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We have planted a series of rather substantial Norway Spruce trees in an effort to screen out the hated solar collector of our neighbor to the west which, owing to its odious nature, has not previously been featured on this web site. Nine trees have been installed so far, and we may keep going.

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.

The frost has held off, so we’ve been able to harvest plenty of peppers with which to make hot sauce. In the background you can see a colander full of Bogmere Pippins, gathered by Jen. They are tasty, if perhaps unsightly. In less cheery news, marauding deer laid waste to our new donut peach tree, […]

Skies are blue and the grass is high – it must be summertime. Jen inspected our nano-orchard, which appears poised to produce as many as four apples this season. Rather than rely on our domestic fruit production, she set out to pick wild black raspberries. The brambles provided, ensuring we will have jam this summer.

Here’s a before-and-after look at our back yard from the PondCam. I’m glad no one was using the tree swing! This is after the after picture. Sigh.

This handsome Baltimore Oriole stopped by to inspect our new copper beech tree this afternoon. Presumably having found things satisfactory, it flew over to look in on one of our new sugar maples. The trees seem to be growing and healthy.

Our cultivated fruit production over the years has been modest, consisting mostly of peaches from the two trees we gave Jen for Mother’s Day in 2012, one of which gave up the ghost a couple of years ago. The two Macoun apple trees we planted have never produced any apples because they are the same […]

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.

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.