Tony Palumbo and the Gifts of Irene

  • Post published:08/23/2013
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  Two years ago Irene came rampaging through the area turning the rivers into torrents overleaping their banks, washing away roads and buildings, breaking hearts and pocketbooks. Tony Palumbo, artist, owner of the Green Emporium and gardener, was at his easel watching the rain pour down. Neighbors came urging them to leave. Palumbo’s partner, chef Michael Collins, said they would wait it out. Their house had survived the storm’s of ’38 and ’87. It would survive this one…

Forbes Library Leads Off Garden Tour Season

  • Post published:05/29/2013
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Julie Abramson' s garden  is just one of six garden that will enchant garden lovers on the Forbes Library Garden Tour on Saturday, June 8, from 10 am til 3 pm. Julie's is a collector's garden that features some notable trees, clematis, and a colorful array of perennials and a rock garden. I was intrigued by the description of a rustic arbor covered with climbinbing hydrangea, PLUS two other arbors covered with roses, honeysuckle and clematis. Pure romance!…

Life Under Our Feet – and Fruit Over Our Heads

  • Post published:05/13/2013
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There is life under our feet. I have talked about living soil from time to time, but in his New York Times essay yesterday  Jim Robbins says that "One-third of living organisims live in  soil. But we know littel about them." Well, of course I know about worms and  bugs and the mycellium that I can see, and I know the soil is full of microbes, but to think that one-third of ALL living organisims live in the soil…

G is for Gardening Projects for Kids on A to Z Challenge

  • Post published:04/08/2013
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G is for Garden Projects for Kids: 101 ways to get kids outside, dirty, and having fun by Whitney Cohen and John Fisher of LIfe Lab in Santa Cruz, California. Surely, my regular readers would not expect me to get through a whole month of posts without including a book or two. And this book from Timber Press is a doozy.  Garden Project for Kids is not only about growing veggies, but about other designing the garden so…

Puccini’s Opera La Villi and Forget Me Nots

  • Post published:03/22/2013
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Yesterday I listened to bits of  Puccin's operas at our local Senior Symposium put on by Greenfield Community College. This is an engaging and enlightening  series of programs featuring wonderful scholars and speakers like William Fregosi, who was for many years the technical coordinator for Theater Arts at M.I.T. He talked about Giacomo Puccini's life and times. Work! Scandal! Fame! Passion! Incredible success! His estate is still collecting royalty payments for three of his operas including Turandot. Two…

Industry Produceth Wealth – The Farmer’s Arms

  • Post published:01/23/2013
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  I don't know what prompted my mother to make this Farmer's Arms sampler. It is true that her brother, my Uncle Wally, had a farm on the shores of Lake Champlain that our whole extended family considered Our Farm, and we kids/cousins were shipped up there for part of the summer. However,  my father tried farming but quit suddenly one frigid winter day in 1948. Of all the 20 cousins, including my five farm cousins, I may be…

Mr and Mrs Vegetable – Garlic Heads?

  • Post published:11/15/2012
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When we finished the remodel of our kitchen a few months ago I took Mr and Mrs Vegetable out  of the drawer where they have been living for the past two decades. I remember these from my childhood when  they hung on the kitchen wall in  New York when I was about five (1945) and then in the farm kitchen in Charlotte, Vermont. My brothers and I found them in a big storage closet  along with our childhood…

Welcoming Spaces in Wendell

  • Post published:09/29/2012
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Thirty years ago Diane Kurinsky and her husband Steve Gross built a house on a plot of land in Wendell that included fields and woodland. The land was a blank slate where they have managed to create a domestic landscape that welcomes and invites the visitor, luring her on to one delight after another. When I drove up I parked my car in the circular drive that curves around a large ‘bed’ that Kurinsky calls the heather garden.…

A Creative Community Shows Off at the Heath Fair

  • Post published:08/23/2012
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Our creative community got to display its imagination and skill at the 95th Annual Heath Fair from August 17-19. The Hall exhibits range from flowers, flower arrangements, vegetables and fruits on a plate or in jars, cookies, bread, maple confections, eggs, ciders, honey, quilts, knitted or crocheted hats, sweater and scarves, lego constructions, photography, art of every sort - and all categories are organized by age. Ribbons and money can be won by everyone! I spent a lot…

More Wonders at Mass MoCA on Wordless Wednesday

  • Post published:08/22/2012
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I did not notice these wonders at Mass MoCA until about the fourth time through All Utopia's Fell by Michael Oatman. This exhibit is an Airstream trailer rigged up like a space capsule that has crashlanded and is hung up in the air on an old factory building, crammed with all the equipment for necessary for spacemen to live and work. Finally I noticed that  this craft has God's eyes everywhere. Was Michael Oatman suggesting that God's eyes…