Early April often comes at you with a slow comforting joy then a fast jolt. The snowdrops and crocuses have decided correctly or incorrectly that the snow is past and are flush with leaves and blooms. Daffodils are pushing upward with visible progress each day. Tulips are more tentative as is a cautious child peeking […]
Final melt
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 […]
Frozen veg and tropical fruit
In December, most of the vegetable beds are empty. The beds of strawberries and garlic have a few spots of green emerging from their strawed blanket. The asparagus and rhubarb have been cut to the ground and manured for next Spring. The early snow is stubborn stunting any harvest attempt. At that time of year […]
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 […]
A lone woolly bear
As I mentioned in a past post, there has been a dearth of woolly bear caterpillars in our yard. Both dedicated and casual searches have been in vain. We were ready to give it up for the season when Juana spotted a tiny creature munching on a chrysanthemum that was planted in a flower box […]