February is heavy. February is fickle. It sometimes gives itself an extra day, and the month is layered in love and chocolates. But it’s also the month that fully encapsulates winter, even as we desperately hope for spring. The snow lingers. The light feels short.

And even a lingering cold can make you question your energy — the kind of cold that should have been gone days ago. Sure, the chill slows us. But maybe we’re just following nature’s cadence.

Or, if we resist winter, perhaps the doldrums hit hardest because we want to move at the pace of spring.

Winter doesn’t drain you. It reduces your range.Coffee is cold. Batteries are low. Snow still blankets the ground.Maybe February just wants you to hibernate — and notice what still functions.

Did you ever notice how electronics tell us when they’re low?

Phones vibrate at 20%, nudging us to charge. Cameras blink red like railroad crossings. Electric cars politely suggest charging stops along the route. Laptops dim and chime.

We humans? We just keep going. We don’t come with warning signals when our energy runs low.

This month, I’ve been thinking about what it means to function on reduced range. Sometimes winter doesn’t drain us. It asks us to hibernate, to conserve, to follow its rhythm. Electronics don’t fully stop at 9%. They just adapt.

And right now, there is one thing charging a little bit each day: daylight.

It’s noticing the small sparks: three extra minutes of light, a cold coffee that still fuels a moment of focus, a camera that still clicks and captures a moment even when its battery is low.

Press play, and join me in noticing what’s still functioning, still moving through the cold, still lighting the way. How do you recharge during the winter months?

Have you ever watched a loading screen and felt your pulse pick up just a little? The spinning wheel. The buffering bar. That quiet instruction: Please don’t close this window.

We’re uncomfortable when we can’t see progress. We want confirmation. A percentage. A sign that the wait means something.

Late winter feels like that.

This week’s episode explores that gap — the space between what’s happening and what’s visible. The quiet beginnings that don’t announce themselves. The kind of progress that offers no confirmation screen, no percentage bar, no green checkmark.

Spring doesn’t arrive all at once.It loads slowly.And so do we.

You can’t recognize almost-spring unless you’ve lived the whole way here. Through the dim light, the long nights, the repetition of cold mornings.

The accumulated weight of it. The sequence. The repetition.

Only then can you recognize what almost-spring really means.

Red-winged blackbird recording courtesy of: Stanislas Wroza, XC1021377. Accessible at www.xeno-canto.org/1021377.

License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0

Episode 16: The Art of Dialing In

Sometimes what you've been searching for has been right in front of you all along. You just weren't tuned to the right frequency.

After years of trying to hand-feed chickadees, a red-breasted nuthatch landed on my palm. I'd been trying to feed the wrong bird.

In this episode, I explore what it means to dial in instead of starting over. Why native plants struggle in an instant-hit world. And why attention often matters more than effort.

In This Episode:

The moment a nuthatch finally landed (and why it took years)

Why we're measuring slow work with fast metrics

The difference between buttons and dials

What native plant gardening teaches us about presence

The invitation: notice what's already working

Mentioned in This Episode:

Episode 15: Snow Regrets: I Never Learned So Much From a Bird

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