Just outside the picture window nearest to my desk, a daylily planted a month or so ago is blooming. This variety keeps multiple blooms that last longer than the name implies. Uninvited but welcomed is a tiny daisy, a wildflower, which sprouted up in the middle of the daylily. It has white petals and a yellow button in its center. There are hundreds of these daisies growing along the hill heading down to Pancho’s Pond. We don't mow that hill, save for a swath creating a path down to the shop/gym. I will mow the hill after the first frost this fall turns the grass brown, and the flowers have wilted.
I...
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Things are beginning to pick up out here at Three Geese Farm. A major landscaping project is coming to an end. A local landscaper who works solo (message me for his contact information) has done the bulk of the work — first transplanting roses that dominated the front and east side of the house and creating a stone walkway in its place. People can actually get to the front door now without walking through the grass. Three different walkways in the backyard break up a boring rectangle of grass. At his suggestion, we have added a variety of plants suitable for our climate — azaleas, purple sage,...
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Irene goodnight, Irene goodnight
Goodnight Irene, Goodnight Irene
I’ll see you in my dreams
Huttie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter
Since I first heard this song as a child, I have never listened to it without thinking of Aunt Irene, one of my late mother’s younger sisters. Irene Kinosh was a constant presence in my childhood, growing up in New Hampshire. She was kind and funny, someone who delighted in her family, and loved the Red Sox. Later in life, after moving to Bristol, Connecticut, she became an avid fan of the UConn Huskies women’s basketball team as well.
My mother had five...
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Three years ago, at Easter, my Beautiful Mystery Companion and I sat down to a fancy lunch fashioned from frozen Christmas dinner leftovers. We propped an iPhone against the table’s centerpiece and watched famed tenor Andrea Bocelli perform Music for Hope along with an organist, in an empty cathedral in Milan, Italy. The streets were largely empty as well, in Milan and across the world. The COVID-19 pandemic had forced much of the world to shut down, including us, of course. We were fortunate enough to be able to work from home, to order groceries picked up curbside, to be sequestered in a beautiful...
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