Liza Gyllenhaal — a writer in the garden

For the first time in several years, we’ve been waking up to sub-zero temperatures. It’s the kind of cold that can’t really be measured by windchill factors. Biting and mean, it feels more like some kind of outsized mythic creature– the Abominable Snowman, perhaps – marauding across the landscape, freezing locks and playing havoc with your tire pressure sensor.  It’s the kind of cold that can only be compared to the deep, snow-bound winters of childhood when, insisting on wearing your thin Christmas mittens to a sledding party, you walked home sobbing because you’d lost all feeling in your fingers.

In this poem about his childhood, the 20^th-Century American poet Robert Hayden calls the predawn cold “blueblack,” which seems exactly right – as is everything else in these 14 beautiful lines of love and regret.

Those Winter Sundays

by Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

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 Continue reading →

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 Continue reading →

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 →