nog?

o good grief. is nothing sacred? sugar cookie eggnog? pumpkin? if only because it's a seasonal libation, let egg nog be pure and unadulterated and traditional - with the only flavoring the time-honored hint of nutmeg. okay, and maybe a little brandy.

post thanksgiving

after a heavily techno day of shopping black (and pink!) friday deals online and assessing students' tech projects, it's nice to end the day at the other extreme - on the couch in front of the fireplace listening to the first strains of windham hill christmas music while turkey stock simmers on the woodstove and fills the house with good smells.

the other turkey

along with the fall decorating and the cranberry-orange relish, a new thanksgiving tradition has begun - a yearly hand turkey from the baby girl. i'll save them from one thanksgiving to the next and may eventually add them to the fall decorating cache. i hope it will be a fun tradition for her on a day when there are not many kid-centered activities - and it will be a chance to compare artistic technique from year to year. that said, behold the first offering, traced by grammie and colored by the baby girl. please note that most of the strong coloring is within the traced shape and that the young artist has carefully chosen classic turkey feather colors from her box of 16 crayons! hand turkey #1 @ 17 months. happy thanksgiving!! (don't forget to take the poll in the sidebar ------>)

first snow

it's hard to focus in the dark, in the snow. but i wanted to try to capture it as it came as a surprise. time to go to bed, tonight with the outside light on, so i can watch the season's first flakes drift past the window as i fall to sleep.

thar she blows

day 8 of a bothersome cold and already i have been through two of those cubical boxes of tissues. on my return trip to the pharmacy, where they know me by now, i compare the cube and the rectangle, thinking they are all the same tissues. not so! the rectangle contains 132 tissues, the cube only 60. the tissues in the rectangle are bigger than those in the cube. and the rectangle is more expensive, but not by much. since my tissue holder is for a cube, i wonder if i can take the tissues from the rectangle, fold 'em in half, and stuff them in the empty cube. because at the rate i'm going through tissues, i'll use up those 60 cube tissues by tuesday.

overnight ice

yesterday water at this familiar spot was still and black, the kind of pool that looks to be bottomless. overnight, temperatures dropped sharply and wind picked up. this morning - ice, from one bank to the other. as i watched, oak leaves skittered and twirled across the surface in the wind, the first skaters of the season.

drab saturday

a hydrangea dried beautifully on the plant, its translucent flower petals representing the most color in the landscape on a drizzly grey morning.

the end.

remember those pansies from posts past? just the other morning, i picked a few for a tiny kitchen window vase and marveled at the fact that there were still flowers blooming in northern new england in november. but alas, last night's temperatures were too much for them and they succumbed to the frost. it was time.

lucky numbers

while shutting down for tonight and packing up for tomorrow, i glanced at the display on my cellphone as it powered down - just in time to glimpse a unique sight. by the time i turned the phone back on and retrieved the camera from its zippered case, a minute had passed and i had missed recording the serendipitous moment: 11:11 on 11/11. perhaps i'll catch it on 12/12, shortly after midnight.

the last planting

fifty assorted daffodil bulbs planted in the far corner at the edge of the woods, just in front of the too tall stump. fifty more will go in tomorrow all in a clump and in a spot visible from the windows. daffodils hold such promise in their squat little forms. it makes planting on a chilly wet november day well worth the effort.

november rain

rain in early november brings down the last of the leaves...lilac, beech, some oak. here you can barely see the roof of this summer cottage for all the leaves. very soon, gusty winds from the north will clear the roof and scatter the leaves skyward. fall is drawing to a close.

election day

i voted.
now i am crossing my fingers.

so soon?

doesn't it seem christmas comes earlier and earlier each year?

fifteen years ago early morning sales began the day after thanksgiving. later christmas magazines started appearing on supermarket newsstands around veterans' day. and now this in my inbox today - as well as the first christmas commercial of the season on tv tonight. i expect when i go out later this morning, still chewing my halloween gum, the stores will all be decked out for the holidays. after all, there's only fifty-five shopping days left!

halloween

like my costume?
happy halloween!

riding shotgun

seen sitting in the passenger seat of an suv in a bank parking lot. and look, he's even buckled in. funny the things some adults do when it's time for hallowe'en...

cheesy glasses

here are the drug store cheepos i had to wear for two days instead of my regular wire framed glasses. over the weekend as i cleared brush, a lilac branch snagged and caught my specs as i heaved it out into the woods. it took forever to find those glasses in the brambles and leaves, and, when they were recovered, they were in quite sad condition. so i wore these scratched plastic readers while they were being repaired. and no one even noticed the change. 

