Garlic Harvest Fresh Out of the Ground

  • Post published:07/22/2014
  • Post comments:4 Comments

This morning I dug up my 35 hard neck garlic bulbs. My garlic harvest is looking pretty good and I am looking forward to entering them in the Heath Fair next month. Garlic is a wonderful crop. So easy. You begin with good seed garlic which you can get from a friend as I did, or go to a garlic farm like Filaree where you will be amazed at how many kinds of garlic there are to sample…

The New Year Arrives – 2014

  • Post published:01/04/2014
  • Post comments:4 Comments

  The noted essayist and poet Charles Lamb (1775-1834) said “New Year’s Day is everyman’s birthday.” As I look at the snow covered mowing near the center of Heath, I cannot help thinking that the mowing is like the first day of the year. It is perfect and flawless as the new year begins. It seems filled with opportunity and the promise of a good harvest. There may be only sunny days and gentle rains. And yet we…

Happy New Year from the End of the Road

  • Post published:01/01/2014
  • Post comments:3 Comments

Happy New Year! We started celebrating on New Year's Eve Eve with Chinese. Thank heaven, and cousin Tricia for homemade gingerale. What's the point of snow?  Sledding! Who cares if it's only 15 degrees? Not Bella! We can always warm up baking cookies - and taking them to a friend. A great beginning to 2014! For more (almost) Wordlessness this Wednesday click here.

Many Ways of Looking at the New Year

  • Post published:12/28/2013
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              New Year’s resolutions. The beginning of a New Year always has something of the seductive about it, no matter how dismissive we try to be, or how skeptical we think we have become.             I look at the blankness of the calendar’s pages, matching the blankness of the winter landscape and think about the ways I will fill the days of the new year, fill my days in the garden.            …

Thanksgiving at the Friendship Hotel, Beijing in 1995

  • Post published:11/27/2013
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As I prepare for Thanksgiving in my nice American kitchen I cannot help thinking of  other Thanksgivings, most notably two that were celebrated in Beijing where we lived in the Friendship Hotel. The first was in 1989, and the second in 1995. While many things had changed in those five years, much much more car traffic, much much less bicycle riding (because of the vehicular traffic), the arrival of big department stores and McDonalds  and Kentucky Fried Chicken,…

Halloween in Heath

  • Post published:11/01/2013
  • Post comments:1 Comment

Because we are such a rural, spread-out town children can't easily go trick or treating  from house to house. A Tailgate Halloween in the town center was planned, but the rain called for an instant revision. The community hall was quickly turned into Trick or Treat Central and the youngest children, baby pumpkins and kittens, arrived first, followed later by the older kids who had a map of all the houses in town where the Trick or Treat…

Happy New Year January 1, 2013

  • Post published:01/01/2013
  • Post comments:2 Comments

Happy New Year to all! "The Old Year has gone.  Let the dead past bury its own dead.  The New Year has taken possession of the clock of time.  All hail the duties and possibilities of the coming twelve months!  ~Edward Payson Powell  (American author and journalist 1833-1915)

Celebration Season – Eat Your Heart Out

  • Post published:12/31/2012
  • Post comments:2 Comments

Celebration Season this year has been quite lengthy. We had one rowdy family Christmas on December 22, but then a quiet adult Christmas  on December 25 with only one child and his lady, and a dear friend who always joins us for Christmas dinner. On December 29 the Heath Gourmet Club celebrated Christmas with a theme of Looks Like a Wreath to Me! Nearly every course was wreath-like. My savarin pans came in handy for the main course which was…

How to Give a Gift Plant

  • Post published:12/02/2012
  • Post comments:2 Comments

A living plant can be a wonderful holiday gift whether it is chosen for its flowers or for its foliage. However, before you give a plant think about the recipient. Will she accept the plant as a long lived bouquet and then let it go to its eternal reward in the compost pile? After admiring the plant will she feel overwhelmed by the necessity of caring for the plant? Will she weep because she wanted to keep it…

I Made This Christmas Wreath

  • Post published:11/28/2012
  • Post comments:4 Comments

One of the pleasures of belonging to the Greenfield Garden Club is the November meeting at Chapley Gardens where we have help and materials to make our own wreath.  This year I did pretty well. At least better than I did before. Mother Nature decorates like this. For more Wordlessness this Wednesday click here.