had too many proofs of just how important it is to listen to them. So, begrudging the fact that I often get smirked at by neighbors and friends, I do what\u2019s suggested, when suggested, regardless of how illogical and impractical it might seem.<\/p>\n At the farm store, the high school kid who loaded the bales of straw onto my flatbed wondered out loud to me on why I was getting a full load today instead of my usual handful of bales.<\/p>\n I thought about hedging.\u00a0 Decided against it.\u00a0 \u201cBecause it\u2019s time to winterize the garden and stock up for a blow.\u00a0 Livestock can\u2019t go without straw in the cold.\u201d<\/p>\n He gave me what, locally, we call \u2018the hairy eyeball\u2019, pointedly looked up at the blue skies and sinking sun, then, more pointedly, said, \u201cSu-ure,\u201d sarcasm dripping.<\/p>\n I grinned, finished strapping the load, then followed him inside to pay, grabbing a couple of rolls of heavy plastic and some snow blower sheer pins, to boot.\u00a0 Then, I stopped at the gas station and filled my empty gas cans, bought some fuel stabilizer, and got some oil, just in case.<\/p>\n Once home, I spent the rest of the afternoon on into dark harvesting the green tomatoes and squash, pulling the houseplants in, winterizing the roses and banking the house, then loading the rest of the straw into the storage barn. \u00a0Last, with the yard lights on, I stapled the heavy plastic up around the north end of the open air barn.<\/p>\n Exhausted, I fell into bed around 10PM.\u00a0 The thermometer reported the outside temperature at a pleasant 54\u00b0.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I rise early.\u00a0 And I don\u2019t keep the furnace on all year.\u00a0 At 3:30AM, upon rising, the house felt chillier than usual.\u00a0 Not much.\u00a0 Just a bit.<\/p>\n I poked my head outside.\u00a0 It was brisk, but it hadn\u2019t frosted.\u00a0 I shook my head.\u00a0 \u201cSo much for following nudges,\u201d my surly side grumbled inside my brain.\u00a0 \u201cHey, the job is done, and I won\u2019t have to do it later,\u201d my \u2018glass-is-half-full\u2019 side shot back.<\/p>\n Not to be outdone, the pragmatic self responded with, \u201cIf it stays warm, the roses will rot. I\u2019ll have to uncover them during the day, at least.\u201d<\/p>\n I damped down all comments, moving to \u2018not-think,\u2019 the only sane way to deal with all the arguments and counters the rational, pragmatic brain will spawn.<\/p>\n Daylight showed gloomy overcast.\u00a0 By 8AM, a chill wind had started.\u00a0 By 10AM, the temperature outside had dropped from 42\u00b0 to 35\u00b0.\u00a0 By noon, the grass was frozen stiff, a winter storm warning in effect according to the National Weather Service, and the wind chill put the outside temperature down near 10\u00b0.\u00a0 By evening, it was much, much worse.<\/p>\n If I hadn\u2019t \u2018listened\u2019, which is another way of saying, paid attention to my instincts, my inklings, my nudges, I would have been scrambling to get everything done, working in miserable conditions to do it, and, believe me, it\u2019s no fun stapling up plastic in the wind, to say nothing of trying to binder twine leafs of straw around roses to protect them from the bitter wind\u2019s frost burn with freezing fingers.\u00a0 Instead, I prepped the snow blower, then, bundling up, went over to help the neighbor with his frantic winterizing.<\/p>\n That night, snow started, the wispy, nasty stuff that creeps into every crevice and burns your face like stinging nettle when it hits you.\u00a0 By the following morning, we were sitting at an ambient temperature of 3\u00b0 F. with a wind chill of -26\u00b0.\u00a0 It stayed that way for three solid weeks, no breaks.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n People ask me how I know when to do what. Above, I gave you a simple example, not life critical, certainly, and probably inconsequential to most, but very demonstrative of how following nudges, following \u2018flow\u2019, allows you the luxury of avoiding unnecessary panic, toil, and suffering.<\/p>\n Oh, and the next time I visited the farm store, that high schooler grinned at me.\u00a0 \u201cYou were right about the weather!\u00a0 How\u2019d you know?\u201d<\/p>\n I gave him the easy answer, one that doesn\u2019t give people willies: \u201cA little bird told me.\u201d<\/p>\n The weather forecast predicted a low of 48\u00b0F. and a high the next day near 62\u00b0 with partly cloudy skies. I sat on the cement apron under my awning, reading one of my manuscripts, a novel I was planning to publish the following month. Around me, a few wasps and hornets still sipped at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1210,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[123,134],"tags":[244,28,29],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1202"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3744,"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202\/revisions\/3744"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Incoming_6-5-2016](\"https:\/\/www.dlkeur.com\/dlkeur-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Incoming_6-5-2016-web.jpg\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"