I don’t know about other people but it takes me a long time to turn around after Christmas. The preparations we expend so much energy on for the year-end’s celebrating are supposed to give thrills of wintry anticipation but it’s rare now to have the weather go hand-in-hand with them. A possible day of flurries […]
Ah! A day in Europe! A long-planned return visit to the Cloisters right around the Solstice gave all the reassurance I’d hoped for. Had been meaning to get back down there for years but the usual one-thing-or-another kept cropping up… Plants cheek by jowl- just kept more neatly than mine! But- they have gardeners and […]
At a certain point around the Solstice, generally just prior to, the entire backyard is redolent with rose- it’s all rose- no wonder humanity loves this time of year, utilising it to marry, to celebrate young scholars, to linger in gardens long into the evening. The mornings are wonderful to walk out into with that […]
Best way to finally get an owl family to establish themselves in your owl house set up nine years ago? Choose what seems to be the most likely tree, get an arborist to place it nice and high on it (we aimed for 10 feet), set up a brand-new one on another tree specially selected […]
“In the early dangerous spring I wander….” That line from a poem I wrote in younger years while strolling in the evenings on the Vineyard is about the very unsettledness of spring- the desire to be out while yet it’s still dark- the sudden dying off of all kinds of household indigenes that just made […]
This will be the first Hallowe’en I’ve ever spent up here, and to celebrate, the Fields gods have materialised us a guest- one we’ve often heard in the woods but not seen- not as iconically as this anyway, in the wild- we’re guessing because after not having been mown all summer yesterday’s sudden cutting has […]
I’m calling this, “Thoughts on Fall Color”. And if you think these don’t look real, you should see the actual trees. We’ve been spending the month of October in the mountains, with a quick return home to show up for a supposed jury duty summons that turned out to have been postponed. A trip to […]
The day of the Autumn Equinox is here and it is the most pleasant we’ve had in a long while. What a hot summer this has been. It’s a day for changing our clothes over to our fall ones and not until now have I wanted to do it. Out come this season’s decorations too- […]
I find St. John’s wort (Hypericum perforatum) and Virgin’s Bower (Clematis Virginiana) to be quite fitting botanical bookends for the season of summer- Solstice to Equinox- if only for the similarity of their poufy little central crowns! (And they’re lovely content for borders- which are of course my prime concern, being a medievalist. I do […]
If the power goes out and we lose the days to the extra work, it can be distressing. Once in a several-year-snowstorm can be all used up with preparing, shovelling, getting the kitchen ready for camping out in front of the stove to stoke during the night to keep the pipes from freezing if the […]