Even though there are lots of activities here and there, we all spend lots of time at home, playing games, making art, cooking, checking out the Frog Pond, and Reading Aloud. Life at the End of the Road offers many activities right here. But we did hit the road to do some errands in Shelburne Falls. Tourists come here because they think its kind of quiet and old fashioned. But it is not THIS old fashioned. After errands,…
With the weather still cold and wet we devoted yesterday to community service. The only gardening we could do was watch the yeast grow as we started baking bread for the food distribution at the Federated Church of Charlemont. It takes strength to knead bread, but we kneaded until the dough felt like a baby's bottom. We weren't going to get any of the bread, but we baked lemon cookies for the Bridge of Flowers birthday on Saturday…
Grandson Tynan arrived Monday evening, but we wasted no time on Monday exploring the damage done to the landscape. We cleared the path down to the Frog Pond a little more and Ty was amazed at the trees bent and broken around the pond. The frogs and newts seemed to be in good shape. The sundews, too. We still don't know how those tiny, pond-edge carniverous plants, close around bugs to eat them. Since the weather was supposed…
The past week was cold, wet and windy. Not much time out in the garden, although I did pick the last of the lettuce in the herb bed, and lots of sugar snap peas. We eat them raw. On the cloudy, cold and windy Fourth of July we went to a neighbor's BBQ where we huddled in the kitchen, only nipping out to the fire and hot dogs occasionally. We all know that kitchens are the best for…
Tynan arrived to spend part of school vacation with us and we devoted ourselves to art, the garden, and celebrating Earth Day at the eleventh most beautiful waterfall in Massachusetts. First, off to Umass, my alma mater, to visit our friend Dan at the new Studio Arts building. He gave us a tour of the undergrad studios where we saw all kinds of art, collage, drawings, assemblages, paintings, clay sculptures, and even a work made with black…
Last Saturday was the Western Mass Master Gardeners Spring Symposium. I was honored to share the bill with Julie Moir Messervy who was the keynote speaker. I spoke about my worm farm and she spoke about garden design and her new book Home Outside. Julie had a lot of helpful things to say, but she struck the tone immediately for me in her talk and in her book when she said her aim is to help us create…
Temperatures have been in the single digits for days now, but here in Heath, and I think all over the country, we are feeling a change in the climate as our new president takes office. Never has the phrase Global Warming been so positive as we warm to each other, warm to the tasks at hand. We were all feeling the warmth of good fellowship and optimism last night at the Inaugural pot luck at the Community Hall,…
January is the month when I welcome silence. December is gone with all its noise. Gone are the jingle bells, carols in the stores, party music, laughter, and loud conversations in crowded rooms. Gone are the midnight shrieks and horns on New Year's Eve. Gone are the snaps and snarls of overtired, over-scheduled, short-tempered spouses and children. Here in the country January is silent. Silence is almost an impossibility in the city. One summer…
The Commonweeder website did not exist in January 2008; I thought it would be fun to reprint this New Year’s Between the Rows column and see how I did. For a number of years now I have not been too keen on New Year’s Resolutions. This is partly because I have lived long enough to have developed what I call the Driver’s Philosophy of Life. I remember when I was learning to drive I was always concentrating on…
We are on the road from blog spot to Wordpress and it is beginning to look a lot like Christmas here at the End of the Road. Keep watching for further developments.