I like the first cup of coffee in the morning.
I like t-shirt sheets.
I like the Boston Red Sox.
I like Bob Dylan’s music.
I like the Beatles, too. And John Prine. I love John Prine.
I like Annie Dillard’s essay, living like weasels.
I like the sound of snow at 15 below.
I like Elmore Mountain glittering the way it looks to me on the way to work in January from up on West Hill, or actually by then it is probably Town Hill.
I like encountering wild things in wild places; I like the way we stop time when we pause and take each other in. Continue reading
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HLF’s Extremely Good Vermont Squash/Apple Soup
It’s that time of year…
Ingredients:
A stick of butter
A sort of large sweet onion
2 pretty-good-size butternut squash
A little olive oil
2 granny smith apples
Some maple syrup (dark amber is best)
A little bottle of cider (a pint is more than enough)
A quart of stock (vegetable or chicken – not beef)
Salt, nutmeg and ginger & fresh sage
1 cup heavy cream (or half n half)
(Some like cloves or cinnamon, but I don’t.)
Duct tape. Continue reading
Yard Sale!
Funny: It feels like I am making money.
Items have their seasons: battered paperback copies of Steig Larsson’s two published thrillers (“Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and “The Girl who Played With Fire”) move briskly this year; the third in his trilogy is due later this summer. Other items self-deposit like glacial till — crockery, dusty silk flower ornaments, children’s games — creeping passivley and persistently, year after year, back and forth between the households lining these highways.
Our Morning Routine
Mmmm...Swamp water!
Just about every morning Tucker & I leave the house around 8:15 or so and hike the half-mile trail through woods and up the hill to my parents’ for a cup of coffee and a breakfast visit. On the way we pass the frog pond, where Tucker rousts the natives and stomps around in the tall grass for a bit.
At the top of the hill I take his leash off and he makes two or three rounds all the way to the house and back to me while I slog up past the veggie garden, the raspberry patch, the pool and the back/front lawn. He has short little legs, but covers more ground in less time than I can, by orders of magnitude.
Once inside, he breaks straight for the living toom. He doesn’t even bother with the formality of greeting anyone who might be sitting just inside the kitchen door. He bolts for the big plate glass window before my dad’s armchair, and takes up his sentinel post on lookout for doves, chipmunks, robins, juncos, hummingbirds or whatever might be out there. He clocks in at various positions along the window by pressing his nose prints into the glass.
Tucker watches for doves, chipmunks, robins and juncos.
This is Tucker’s idea of heaven.
First [Spring] Day…
It was hot enough today to fill Tucker's wading pool for the first time. Too hot to kayak.
I’ve been here a week now. A week and change. I’m starting to feel like life here is normal life. I’m starting to not-notice things like what time it is, half-way through the morning. It’s been hot today — easily into the 80s, maybe even 90. Summer is officially about a month away. Unofficially, it starts early next week — the Memorial Day holiday weekend. Yard Sale Weekend. 
We’re having a yard sale too this weekend. My neighbors and I. We’re making signs, cleaning house, tagging stuff, telling everyone we know. It’s a good little project for me — a change of pace [not!] from what I’ve been doing lately. Packing, moving, finishing up — I know teachers have a great job, a job on terms 90% of the world would kill for, but you know it’s not perfect when one of the best things about it is the amount of time you don’t have to spend there. Continue reading
This Day As-Is 