It was quite a job getting everyone in the family together in one spot even at a family reunion. My brother and sister-in-law bookend this group, but the rest of us include our five children, their spouses and the grandchildren. That is three daughters and three granddaughters. My oldest son's daughter Tracy (our oldest granddaughter) who lives in Florida couldn't make the 2010 family reunion, but she and her two daughters, Lola on my lap, and Bella on…
More drama!
If your housekeeping regime is anything like mine, there are bound to be surprises from time to time. Last week I shuffled the bins of knitting yarns slightly from where they had been pushed in front of the bedroom bookshelves. There under the shelves was a pot of bulbs that I had forced on top of the shelves last spring. And once again I had to cry Life Will Not Be Denied! The potting soil was dry and…
I was about to start cooking yesterday when I looked out the kitchen window and saw my chickens all a-flutter and one in the mouth of a fox. A healthy and beautiful red fox. I opened the window and started yelling and banging my frying pan and lid. Everyone really got excited. The fox dropped the chicken and had trouble finding the hole in the chicken fence, but finally pushed his way through. The chickens went flying in…
The view from my bedroom window on January 27, 2012. Ice is heavy. And to think I was planning to collect forsythia branches to force today. View from the Welcoming Platform. I have photographed this tree in every season and every weather. It is always beautiful. Temperatures hover at 32 degrees and the stream keeps flowing.
I woke at dawn and looked out the window to see three rabbits frolicking on the nowy lawn. Hardy rabbits. The temperature was 8 degrees. They were no where in sight when the sun was fully up. When the sun had gotten a little higher and the temperature had reached 16 degrees my husband and I decided to take a walk down the road. We passed our neighbor's house with this beautiful tree that I have always admired.…
I open the bedroom window to the southeast breezes on this, the first day of the new year. The weather continues its unseasonable habit. There is a bit of ice but at noon the temperature is 44 degrees. These two photos almost make a panorama. Green lawn, brown fields and gray skies. Often at this time of the year I wonder if spring will ever come. This year I am wondering if winter will ever come. What does…
Many family Christmas memories revolve around the Christmas tree. These stories rarely have to do with the magnificence of the tree. In fact, Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree may be our culture’s most famous Christmas tree, standing for the true meaning of the season. We have many family stories about our Christmas trees beginning with our first Christmas in Greenfield in 1971. I was a single mother of five children when I came to town. Our life had changed…
The penultimate day of the year: 26 degrees, still, and gray. For more skies click here.
As I look out my window today the ground is a tapestry of beige, green and white. The meadow grasses have died back, but the lawn is a brilliant green because it has loved this long cool, but not frozen, autumn and there are still patches, large and small, of the snow that keeps tantalizing us. Winter may be coming, but it is shy this year, stepping out and then retreating. The winter garden can be a challenge…