Temperatures soared above 60 degrees and this was the first weekend we could actually work outside, so let me give you a brief tour to set the scene. The snow is still melting and revealing that the winter has been kind to the rhodies. No breakage. Lots of buds. The "Limelight" hydrangea was not so lucky. The snow plow dumped a lot of our enormous snowfall at the edge of the lawn and broke more than half this…
We left sunny Houston yesterday at noon, and got into sunny Nashville, but by the time we arrived in Hartford at 6:30 the rain was falling. Our son drove us to Greenfield where our car waited for us at his house. Quick! A few groceries! Quick up the hill. The snow is falling. And still falling this morning. My plan was to plant spinach today, but I guess that will not happen. The only flowers in my view…
When I began my blog, slightly more than three years ago, I had just finished reading The Uncommon Reader, a delightful short comic novel by Alan Bennett. I am a reader and understood the reference to Virginia Woolf's Common Reader essays so the phrase 'common reader' was whirling around in my brain when I thought of that most common of weeds - the dandelion. I thought the dandelion was a perfect flower to refer to me; I am…
This is an end-of- winter Monday Report. Next Monday it will be Spring. The temperature this am is 32 degrees and we are enjoying a snow flurry. Grrrrrr. But you can see there has been a lot of snow melt. Warmth is predicted for this afternoon. Although the season has been most unusual, the maple sugarers seem to be having a good run. Even though the snow was very deep with plow piles along here, the exposure is…
My friend Kathryn Galbraith and I met inNew York City more than 30 years ago when we were both taking a writing class at the New School. She was working on her first novel for children, Come Spring, about Rennie, a little girl who is moving (again) to a new house, not just an apartment, and looking to put down roots. Kathryn has a special insight and understanding of the hearts of children, and this is a tender…
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…
Saturday morning I substituted for our wonderful Assistant Librarian, Lyra, who is on maternity leave and tending lusty young Jupiter. Needless to say the three chickens I had lost to a weasel during the week was a topic of conversation with library patrons. I said we put out a rat trap and a Havahart, but did not think that peanut butter was the kind of bait to attract a weasel. Everyone agreed that peanut butter did not sound…
The snow was falling when I woke. I hope this is the first of the four final snowstorms predicted for this winter. While the snow is beautiful, the view inside the hen house was not as lovely. For the third morning in a row I went out to find a dead chicken, killed by a weasel. I don't know if it is possible to keep a determined and hungry weasel out of a hen house. I will spare…
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My father was a machinist. For many years he worked for my grandfather, Algot Larson who invented the Unique window balance, a device that replaced the ropes and pulleys that were used at the time to open and shut windows. My father's avocation was astronomy. He was a member of the Amateur Astronomer's Association. He often attended meetings at the Hayden Planetarium in New York City where he learned to make his own telescope grinding the lens himself. I remember him melting…