Liza Gyllenhaal — a writer in the garden

Ben Garver, Berkshire Eagle

We hadn’t had a good rain in weeks.  A drought was declared.  Then a severe drought, along with a burn ban. The long lovely stretch of mild weather turned ominous. Leaves rustled in the underbrush, and then were swept up in a frenzied dance by the breeze. The sky remained an unrelenting blue. Fires were breaking out in the Hudson Valley, the smoke drifting north.  But it wouldn’t happen here, we told ourselves. We’d never had a wild fire in the 30 years we’ve lived in the area, and besides the meteorologists claimed the Berkshires were getting wetter and warmer with climate change.

On Tuesday morning, at our regular gas station in Great Barrington, I looked up and saw a cloud of smoke billowing along the side of East Mountain, its underbelly orange with reflected flames.  There’s something so mesmerizing about fire.  Suddenly, I realized how many other people were standing there, errands forgotten, car doors left open. We were all staring up, stricken by this sheer force of nature that would, even with 120 firefighters working to contain it, eventually spread across 1,200 acres. Despite a steady rain, the fire will, according to the authorities, continue to smolder on into the winter. Like desire, as Frost would have it, which rhymes so beautifully.

Fire and Ice
by Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Photo: Gilles Gonthier

They entertained us all summer long, chasing each other around the garden in dizzying circles.  Their high-pitched chatter drove our cat mad, taunting him as they raced back and forth outside the screen porch before diving headfirst into one of their tunnels. They’ve built an extensive network of burrows near the house over the years, including one in the long stone wall along the driveway that in the summer months is as populated and bustling as a Manhattan co-op. They’re good neighbors, though, keeping their living quarters clean and storing their trash in designated refuse tunnels.

In the early fall, we watched them foraging for acorns under the oaks, stuffing their expandable cheek pouches with the nuts that they stockpile in their burrows and live off of all winter.  This harvesting and hoarding apparently fosters seedling development, and their droppings enrich the soil around trees, endowing these playful little characters with an important role in the forest ecosystem. They’ve been such a lighthearted part of our lives for so many months now, it took us a while to realize that they’ve gone. They’ve disappeared into their underground hidey holes for the winter, their absence adding to the growing stillness and silence of the late fall landscape.

For the Chipmunk in  My Yard

by Robert Gibb

I think he knows I’m alive, having come down 
The three steps of the back porch 
And given me a good once over. All afternoon 
He’s been moving back and forth,
Gathering odd bits of walnut shells and twigs, 
While all about him the great fields tumble 
To the blades of the thresher. He’s lucky 
To be where he is, wild with all that happens. 
He’s lucky he’s not one of the shadows 
Living in the blond heart of the wheat.
This autumn when trees bolt, dark with the fires 
Of starlight, he’ll curl among their roots, 
Wanting nothing but the slow burn of matter 
On which he fastens like a small, brown flame.

The Sweet Autumn clematis that festooned the trellis with small glossy leaves all summer has burst into blossom. Swarmed by bees, its tiny, star-like flowers give off a heady aroma of vanilla and clove. In another few weeks, these flowers will morph into clouds of fluffy silver seed heads. The mint and basil in the herb garden have already bolted, sending up soft Continue reading →

There’s something a little fussy and old-fashioned about phlox. The flowers, arranged like over-sized five-leaf clovers, mass into airy clusters that give off a sweet, slightly musty aroma. My phlox paniculata were already well-entrenched in our long border when we bought our place almost thirty years ago, though I didn’t pay much attention to them at the time. I still don’t for most of the summer. With the peonies and lilies in riotous blossom, it’s easy to overlook the lanky plants standing quietly in the back of the border. Until, usually around mid-July, I Continue reading →

What took me so long?  It wasn’t until early this spring that I tasted my first watermelon radish, though I imagine they’ve been around forever. Rough and earthy on the outside, inside they’re a shock of gleaming dark red. Not always solid red, but riffs on the color: rings or spirals or sprinkles of red, swirled against a field of crisp white. It’s no surprise that radishes belong to the mustard family. Though full of nutritional and Continue reading →

A few weeks ago, I noticed something strange at the bottom of our frog pond: what appeared to be two dark fish, swimming in circles. They looked like carp, each about 8 inches long. But how did they get there? Our pond is small, self-contained, and pump fed.  Could a passing bird have dropped them in?  I once saw a crane stalking around the area, but it seemed to be looking for fish, not disposing of them. As the days passed and the two fish kept circulating, I noticed the frog population seemed to be thinning out. I’ve grown to love our frogs, and I couldn’t help but worry: could the carp be eating them? “Carp have a tendency to eat almost anything,” the internet informed me, “bottom matter or even minnows, crawfish and frogs.” Continue reading →

This is the time of year when meadows in the Berkshires take on an almost otherworldly beauty. Clover, wild carrot, violets, forget-me-nots  –- overnight, drifts of wildflowers have spread across field after field. Banks of blue and white wild phlox glow along roadways and at the edge of the woods.  In the deeper shade, columbine, jack-in-the-pulpit, and Indian pipes — complex, curious-looking shapes — have sprung up out of Continue reading →

Up close, they look like loosely scattered pearls or bubbles popping in a glass of champagne. Take a few steps back, and they resemble clusters of far-off galaxies, glistening in the dark. I came upon them the other morning on the northwest corner of our frog pond, right where our Field Guide to the Animals of Vernal Pools said that wood frogs prefer to lay their eggs.  Look closely at the photograph and you’ll see tiny dark brown tadpoles, grazing on the Continue reading →

Photo: Diginatur, CC BY-SA 3.0

The gouges on our garage door were deep and angry, ripping into the old wood, leaving splinters scattered across the breezeway. Our porch, too, had been attacked, the screens sliced diagonally, the cuts clean as a razor — or a bear claw. A very hungry black bear, it turned out, roused too early from its somnolence by this year’s weirdly warm winter weather.

Black bears are a regular feature of life in the Berkshires. Harmless for the most part, sometimes even comical.  One summer, several years back, we had one break into our garage, pull out a full bag of bird seed, and proceed to sit under the trees Continue reading →

Barred owl. *Photo: Anders Gyllenhaal

If I happen to be outside at the end of the day — usually when dusk is beginning to fall — I’ll often hear the gentle, haunting cry of a barred owl: Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you? It’s unlike any other bird song I know, close to human-sounding in tone and cadence. But also intimate and somehow loving, like a mother calling her children in for dinner.

Nearly thirty years ago, the night we first moved into our house, Continue reading →

Except for a light dusting at the beginning of the month, it’s been a snowless December in the Berkshires.  Though hardly a dry one. The unusually inclement year is doubling down as it nears its end with rain forecast almost every day this week. The fields are water-logged. The road is mud. Our seasonal creek is overflowing its banks.  The ground has yet to freeze for more than a day or two at a time. Morning mists linger well into the afternoon.

Winter will surely arrive at some point.  But the demarcation lines between Continue reading →

All summer long a pair of blue jays flitted around one of our espaliered pear trees, hopping from the barn gutter to the ground to the top limb of the tree where they’d disappear into its leafy shadows. Despite all the feints and evasive maneuvers, it was clear that the jays were nesting. But it wasn’t until the last of the leaves had fallen a few weeks ago that I discovered where. Packed into the spikey circle of twigs at the tree’s crown, woven with moss and straw and pine needles, was a miracle of avian engineering that had blended perfectly into its surroundings.

The fall reveals so many things that had been hidden in plain sight by summer’s canopies of green: the cresting wave of Continue reading →