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The grass is rising high and the fences are sinking low at the farm these days. This weekend, we celebrated Memorial Day.  Rhinebeck has a real small-town parade, which Sarah was eligible to march in by virtue of her membership on the softball team. All people in uniform are welcome. Sarah was thrilled to have […]

On Saturday, we visited the Northern Dutchess Botanical Gardens to buy a few plants for the garden. We got the essentials: peppers (bell and poblano); lettuce (oak leaf, red sails, and red romaine); arugula; peas (snow and sugar-snap); soybeans; broccoli; strawberries (everbearing, Junebearing and all-star); herbs (green and purple basil, Italian parsley, and lemon verbena); flowers (coneflowers […]

On Saturday, Sarah played first base in her first softball game, against Red Hook. Rhinebeck could have fielded 15 players, but the Red Hook coaches — rather churlishly, in my opinion — allowed only nine of them on the field at a time. Some of the Red Hook girls seemed quite a bit older. In […]

We had a great Mothers’ Day weekend at the farm, with lots of lilacs starting to bloom, and plenty of gardening by Jen. If the house appears a little odd … … it’s because we’re having it painted, and it looks a bit naked without its shutters. In addition to lilacs, we gathered lots of […]

  We had plenty of sunshine this weekend, enjoyed by what we can only hope is a large proportion of our pond’s turtles. The squirrels — all of whom are as fat as house cats — checked out the new growth. The birds also seemed to enjoy the fine spring weather.  Here is a mourning […]

Some deer seem to have made it through the winter. This heron stopped by the pond, although, by taking its picture, I scared off scaups, mallards and, less regrettably, Canada geese. Sarah was mostly too cool for scootering. But she was willing to help her mom clear out the old berry canes, making room for […]

Sarah and her friend Michaela played with sticks before heading out to Kids’ Night Out at Bard. Herman the muskrat prowled about, looking for material for his lodge. He is far more photogenic in the water than out of it. A mallard sits pondside, watching the sun set.

We returned to the farm after a month away to find many harbingers of spring. Uncharacteristically negligent deer left us a single crocus, which is enjoying a visit from a bee. We had a visit from some scaups, as well as a pair of mallards (not pictured). We found wild hyacinths … … and a […]

Last year, we were surveying the damage from one of our annual 30-year ice storms. This year, however, we are leaving for Florida.  Sarah is very excited — she woke me up at 5:30 this morning to ask why it was still dark. It looks like we’ll have pretty good weather!

Sadly, we again have only a PondCam™ image to post, as we are stuck in New York.  There isn’t much obvious change from last week, so perhaps we’re not missing anything important. Equally sad is the fact that Sarah has to do her piano homework on a mid-1980’s Casiotone.