Category Archives: Blog

My echinacea is in its glory now, a couple of weeks early, as are so many flowering plants and shrubs in the Berkshires this summer.   This beautiful North American native — also known as purple cone flower — is a … Continue reading →

Our house came with a field of wildflowers. There were mostly daisies that first summer. Then fewer daisies the next. It took me a few years to realize that you need to reseed every five years or so, especially after golden … Continue reading →

I’m not alone in hating spiders. According to the Statistic Brain Research Institute arachnophobia ranks third — right behind fear of public speaking and fear of death — among the country’s top phobias. Approximately 30 percent of all Americans are … Continue reading →

I planted Globemaster alliums three or four years ago. They’re the largest and most majestic plant from the ornamental side of the large allium family which includes chives, onions, shallots, leeks, and hundreds of wild and cultivated species. (Not surprisingly, … Continue reading →

It’s been another passive-aggressive spring in southern New England. Showing up weeks late, spring arrived in a tremendous rush this year — trailing swarms of insects and rapidly pushing the temperatures up into the eighties. The daffodils and tulips which … Continue reading →

One grey day in the frozen depths of winter, I saw a flash of gold in the woods behind our place: fox!  It moved with a wonderful fluidity and sense of purpose, but wary and close to the ground. Later, … Continue reading →

Galway Kinnell, one of America’s most honored and beloved poets, died last October at the age of 87. He was a physically imposing man — with a tough-guy face that belied a gentle and generous nature. He believed that the … Continue reading →

My witch hazel shrub is flowering — the blooms flamboyant bursts of yellow and red, like miniature pom poms, cheering on springtime’s long-delayed kick-off. Besides an almost imperceptible blur of red in the underbrush and a shimmer of gold among … Continue reading →

Here’s a guest posting that I hope adds a touch of levity to these last grey days of March: Walking along the shore of Captiva Island the other day, who should I bump into but my old teacher Linnaeus Zandtdahler. … Continue reading →

Anne Morrow Lindbergh — aviator, author, and wife of Charles Lindbergh — wrote Gift from the Sea sixty years ago on Florida’s Captiva Island. Nobody knows exactly which cottage she lived in when she wrote the eloquent meditation on and … Continue reading →

Preserved lemons, the key ingredient in many Moroccan and Indian dishes, are lemons that have been pickled in a salty brine with various other spices and fermented for several months before using. They have a uniquely tart and intensely lemony … Continue reading →

I had the good fortune of getting to know Daniel Hoffman in the final years of his life. I was invited to join a group he had organized that got together for dinner periodically to read poems aloud. He was … Continue reading →

Not long ago, my husband and I attended a memorial service where the song “Morning Has Broken” was sung by an a cappella group. The voices filled the sunlit New England church where we were sitting with a sense of … Continue reading →

by Richard Wilbur Now winter downs the dying of the year, And night is all a settlement of snow; From the soft street the rooms of houses show A gathered light, a shapen atmosphere, Like frozen-over lakes whose ice is … Continue reading →