I had no idea what was involved in all of it, planting it, caring for it, even just keeping it alive. I knew deer ate yew bushes, cedar trees, prickly holly and, in rough winters, even really prickly roses, but it never occurred to me that they ate tulips or lilacs or the buds off the hundreds of day lilies I would plant along the road, just as they were about to flower. Keep Reading
I suppose I had wanted a garden for some time. But gardening wasn't a childhood obsession like my yearning for a house. I mean, there is an old black and white photograph of me, age six, planting pansies in our garden with my mother. I love the look and especially the smells of gardens. But it wasn’t until I put in my first garden, in the Peace Corps, in Tanzania in the late 1960s, that I developed any real for passion for gardening itself. Keep Reading
In painting and sculpture, artists explore the myriad aspects of the maritime world in “Waterworks: A Marine Show,” a show that opened at the Lyme Art Association on June 14 and runs through August 2 Keep Reading
I had always wanted a house of my own. The grandchild of an architect -- dead long before I was born -- I had always thought I wanted to be an architect as well. All the time I drew houses. Houses down the road. Houses my parents' friends lived in. Houses I saw in books or traveling. Houses I made up. Many were houses I thought I wanted to own. They became, for a time anyway, my house, the house I would live in… until I saw something I liked better. Keep Reading
In what looked to have been the smaller front parlor, the fireplace had been bricked up, a toilet put in where the hearth had been, and a bathtub installed against the end wall. But we found it charming, or I did certainly with its old windows and mantels, splendid random-width oak floorboards. I even thought the old gnarly radiators were charming. Keep Reading
At the bottom of the hill we turned onto Ferry Road, and then as we came around a corner and over a rise, Whalebone Cove opened out in front of us. Mostly it was frozen, but there were still open channels crowded with busy, flapping ducks, numbers of geese landing, seagulls and a pair of swans, heads held high, gliding among them. Keep Reading
“Go away. You're early,” said George. “Go have a look around and come back around sunset.” He shut the door. Not a very auspicious beginning, I thought. But I said to Christian, “let me at least show you where we are,” and we headed back the way we'd come, and onto the road that leads up the east side of the river. Keep Reading
