With so many things in a frenzy of bloom it’s not hard to feel the excitement of spring and the promise of warmer weather and all that it brings. Despite the incessant blight that has diminished our dogwood trees (Cornus), it’s hard not to notice their beautiful bloom, even on trees that seem noticeably stressed. There’s something particularly nice about the horizontal petals of the bloom that drink up the sunlight and carry a piece of the morning through the entire day. (more…)

And so it begins. In almost all places in New England spring emerges as April comes to a close. The degree and intensity varies. I’m sure the hills of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine are still draped in snow bank. But even these will feel the gentle stir of thaw on one of these unusually warm early spring days. Speaking of degrees…temperatures were in the eighties today…too warm for April but enjoyable nonetheless. A day spent getting the gardens ready. (more…)

Whether March will leave like a lamb is yet to be seen; but the fact that it arrived with something of a roar this year is beyond question. The first weekend of March in southern New England brought spring-like temperatures reaching nearly sixty degrees across an unsettled weather system that quickly transformed, with a typically cosmic sense of humor, to one of the year’s biggest storms. It carried across its broad leonine shoulders almost a foot of snow in some locales, cancelling school and most other activities that involved the movement of human beings and vehicles across the landscape; putting our thoughts of spring on the back burner. (more…)

There is hope. It’s barely noticeable but the daylight of each  twenty-four hour period gets about two minutes longer. There is, more often than not, the amber haze of a lingering sunset as we sit down for supper where only weeks ago the windows were opaque with darkness. This has been an old fashioned New England winter with plenty of snow and some frigid temperatures. As I write this morning, it’s registering below zero. Outside the window, all the plants are coated in white and the Blue Atlas Cedar has never looked more beautiful, with its narrow, outreaching, descending branches and the upright silver needles embracing snow and ice pronouncing its extraordinary character. (more…)