forest floor

yes, it's blurry, i know. i was trying to photograph that orange seed pod on the birch branch but had only the lesser camera and, to make matters worse, was without my glasses. still, i like the colors and textures and wanted to post this even though its blog-worthiness is questionable.

goodbye to the gardens

a grey fall saturday is a good day to cut back the gardens and clean them up before snow arrives. pulling and cutting plants, one last round of weeding,  and some on-the-spot divisions of plants make the task last all day. as always there are surprises - the blooming johnny-jump-ups hidden among the dead rubekia, a paper thin chrysalis hanging from dried milkweed, the strong scent of lemon balm as my rake passes over the dead flowers. in the vegetable garden, hidden under the damp vines, i find a huge cucumber that has somehow escaped picking. and on the bean pole, i cut and pocket shriveled brown seed-laden pods that hold the promise of next year's beans. after many trips to empty the wheelbarrow, i end the day with a cup of tea in the adirondack chair, tired but satisfied, as the maples release their leaves with the wind. 

october grasses

not sure how much longer grasses will look this feathery and winsome against the evening sky. this morning we had a killing frost. tonight the forecast is for rain - or possibly snow showers. i have yet to see a flake - and that's fine with me. 

rally cap

and it didn't even work. the red sox lost in game 7 of the alcs. no world series for me. no more baseball until spring. and certainly no joy in beantown tonight. *sob*

frost at dawn

with this week's full harvest moon and a starlit cold overnight, everything this morning was tinged with sparkling frost for a few brief moments before the breaking sunlight melted it all. 

the nice thing about pansies

the first nice thing about pansies is that they come out so early in the spring. well before any of the other annuals arrive, pansies provide a multitude of much welcomed color after the drab months of winter. the second nice thing about pansies is that, after they have gotten leggy and sad-looking in the heat of summer, as the days cool and fall arrives they stage a comeback that lasts until frost. and the last nice thing about pansies is the seed pod. in that short period after the fat pod splits in three and before the wind or rain ensues, the seeds wait all lined up in perfectly lovely little rows. Observe...

autumn in new england

because you can only blog so many foliage pictures before your readership begins to roll their eyes and curse you under their collective breath and since it is once again a totally spectacular new england sunday, i offer you this autumn montage with the vow that this is the end of foliage season as far as serendipitous is concerned. really. i promise.

g(r)azing

after a poor start to the season, fall foliage is beyond breathtaking this weekend. here i pulled over to the side of the back road i was following to marvel in the colors and patterns and textures of the trees on the hillsides. only after moving beyond the awe and beauty of it all did it occur on me what a great shot this might make - cows and all. 

short & sweet

the first carrot from the garden. neither underdeveloped nor stunted,  it's a variety that grows short and fat as it matures and is good for heavier garden soils like ours. other years' attempts have yielded carrots that were puny and thin, hardly more than orange roots. planting this kind was a carrot coup. i sure hope helen's reading this.

cookies

these toll house wannabes represent the most productive thing i have done in an entire week's time. don't be impressed or anything. they were from a ready to bake, ready to expire package i keep on the refrigerator door in case guests show up. but it sure felt good to finally accomplish something, even if it was a little easy baking.

inside looking out

maple leaves on the hill in back just after the rain. taken through the back window - a lucky shot.

missed

this boggy spot by the side of the road is where i glimpsed this morning, with my peripheral vision, a great blue heron standing in the mist in the shallow water. alas it was too late to turn the car around and, by the time i came back later in the day, the mist was, of course, long gone, taking the great blue with it.

to the orchard

off to the apple orchard this fine late summer day where there were plenty of opportunities for photos in great light, like these pumpkins in an old mail wagon.

tuesdays with money

a while back i hit a landmark birthday - a big one. i'm ashamed to admit i was pretty depressed by it. so in an effort to curb this feeling, i've taken to seeking out the positive aspects that accompany this decline in years. and here's an ongoing one: tuesday is senior day at the drugstore. so i make my list and only shop there on tuesdays. i make sure the twenty-something behind the counter scans my key ring fob. and see the savings? since i started tallying it, i've gotten discounts amounting to around $14. maybe i'll save up for a unicycle.

early darkness

it seems far too soon, but day by day we're drawing closer to the equinox, that time of equal hours of light and dark. candles burn earlier these nights like this windowsill light, lit after the supper dishes were done and casting its glow on the overgrown summer impatiens in the window box beyond.

