Great Outdoors
Fall brings leaf-peepers and pumpkins!
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Each September we try to predict the intensity of the peak autumnal display. It’s more than a coin toss, as foliage reports take rainfall, sunshine and temperature into consideration.
Great Outdoors
Granby summers are bountiful
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Six months from now, deep in a January freeze, it will be hard to recall these shining summer days. Birdsong has been replaced by the late afternoon droning of insects. Early summer flowers start to fade and goldenrods and asters brighten the roadside. The harvest season is in high gear with all manner of ripe fruits and vegetables in abundance at local farmstands.
Bonus Pages
The wrens return
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Two years ago, I purchased a bird house thinking how lovely it would look in my tiny garden. I wasn’t sure if birds would ever nest in it, but I followed online instructions on how and where to situate it and a few weeks later I saw twigs sticking out from under the roof. We had a nest in progress—a wren! She’s back this year and another nest was built.
Great Outdoors
Of hummingbirds, hawk moths and ephemerals
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Years ago, I received a phone call from Melissa, my cousin in Philadelphia. It was early May and she wanted to know about a baby hummingbird hovering over a small patch of flowers. After 27 years of tending to my hillside garden in Vermont, I knew the “baby” was actually a hawk moth, also known as sphinx moth.
Great Outdoors
Scents and salamanders, the early signs of spring
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For me the scent-sational start of spring is the smell of the rich, damp forest floor awakening. It’s actually geosmin, a Greek word meaning earth and smell, a soil-based compound produced by bacteria and blue-green algae. I take deep breaths to revitalize my winter-weary senses.
Great Outdoors
Bird Song and Maple, Spring 2025
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It was early February, just after a light, fluffy snowfall, but I was already thinking spring! Two of my favorite late-winter events triggered such sunny thoughts.
Great Outdoors
Warm hearts and Linzer tarts
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An old adage proclaims, “As the days lengthen so the cold strengthens,” though the month of February features a holiday heart warmer—Valentine’s Day!
Bake cookies for gifts this holiday
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Northern Connecticut had an excellent acorn mast year. Mast describes the acorns produced by oaks and other nut bearing trees in an unusually large number of acorns (or “mast”) as part of an irregular cycle.