In a typical winter, late March is when we often get our final melt in Connecticut. There are false starts where a few snow drops will make an appearance and daffodils start to poke their heads through a veneer of snow. But invariably a late winter blast burys any hope of an early Spring. After […]
White birches, grey spaces
White birches are one of those trees that make their best mark in the winter. Against a landscape of grey detritus, they offer a clean and differing diversion to the eye. One of the nicest stands of betula papyrifera is on the way to Boston via I84 in the upper east corner of Connecticut (known […]
Home fruit
This weekend we are in Antigua, Guatemala, for a family wedding. They say that Guatemala is the land of eternal Spring and I can’t disagree. When we got off the plane, a waft of warm fragrant air and the sound of marimbas told us we were no longer in frosty Connecticut. The drive to Antigua […]
Snow seedlings
Often the effects of nature arrive in lumps or large batches. This was more than the case this week with my beds of seedlings and the foot plus of snow sprouting up and falling down, respectively. I planted three trays last week thinking that perhaps I was a bit late. But upon checking my past […]
Driving Islamorada to Ridgefield
It’s snowing today and there is nothing better to do than to have a fire, read (or write) and watch the yardstick slowly disappear under a white blanket. As Juana and I follow the birds fighting over position at the feeder, today’s New York Times has a story about how the signs of Spring this […]
Late leeks, Spring surprises
Getting back from the Florida Keys was a big shock on the first day with a temperature drop of 80 degrees (more on the travel up later) but within a few days we felt like we were in a Northern Florida zip code as it was sunny and pushing 60 degrees. Unlike prior years, the […]
First snow
November is often when we get the first snow of the season. It arrives in different ways, sometimes as a simple flurry other times as an unanticipated storm that halts fall clean ups for the rest of the year. Today’s first snow was between these extremes as it was an unexpected fall with a few […]
Waiting for Wooly Bears
In early October as we are becoming used to the Fall, it can sometimes not be helped that we think ahead as to what will winter hold for us. And with that fascination, comes a wide variety of speculation some of which comes from the wooly bear caterpillar. The wooly bear, or more precisely the […]
The coldest day
The part of winter that I dislike the most is the coldest day. In either January or February it arrives causing the Mercury to plunge to a yearly low, though we may not know it at the time. In Connecticut, the low is often around 0 degrees Fahrenheit. Some years it can be in the […]
First flurries
The first snow of the year comes with anticipation. By the time the first flakes can reach the outstretched tongue of a child, the annuals have long since died and the perennials gone dormant. The leaves have lost most of their color becoming a gray carpet that periodically crunches underfoot. Broken branches are scattered waiting […]