One of my most prized possessions is a map that the poet John Ashbery drew for me many years ago on the back of an old business card. This was at the end of a long celebratory dinner — the purpose of which I’ve now forgotten — and a great deal of wine had been consumed. Though almost illegible, the map provides directions to Rodgers Book Barn in the Columbia County town of Hillsdale. “It’s...
There’s nothing like a daylily to remind us that life is both fleeting and beautiful. The flowers of the Hemerocallis — which literally means “day” and “beautiful” in Greek — last only 24 hours. The bright orange flutes of yesterday are withered like spent party balloons today, often drooping from the same flower stalk as the new day’s fresh-faced offering. The center of the flower is called its...
I was raised in the unenlightened days when lettuce came in one variety: iceberg (and this was well before its recent haute cuisine revival). So my first taste of arugula was something of a culinary awakening. It was the summer of 1980, and my future husband and I had been invited to lunch at the home of friends of his in the Berkshires. I have no memory of what else was served, but between the...
This is the time of year when Queen Anne’s Lace flowers in drifts of white across the open fields and along the roadsides of the Berkshires. An immigrant from Europe, this biennial was supposedly named for Queen Anne of Great Britain. The pinpoint of purply red at the center of each white flower is said to represent the droplet of blood left by Queen Anne when she pricked herself making lace...
I thought I’d made my peace with them. It hadn’t been easy. Six years ago, a woodchuck family set up a compound on our property. They burrowed tunnels in the mowing field, behind a rotting log near the compost heap, and (appropriately enough) under the woodpile beside my writing studio. From time to time while I was working, I’d be overcome with the eerie sensation that I was being watched. I’d...
A few years back on an early June night a storm raged through the Berkshires, downing trees and knocking out power. Our elderly weeping willow was sheared nearly in half. A massive tangle of shattered limbs and willow wands sat in a forlorn heap on our front lawn. What remained of the tree looked denuded and vulernable — an amputee still in shock. For years Mike, who cuts our lawn, had...