tomato

"a good ripe tomato stands out in the garden like a flag."
-edie clark, the view from mary's farm.

september corn

every time i stop at the local farm stand for the evening's produce, there's another sign of fall there. pumpkins one day, mums the next, squash, asters. and a dwindling supply of corn.

sunset silhouette

one last summertime hurrah this weekend at the ocean with the girl and the baby girl, who appears to love sand and rocks and ocean walks just as much as i do

crayola moon

this evening i had my students do a quick drawing to support a math concept. in an attempt to model risk-taking behaviors, i drew too. the sky object i chose to draw was a crescent moon - but we were sharing crayons and the yellow was clear across the room. i settled for the orange, muttering - an orange crescent moon, an unlikely sight. so imagine my delight when, driving home in the dark, i saw the same crescent hanging in the western sky in all its orange glory. i scrambled for the camera but could not capture the moon. so, for the purposes of this posting, you'll have to be satisfied with the image of its crayola counterpart.

the evolution of baby shoes

in the foreground, the dainty soft soled, leather tie shoe that belonged to the girl when she was tiny. behind it, the baby girl's first serious footwear. two toned and sturdy, with thick soles imprinted with words - run, smile, jump, dance! a rough and tumble shoe, fastened with the velcro that the baby girl loves to rip open and close over and over and over again.

walking the beach

other than me, the only things moving on the beach this morning were these birds. how wonderful to have such a vast expanse of sand and sea virtually to myself.

in the sand

found on a small sandbar, this tiny hole with tinier rocks clustered tightly inside. a gift from the sea for my camera lens.

long lost last weekend

off to the ocean, this time for a few days only. i'll see the sea, smell the salt and feel the sun. and make a memory to sustain me through another cold and snowy new england winter. this daylily has nothing to do with that - or with anything for that matter. i just like the way you can almost see the texture of the flower petals.

first day

today i begin my twenty-sixth year as a teacher of small children.
twenty five years of service...

the summer that wasn't

for all intents and purposes, summer is over. it was an uncommonly short hiatus from school, fraught with medical issues, family concerns, cancelled plans, and no time by the ocean. add to that the rainy, damp days and this summer was almost a bust. but now on to the glorious days of fall, with crisp, clear days and chill starlit nights - and the fervent hope that summer does not try to return in its place.

jewelweed

growing wild on the outskirts of the yard, this is one of my favorite of the "roadsidea" species. a late summer bloomer, it's aptly named since its flower gleams like an orange jewel in a profusion of green leaves. now, see those elongated fat seed pods? the slightest touch will abruptly burst the pod open - pop! - and send tiny wet seeds spitting out in all directions. find some and try it yourself. it's great fun - even better than popping bubble wrap!

toadstool

look! living proof of the rainy and damp summer it has been. this mushroom was enormous, glowing white-yellow by the side of the road amongst the greens and browns of the underbrush. it was tall and perfect and it looked like something from a storybook. like it should have fairies living under it or sprites dancing around it in the dew.

rain, rain...

go away.
please.

real live riddle

why did the chicken (and the guinea hen) cross the road?

what do you think?

a dead moth

found on the sidewalk under a maple in a nearby city. it was beautiful and it was huge! (click on the picture to make it big - it's on toilet tissue, see?) i really wanted to keep it and bring it to school, but a local shopkeeper became so excited when i shared it that i let her have it. her young son collects insects and aspires to become an entomologist. so i took this photo, then sent the moth to him with my email address. i want him to identify it. and i want to know he's as impressed with it as i was.

monarda

aka bee balm, tossed up on the back hill years ago while uprooting a now defunct herb garden. rather raggedy flowers sit atop too-thick stems that are sturdy and square as most mints are, and spread quickly as most mints do. as their common name suggests, these flowers attract bees - but they attract hummingbirds as well. so a better name for the plant might be hummingbird balm. say that three times fast. it sounds as funny as the flowers look.

nap time

this is the fan on the ceiling of the baby girl's nursery. directly under it, next to the crib, is where i dozed on the carpet this afternoon, waiting impatiently for the baby girl to wake from her nap so we could get back to the serious business of playing. ring-around-a-rosie, wooden puzzles, stacking cups, soft blocks, board books, balls - all those toys and playthings that grammies just love.

grey morning, grey feather

early this morning, as the tea water boiled, i ventured into the murky dampness that has been prevalent these weeks, searching for a photo. the best i could do: this turkey feather adorning a hanging plant.