There you stood in your pale green frock with white trim, showing a little age but resolute and desirable still, ready for come what may. You embraced us when we walked inside, asked where we’d been, and so we knew we were yours. We massaged your muscles and traced the contours in your bones with … Continue reading Farewell to Thee, Dear Clapboard New Englander
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Sunday Photo Essay: Hope Springs Eternal
plucky parsley I was not absolutely sure I believed Chef David when he came inside from his run earlier today and announced last year's Italian parsley appears to have overwintered in our frozen Vermont soil, and is coming back. I'll be damned, I said a little later on in the afternoon when I crouched down … Continue reading Sunday Photo Essay: Hope Springs Eternal
The Essence of Us
For days stretching into a couple of weeks now, I’ve been working on deep cleaning and reorganizing the creamy yellow office space at the top of our steps, a small but sunny room I share with The Chef—his desk situated at one end and mine at the other like a pair of bookends, with … Continue reading The Essence of Us
Sunday Photo Essay: Butternut Squash Soup
It's the time of year I start yearning for soup and chili, feel the need to stand in my kitchen and create things. Tomorrow is the first day of fall, and I shall greet it with the best possible outlook, knowing it will also hand us our first plowable snow, and keenly aware our first … Continue reading Sunday Photo Essay: Butternut Squash Soup
Our Vermont Life: Changing Landscapes, Changing Times
A few years ago, Chef David and I stopped in to a small retail store in Manchester, Vermont, just one town removed from our own at the time. Manchester is picturesque and off the beaten path, nestled in the shadows of the breathtaking Taconic Mountains in western Vermont, a town known for its high-end shopping … Continue reading Our Vermont Life: Changing Landscapes, Changing Times
Journal Entry: Change Is Bad, Except When It Isn’t
“My ass is hanging off the bed.” Those were the Chef’s first words to me this morning, prompted by one Scout-the-Goldapeake-Retriever’s pushing four paws into me, with his back to the Chef, who was forced out of the bed this way. All six-feet-plus of him, at a quarter ‘til six. The planets are misaligned; that’s … Continue reading Journal Entry: Change Is Bad, Except When It Isn’t
Journal Entry: It Is Still Winter
And we are almost out of firewood: we have what you see in the photo, plus a bit more stacked on the front porch. No big deal. We don’t depend on it to heat our house, as I did in the beautiful but isolated Vermont loft where I lived between 2013 and 2015. But we … Continue reading Journal Entry: It Is Still Winter
A Christmas Story: Holidays Are Hard
A few days ago something or other I saw on the telly prompted me to hop onto the web and find out who’s living in my erstwhile home in Tennessee now—whether it’s the same people who bought it at auction in 2012, mere moments before the bank would’ve foreclosed on it, as it turns out. … Continue reading A Christmas Story: Holidays Are Hard
Sea Glass Story: Willing My Home Improvement Project to Work
Sometime earlier this year—in late winter or early spring—I took a bad spill on a thin layer of ice at the bottom of our back deck steps. It was one of those cartoonish moments where you hope like heck nobody saw you: in trying to climb the steps, my feet went out from under me … Continue reading Sea Glass Story: Willing My Home Improvement Project to Work
Journal Entry: The Earth Grows Restless and Begins to Shift
And the days grow notably shorter. It had to happen eventually, I suppose. But the poison parsnip is dead, and good riddance to it. “I don’t suppose your leaves have started turning yet,” mused my dad at the other end of a cell phone connection about a week ago. “No,” I said, “but just last … Continue reading Journal Entry: The Earth Grows Restless and Begins to Shift
Sycamore Stories 