Still Winter

  • Post published:03/08/2011
  • Post comments:4 Comments

It rained heavily all Monday night and continued lightly through the morning. Then the temperatures plummeted to 24 degrees. When I went out to my car at 11 am it was covered with ice, and all the locks and doors were frozen tight. I wasn't going anywhere. At 3 pm the sun began to shine brilliantly. It turned the trees and shrubs into crystal sculptures. Happily, even though the temperatures were still in the low 20s, the ice…

The Grange – Then and Now

  • Post published:03/07/2011
  • Post comments:6 Comments

Sawyer Hall is our Heath Post Office, Police Office, and Town Library with Town Offices for  the Selectbord, Administrator, Tax Collector, Assessors, etc. upstairs, but  for for many years a good portion of Sawyer Hall was used by the Grange for suppers, and even for dramatic productions.  I remember when we moved here in 1979 the Library was closed because the building was being renovated.  Someone gave me a tour of the large open upstairs where a small…

Master Gardener’s Spring Symposium

  • Post published:03/05/2011
  • Post comments:0 Comments

The days are longer and the sun is brighter, so even though snow lies deep on the ground we know that spring is coming.  That means that the annual Master Gardeners Spring Symposium held on Saturday, March 19 at Frontier Regional High School is coming up, too.. This year I am presenting a slide show of Elsa Bakalar’s perennial gardens in all their glory. Elsa passed away last year, but her memory remains green for many of us.…

Constance Spry in the 21st Century

  • Post published:03/04/2011
  • Post comments:0 Comments

Recently I was able to find a used copy of Constance Spry's book Flower Decoration which includes a few black and white photos of her arrangements. Actually, she did not use the word arrangements, but decorations. If you look really closely at the decoration on the cover of this book you can see that it includes fruits, seed heads, and grasses in an almost invisible vase. I suspect this is not one of her own arrangements by a  painting…

First Mycotecture, Now Helioculture

  • Post published:03/03/2011
  • Post comments:5 Comments

Joule Unlimited is a biotechnology company in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It "produces clean, infrastructure-compatible fuels directly from sunlight and waste CO2 in a single-step, continuous process that requires no costly biomass intermediates, processing or dependency on precious natural resources." I become more fascinated by some new technologies at the same rate I become afraid of other energy technologies like 'hydrofraking.' We need to look at the implications of the whole system and hydrofraking puts our water supply at risk.…

Winter Night on Muse Day

  • Post published:03/01/2011
  • Post comments:5 Comments

Cold moon, cold moonlight Tucking another blanket around the newborn. by CarolPurington  from Family Farm: Haiku for a Place of Moons We have no newborn, but this haiku captures the way I feel as the winter night falls. When bedtime arrives I gaze out at our snowy landscape,  chill and luminous in the moonlight; I am happy to slip between my flannel sheets, and tuck a warm quilt around me.  Then I dream of spring when the snow…