Lilac time is here now ... These are the few evenings in a year when I can sit on the front steps in the evening and feel petals blow against my shoulder.
Read articleSpring is a beautiful season in the hills — warm days bring color and scent and energy, from maple sugaring and early wildflowers to daffodil festivals and baby animals.
What if we thought about what we want to feel in a garden? — #berkshireweekend
This is the transforming time, every year. We come to a day or two in May when every bare budding twig seems to open all at once ...
Read articleKids and lambs meet at the Shaker Village
The barn is different on a spring night. Calves lie in the hay like deer in the undergrowth. Lambs sleep on their mother’s backs, and sometimes a chicken will join them for the warmth. ...
Read articleHave you ever held a newborn lamb?
It's 40 degrees and raining, salamander weather, and I'd like to be slopping around in the glorious, raw New England spring.
Read articleWhat hatches from an Easter egg?
What hatches from an Easter egg? Looking through some old stories, I found a question I’d asked ten years ago in my Berkshires Week days ...
Read articleA shift is beginning toward spring
The music shifts from one song to the next, teasing and lonely, angry, intimate and laughing. Rosi and Brian Amador have been singing together for 30 years, and you can feel it.
Read articleHere comes the sun (June 2 newsletter)
Take a deep breath everyone. We’re standing on the edge of summer. In another week or two we’ll have sculpture shows opening and outdoor plays in the theaters. Already, live concerts are starting up in the grass.
Read articleIt’s a beautiful morning — I think I’ll go outside for awhile — #berkshireweekend
The earth felt cool and damp, and the sun was warm on the church steps, and I was holding a clump of bergamot in my arms. The Hilltown Seed Savers held a plant swap ...
Read articleHilltop Orchards transforms in spring
From the top of the hill here, the mountains show on the horizon in receding waves, and in the high meadow the trees stretch away in long rows against the sky. They are all in bloom.
Read articleWhy is a rhinoceros like a writing desk? (May 14 newsletter)
The rhinoceros is arresting — 600 pounds of bronze standing four-square at the door. French artists and writers seem fascinated by rhinos half a century ago, and François-Xavier Lalanne cast this one into a life-sized sculpture.
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