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Sarah returned home yesterday for winter break from Colgate, after briefly being snowed in following her last final Friday. Today we were able to snag one of the nine remaining xmas trees at the Phantom Gardener, just in time for the first night of Hanukkah.

The Dutchess County Fair offers not only chances at glory, but also cash prizes.

Tomato production is in high gear, and it’s all we can do to keep up. How many BLTs and caprese salads are too many? We will find out. Jen stays hydrated as she tends her garden.

Jen retained her marmalade crown at the 176th Dutchess County Fair. Her peach-lemon marmalade is loved by all. Sarah, debuting in the 18-and-older category, crocheted her way to glory with this beautiful blanket. I eked out the bronze in sweet pickles.

Saturday was perhaps the observable height of the blackberry season. Here, Jen fills a gallon bag with them. Jam will follow. It’s also high season for wineberries, which, although invasive — possibly pestiferous — are sweet, and easy to gather. We collected a gallon of those too.

Flowers tend to bloom, and fruit tends to ripen, all at once. If you miss a weekend or two, you might miss something altogether. This weekend, we had a couple of days of the sort referred to in meteorological circles as stinkeroos. Still, if the fruit is ripe, the jam must be made — and […]

It’s high season for Jen’s ever-expanding collection of peonies. These are the most fragrant of all. A surprising contribution to the beauty of spring flowers: fava beans, whose flowers look like irises. Jen looks after them all.

Today we watched Rhinebeck’s quintessential Memorial Day parade from the Lawsons’ front porch. We had Jen’s parents, Erica and Geoff visiting for the weekend, and the Scherrs happened to have rented a house for the weekend about fifteen minutes from us. We felt slightly sheepish about inviting ourselves over to the Lawsons and bringing eleven […]

Jen is her own harbinger of spring, braving a wet, 40 degree day to get the beans started. This weekend we saw Ring-necked Ducks (f/k/a Lesser Scaups) diving in the pond, Herman the bachelor muskrat giving himself a bath nearby, a coyote skulking around the backyard, and a raccoon in the Hoeners’ driveway.

Jen corageously determined that the pond was frozen solid, which made sense given the single-digit temperatures we’ve had over the past few days. While it might be a good day for skating, it’s also a good day for a fire.