Author Archives: Liza

Last weekend we drove over to Monterey, Mass. where, years ago, we had spent many happy summers. The old brown-shingled Cape we rented there was a mile or so down the road from Rawson Brook Farm which makes and sells Monterey … Continue reading →

Some time ago I noticed that my fennel bush was crawling with caterpillars. They had distinctive green, yellow, and black stripes in a dot and dash formation somewhat like Morse code. Despite the fact that they were devouring my fennel fronds … Continue reading →

We drove up to see the enlarged and renovated Clark Art Institute in Williamstown recently. It had just reopened after ten years of planning and construction, and we were eager to explore the new Clark Center designed by the Japanese … Continue reading →

One of my most prized possessions is a map that the poet John Ashbery drew for me many years ago on the back of an old business card. This was at the end of a long celebratory dinner — the … Continue reading →

There’s nothing like a daylily to remind us that life is both fleeting and beautiful. The flowers of the Hemerocallis — which literally means “day” and “beautiful” in Greek — last only 24 hours. The bright orange flutes of yesterday … Continue reading →

I was raised in the unenlightened days when lettuce came in one variety: iceberg (and this was well before its recent haute cuisine revival). So my first taste of arugula was something of a culinary awakening. It was the summer … Continue reading →

This is the time of year when Queen Anne’s Lace flowers in drifts of white across the open fields and along the roadsides of the Berkshires. An immigrant from Europe, this biennial was supposedly named for Queen Anne of Great … Continue reading →

I thought I’d made my peace with them. It hadn’t been easy. Six years ago, a woodchuck family set up a compound on our property. They burrowed tunnels in the mowing field, behind a rotting log near the compost heap, and … Continue reading →

  A few years back on an early June night a storm raged through the Berkshires, downing trees and knocking out power. Our elderly weeping willow was sheared nearly in half. A massive tangle of shattered limbs and willow wands … Continue reading →

Sorrel’s at its best early in the season, leafing out in the Berkshires about the same time fiddleheads and morels are putting in their own brief appearances. Like them, it has a pungent flavor, redolent of the soil from which … Continue reading →

Moss covered paths between scarlet peonies, Pale jade mountains fill your rustic windows. I envy you, drunk with flowers; Butterflies swirling in your dreams. – ‘Visit to the Hermit Chui’ by Qian Qi (Tang Dynasty)   I first fell in … Continue reading →

I think we all probably associate certain plants with particular events and people in our lives. The smell of pear blossoms or pine bows, hyacinths or lilacs, can sweep me into the past as magically as a madeleine once transported Proust. I was struck by … Continue reading →

The growing season in the Berkshires is at least two weeks behind this year. It wasn’t until late April that I finally glimpsed one of the first signs of spring in our fenced-in vegetable garden: chive shoots — fine as cat whiskers — poking up through the … Continue reading →

The shoes put on each time 
left first, then right…    —from ‘Habit’  by Jane Hirshfield   I planted pansies (Viola x wittrockiana) a few days ago in our window box and in the old cement urn I inherited from my … Continue reading →