Spring on Wheels
Spring is on its way! Being trucked in specially at the Carrot Barn in Schoharie, NY. I went there for a welcome breath of spring in this month of endless cold. In their vast greenhouse, the air is moist and warm, and there’s a promise of flowers to come. It has to warm up sooner or later! By the way, if you’re looking for a holiday plant as a gift or whatever, think about daffodils. Don’t buy tulips unless you enjoy battling mice and chipmunks–tulip bulbs apparently are very sweet (people used to eat them, sugared.) Daffodils may be the one species of plant on the...
Read MoreBurdock: Hooked Like Velcro
One day in 1941, a Swiss scientist was walking his dog, and noticed with annoyance, like so many other dog-walkers before and since, that his pet had blundered into the tall prickly plant called burdock. And as he was picking the infernal little hooked seeds out of the dog’s fur, he had a bright idea. What if this idea–sharp curved hooks binding two things–was used by people? It took him years to get anyone to take the idea seriously, and even longer to develop a model that would work–not surprisingly, since he made his first attempts out of cotton. But finally he...
Read MoreThe Crow Show
They start moving as the sun begins to go down. The first birds are so far away they look like grains of pepper against the gray sky. The crows are heading into Amsterdam for their nightly jamboree. Amsterdam, NY, like many cities and towns, is used by crows–mobs of crows–for their nightly roosting spot. And I’ve been wondering, just exactly how many crows are there? The other day my husband and I decided to find out. Just before sunset, we drove to the Riverfront Mall and parked in the parking garage, facing south with a good view of the river. We had a front row seat for the...
Read MoreStone on Stone
A few cold spring days at the Highlights Foundation at Boyds Mills, PA, for a writers’ workshop. A wonderful opportunity to learn and write. Recently the Highlights Foundation added a new building, using part of the foundations of an old barn. The new space is a cozy yet roomy classroom and meeting place on the inside. On the outside it’s a maze of intricate stonework. The lichened and weathered rocks of the old barn foundation support the newer stones. Enormous chunks of bluestone pave the classroom, the porch, even the bathrooms. The walls are mosaics of rough-hewn stones, each...
Read MoreSacred Tree
One morning in Sri Lanka. I happened to get up early, and wandered out of the hotel to see what was going on. It was in the small city of Dambulla, and our hotel was a few hundred yards away from the main road. At the crossroads, I came across what I at first thought was a park of some sort. Then I realized it was a temple. And the heart of the temple was a tree. A magnificent tree, an ancient tree. A double set of temple walls surrounded and protected it. You have to take off your shoes to approach the holy tree. The temple is right in the mainstream of life, a few feet away from honking...
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