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It is very cold, even by February, upstateish New York standards. I mean really cold. Not everyone seems to mind.

We had a quiet Christmas holiday, with just the three of us and Jen’s parents. Sarah ably performed her elfly duties, and Daisy found a soup bone in her stocking. Sarah gave Jen these beautiful pressed ginkgo leaves from Strasbourg. She gave her grandfather a pen and notebook, where he can record his inner thoughts. […]

Jen, returning Sunday from her 40th high school reunion, looked in on her garden, which, as has become customary, received about two inches of rain on Saturday. Daisy assumed her post by the garden door.

On Sunday we had a “microburst” — a/k/a a personal tornado — which set down on our farm and laid waste to our population of elderly trees. Poor Jen was out picking berries at the time. The storm came very suddenly and was over in just a few minutes. We tried to return to New […]

Daisy enjoyed what has become an unusual event: a foot of snow. She remains pretty energetic at ten years old.

We had despaired of having any hay this year, given how rainy it’s been — but lo, here is some late October hay. A pair of bluebirds presided over the tedder. The round bales are handsome in the afternoon sun.

Jen has created a beautiful and orderly home for the peonies in her secret garden using only mulch, a few rocks, and several hours of backbreaking labor under punishing heat and humidity. She used the same formula to create this garden in front of the cottage. On Friday, we returned from drinks at Chris Rosekrans’s […]

Winter is not quite done with us yet. We received this scenic dusting overnight, and we are meant to have 13″ of snow on Tuesday. On Saturday we went for a walk in the woods to look for our resident Barred Owl. We didn’t find the owl, but we did encounter two hikers and their […]

I’m not sure snowdrops count as harbingers of spring, since, as their name suggests, they appear in winter. The bee at center bottom looks promising however. Ring-necked Ducks, on the other hand, are reliable harbingers, appearing on the pond for a couple of weeks each early spring. They came early this year. They were so […]

We had our first real snowfall of the season today. It was late in arriving, but very pretty as it came down. Here’s the view this morning from the front door of the cottage. And here’s the view this afternoon from the back door of the house.