This past week marked the arrival of heavy frosts in the morning followed by a cold north wind blowing most of the day. The wind was strong enough to dislodge even the stubbornest of oak leaves that were left on the nearby trees. Our dock is in a shallow area of the lake and so it one of the first sections to ice up. Just the other day, I walked down the steps, pushed my kayak off the dock and instead of hearing the soft splash of the hull hitting the water, I was greeted wi

I was caught off guard the other day by the sudden quietness. I had headed outside, hoping to find a few late season tasks to keep me in the yard for a bit. Time spent with my hands in the soil and amongst the plants and little critters is more precious everyday as our little corner of the world tilts further and further away from the sun. As I set about to begin work, it was clear that something was missing. Where was all the chatter that normally surrounded me? The soft buz

​​Sandra Tsing Loh does a great segment on NPR's Morning Edition, The Loh Down on Science. Her two minute programs, cover a variety of science topics and are usually both humorous and informative. One of this week's programs, Butterflies Lost written by Bahareh Sorouri, caught my attention. This piece focused on how monarchs raised by humans indoors have difficulty navigating their way south. It seems reasonable to think that locating monarch caterpillars and then bringing t

At the risk of appearing to be a Robin Wall Kimmerer groupie due to two previous references to her book Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants (July 12 & September 13 blogs), I am giving this marvelous book one last mention. The chapter from this book that has stayed with me the most is Learning the Grammar of Animacy. In this chapter, Kimmerer discusses how she discovered the limiting nature of the English language and scient

Over the course of this year, I have been helping with a collaborative project between Highstead and The Hickories to establish local genotype, native wildflower plant populations that will be utilized for seed production. (For an explanation of genotypes read my March 1 blog.) How did this come about? Highstead staff collected seed from local landscapes last fall and this past spring they germinated seven different native wildflower plants in their greenhouse. The small seed

On the 23rd of this month the autumnal equinox will occur. This is the day when the number of daylight hours is equal to the number of hours of darkness. After the equinox, our daylight hours here in the northeast will continue to shorten until we reach the winter solstice in December. Many people lament the arrival of the equinox and the ensuing shortening days, but I don't. Although I will miss days filled with hours and hours of sun and working our gardens, I do welcome t

Shortening days characterized by falling leaves and chilly, dew-drenched mornings that transform into dry, clear afternoons foretell of coming frosts and freezes. Now is the time to gather up any remaining herbs that I hope to keep for the winter. Once the morning breezes and warming sun dry them fully, I head out and begin to harvest. Over the years, I have learned from my mistakes and now I work methodically from one plant to another, carefully labeling each bunch to avoid

When we purchased our house in Connecticut it already had a split rail fence installed around the front and side edges of the property. It is an unobtrusive fence that blends in rather nicely to the landscape, but it is still a fence, a line of demarcation. What is it with humans and our need to draw lines both visible and invisible around places and things? Do we honestly think that by constructing fences, walls and geographic boundaries that we can separate ourselves from t

Like most folks, we take trips periodically. In fact, we will be hitting the road in just a few weeks. Even though we will be going back to a few places that we have visited before, I am going to have to pull out some maps. Yes, I still use folded paper maps as I find it gives me a better perspective of the lay of the land and a better sense of where I have been and where I am going. I know the general geography, but I could never find my way to a specific beach, cove or hiki

Recently, I have been thinking about galleries, but not the ones that contain art. I have been pondering the "gallery" of our lives and how we curate it by choosing what we fill it with including the foods we enjoy eating, the genre of books we read, the clothes we like to wear, the news we ingest and so on. I first started thinking about this a few days ago while spending some time with some nice folks who happen to curate their lives very differently than I do. Theirs are

This past week seemed to be characterized by all of life's stages with butterflies laying eggs, caterpillars being born and the death of a great blue heron in the lake right by our dock. The heron appeared to have simply died on the spot, while standing in water up to its knees. The body was almost completely intact except for its internal organs and a bit of flesh missing from one leg. My best guess is that a snapping turtle attacked it, but who knows. I pulled it up onto o

This week's musings are in celebration of Arbor Day, which is today! This spring, as in years past, I have been on a mission to witness the emergence of baby tree leaves. It should be an easy task, but somehow it never is. Once I notice buds swelling and the blossoms bursting forth, I know that I need to start checking the branch tips several times a day. Even with this heightened awareness and frequent scanning of the tree tops, somehow I still miss the arrival of the leav

The books on my bookshelves get shuffled around periodically, especially after I have gone to a book sale and returned home with a few treasures. Placing the new acquisitions on my shelves generally requires a bit of reorganizing and sometimes even the removal and donation of one or two of my existing books. All of my books are organized by shelf with each one dedicated to a different category such as poetry, trees or nature study. Once the new books are tucked into their ne