December is a cold month here - not serious cold like in much of the nation, we're weather wimps by comparison - but cold enough to matter. The thermo and photo periods are low enough to all but halt grass growth even for the most winter active varieties, and sends most varieties into dormancy or death.

It's wood stove weather: low 30s at night, frost in the morning, thin ice on the water troughs, cattle with longer winter coats, snow in the mountains only a couple of miles away by line of sight though 15 miles away on foot due to winding, indirect routes.

I get inordinately fond of fire wood. I'll gaze approvingly at a good oak round that was a heavy inconvenience a month ago. I'd try to give it away just to be rid of it. Now it's several hours of a particularly pleasant sort of warmth from the radiant heat of a well stoked stove. It won't just burn up in a hot flash, it'll burn slow and steady for hours and still have enough coals in the morning to fire up a reload with squaw wood.

Such chunks of wood become a minor obsession. I have a list in the back of my mind about where likely candidates are located - always near the bottom of some wood stack - matched to another list of proper occasions for using them. An otherwise ordinary Wednesday night doesn't usually make the list, but tonight it did and I just wanted to say.