When our friends LiSha and Chris visited us, all the way from China yesterday we spent the day celebrating. After sharing lots of family photos and stories we took them on a whirlwind tour of the highlights of Heath and Shelburne Falls. We began with a visit to Bob Dane's glassblowing studio to show off his artistry and shelves and shelves of beautiful glass ready for his local sale on December 8-9 and 1-16. Unfortunately, we couldn't take our…
The first thing Cynthia Boettner had to explain to me about the Silvio O. Conte National Fish and Wildlife Refuge is that the Refuge consists of the 7.2 million acres of the Connecticut River Watershed that runs from the far reaches of New Hampshire, through Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecticut before it exits in Long Island Sound. That is an enormous charge and responsibility. As Boettner explained how she works to monitor, control and eradicate invasive plant…
Mary Lyon, the founder of Mount Holyoke College, was born in Buckland in 1797. Nowadays the Mary Lyon Foundation supports local education in the hilltowns of western Massachusetts which include the town of her birth. Last night my team, the Prescriptive Orthographers sponsored by local Baker Pharmacy, was one of 25 teams who participated in our Annual Spelling Bee. Every team got themselves up in more or less outrageous costumes. The Woodward Wordsmiths even brought the car that…
John Bunker, heritage apple expert, and author, distributes WANTED posters for the old apples he is searching for. He gives a pretty full description of the apple's appearance from size, shape, color of skin, color of flesh, stem size, and seeds. I've learned some new words like Acuminate which refers to the tapering shape of the seed cavity. I don't know what the 'eye' of the apple is. I know the opposite of the stem end is called the 'basin,' and has…
John Bunker and David Buchanan gave a couple of talks on Cider Day all about their experiences with finding and planting heritage apples. They also got to sell their books. I knew about David's book, Taste, Memory: Forgotten Foods, Lost Flavors, and Why They Matter, but I didn't know that John had also written, and illustrated, a book about the apples and orchards of Palermo where he lives in Maine. Not Far From the Tree: A Bried History of…
David Buchanan and I met at the Conway School of Landscape Design (CSLD) reunion in September where he gave a six minute talk about what he had been doing since he graduated in 2000. He talked as fast as he could, and I listened as fast as I could, but I was glad I could slow the journey when I received a copy of his new book Taste, Memory: Forgotten Foods, Lost Flavors, and Why They Matter.…
I am not a graduate of the Conway School of Landscape Design (alas) but I am an admirer of the school, its teachers, principles and curriculum, and of the work its 600 grads have done around the country, and the world. As part of the celebratory 40th Reunion weekend I attended a program of Lighning Talks. A number of alums from different years were given six (6!) minutes to describe their recent work. Ginny Sullivan is an alum who lives in Conway.…
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.…
My friend Kathryn O. Galbraith was recently presented with a Growing Good Kids 2012 award from the American Horticultural Society for Excellence in Children's Literature. This book, beautifully illustrated by Wendy Anderson Halperin depicts the myriad of ways that we all, people, birds, and animals as well as the wind and the rain plant the beautiful and fruitful gardens that grow along the roadsides, riversides and meadows. I wrote about Kathryn and her book when it first came…