We left for Maui on March 3, wearing winter coats. In our absence spring arrived. Poking through the pine branches (which I’d left on the snow covered garden) were brightly colored crocuses. The daffodils grew six inches in the 10 days we’d been gone. In contrast to the vibrant colors of Maui, everything here is [...]
Archive for the ‘Home’ Category
Return to spring
Posted in Home on March 14, 2012 | 1 Comment »
Inventions
Posted in Home on February 15, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
I am convinced that Cherisse and I will one day invent something so useful, the world will wonder how it survived without it for so long. Until that time, I will simply admire the genius of others. Today I used three marvelous inventions. The first is the heated mattress pad. Our bedroom stays cold, which [...]
Solar powered
Posted in Home on February 9, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
Our laundry room is in a bump-out at the back of the house, accessed through the dining room. Whoever built it used a small, old barn or shed door to separate the rooms, and someone made very rough cabinets out of barn boards which hang over the washer and dryer. A wooden ironing board, worn [...]
Recycling
Posted in Home on January 25, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
The Christmas tree came down today. We are always loathe to see it go, but yesterday’s warm temperatures made us feel the time had come. The treasured ornaments so happily unwrapped last month are packed away. The unadorned tree is lying outside—until I cut off the branches to strew around the flower garden—an object of [...]
The new year
Posted in Home on December 31, 2011 | 1 Comment »
Any given year offers many chances for fresh starts. As a student, I loved September, with brand new notebooks, and the promise of exciting classes. For gardeners, spring heralds a beginning: new seeds to experiment with, adjustments to soil or placement of plants, and plans for more diligent weeding. And of course, there is January [...]
Make your own
Posted in Home on December 12, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
For years, to save money, I would purchase a plain balsam wreath and add my own selection of cuttings from plants and trees to make it fuller and more decorative. Then I discovered URI’s Master Gardener poinsettia and wreath sale, an annual fund raiser. The focus was on the unusual, and spectacular, array of poinsettias. [...]
Revisiting old friends
Posted in Home on December 11, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Over many, many years Cherisse and I have collected Christmas ornaments. A few are family treasures but most have been chosen by us, one by one. A rust colored iron cutout of a cowboy on a horse from a trip to Sante Fe. Glass ornaments in different shapes and colors hand blown by various artists. [...]
Magical worlds
Posted in Home on December 2, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
In almost every room of our house there are bookcases filled with books. They cover a wide range of topics that have caught our interest: plenty of novels, mysteries and spy stories, biographies, history, gardening, woodworking, reference books, beautiful leather-bound books on music and poetry that my grandmother treasured, and children’s books. When my sister [...]
Just around the corner
Posted in Home on November 30, 2011 | 1 Comment »
I don’t like moving onto Christmas until December rolls around, but I was at Appleland buying apples, and so I selected four wreathes for the barn doors. Last night Cherisse and I picked the photos for our holiday card. And a new Christmas cd just arrived in an Amazon delivery, so of course I am [...]
O Tannenbaum
Posted in Home on November 22, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
This will be our eighth Christmas in Foster. The first two years we cut our tree at a lovely old farm the next road over. Sadly for us, the owners were retiring (they had ceased to plant new trees a few years before and simply sold what remained in their fields). For our third Christmas [...]