Living and gardening in an older Hudson Valley home
The most strenuous and difficult projects are often the most rewarding. I know this, but I still agonize over them. I wonder – what if I can’t complete the task or what if it doesn’t turn out the way I expected. Rarely am I satisfied with my work, so the later concern is always topmost […]
The soothsayer in William Shakespeare’s Julius Ceasar ominously warns, “beware the Ides of March.” For me the saying should be, “beware the winds of March.” As long as I can remember, March is always a windy month. This past Monday, March 7, we had a terrific windstorm. I wasn’t home, so I missed the storm. […]
Winter is for indoor projects. After cleaning, painting and papering most of the house, there was still one room untouched. The original house plans show an unfinished room over the garage. At some point this room was finished with a connecting door to the nursery, making it ostensibly a bedroom for an au pair. It […]
Thanksgiving is about the feast and the time-honored traditions and recipes that somehow relate back to the early pilgrims. This is our interpretation of Thanksgiving dinner. We had a special dinner for two with all the trimmings! I remember many wonderful Thanksgiving dinners over the years. When I was a child, my mother used a […]
Autumn leaves take the spotlight in the Hudson Valley this time of year. Miraculous displays of red, yellow, gold and brown provided stunning vistas in all directions and surprises of color around every bend and corner. It was truly a gorgeous season. Rains in the past week have caused most of the leaves to fall, […]
Bread week, of the current season of The Great British Baking Show, featured a signature challenge of focaccia bread. A signature challenge is one where the bakers are asked in advance to take a traditional food item and give it their own twist. Of course the signature challenge was won by an Italian, Giuseppe, who […]
It is nearly November and still the garden is yielding vegetables. While the number of things we are gathering from the garden is small in comparison to the bounty of late summer we are enjoying those few things still available. Small black tomatoes, rosemary, sage, basil, chives and hot peppers have gone into seasoning wonderful […]
Now that autumn has begun in earnest, it is time for me to reflect back on this year’s vegetable garden. It was an unusual summer. We had tremendous amounts of rain throughout the summer. My recent experience is that July and August are drier. Last year we needed to water the garden every day. This […]
After nearly three years of not getting on a plane and almost no travel, I went to Germany. When you put this into the context that I had some years where I was traveling at least 75% of each year, to not go anywhere was…..a luxury! A luxury I had some trepidation of giving up. […]
Dear friends from Colorado, Gayle and Bruce, stopped by for lunch on Sunday. An out of the way stop on their journey home from a Saab convention in Albany, NY. I have never owned or even driven a Saab so I do not understand the appeal of the Swedish car, but Saab enthusiasts revere the […]
