Back in the saddle

I’m not sure why it happened or that I choose an altitude of 35,000 feet to reverse course. But after a year of sparse postings I am going to give it another shot. It is not as if I haven’t had lots to write about: the crazy winter, the non-existent Spring, the early Summer, new […]

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Taking stock

This has been the longest stretch I have not blogged. Like other stretches where I have not written, it has not been because I have been resting on my laurels but rather there were more important things to get done. And when the end of the day came, I was either too tired or indifferent […]

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Getting flat

I feel blessed living in the Northeast after Sandy as we only lost power for a week without major damage. Over 100 feet of fence did come toppling down but half of it was rotted and needed to be replaced anyway. So for the last few weeks I have been in storm clean-up mode like […]

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Berry days

One of the more delicious harvests are berries. My wife claims that I must have been a bear in a prior life as I devour anything with berry added to it. For us the berry season starts with strawberries during the first week of June. Strawberries have always been spotty as they require almost perfect […]

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Baby it’s cold outside

Even to those hearty New Englanders who are renowned for shrugging off a foot or two of snow, this winter has been trying. With nary a day during the month of January above freezing, the icicles are over 10 feet long hanging like formidable spears ready to impale a passer by. But there are few […]

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Going south

I think it was dumb luck rather than prescience but last summer my wife and I decided to take a cottage in the Florida Keys for a month starting in February. By mid-January we were packed and ready to leave as the winter this year has been particularly brutal with its high winds and cold […]

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Horticultural therapy in the news

One of the challenges in the discipline of horticultural therapy is that it is not well-understood or promoted. Googling  “horticultural therapy” gets you 60,600 hits compared with over 9 million for Paris Hilton. So I was pleasantly surprised this morning when I read two stories in the New York Times that dealt with the healing […]

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Thanksgiving: 90 percent vegetation

Yesterday’s Thanksgiving feast that was held at many homes throughout the United States is often assumed to be all about turkey (and overeating.) My family went on the Turkey Trot held by the local Boys & Girls club in the early morning. The New York Times and our local paper recently ran articles about how […]

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Biting the hand that feeds us

One of the anachronisms that I have enjoyed over the years has been a local farm that worked on the honor system. The Hickories is a lovely farm now run by Dina and Rob who sell a wide variety of veg and fruit at their farm stand as well as through a Community Support Agriculture […]

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