Great Outdoors

Ice cream trucks and icebox cakes

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Summers in the 1950s included gleaming white Good Humor trucks whose jingling bells announced that frozen treats had arrived. I’d beg my parents for change and dash to the curb for a creamsicle or toasted almond bar.

Great Outdoors

June and the color yellow

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There is a day in June celebrating yellow, appropriately named Yellow Day. In the psychology of color, yellow is linked to joy, and “the happiest day of the year” was started by psychologist Cliff Arnall to balance Blue Monday, the saddest day of the year, which occurs on the third Monday of January.

Great Outdoors

Spring brings moss, flowers, salads

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I always like to stop and smell the flowers, and I also pet moss. The texture provides a soothing tactile experience. Gazing at an expanse of moss-covered ground is calming as well—an emerald carpet so deeply green you might think of Ireland. Or, somewhat closer to home, the Hoh Rain Forest in the Pacific Northwest.

Bonus Pages

Spring has sprung

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It is the middle of March as I write this and 67 degrees! Weather enthusiasts would call this a false spring yet signs of the season are all around. In the widening circles of soggy brown earth, tree bark is radiating warmth as it absorbs the sunshine and melts the surrounding snow.

Great Outdoors

Spring is a promise

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Two harbingers of spring are the mourning cloak butterfly and the rising sap of oak and maple trees. The mourning cloak is one of several species that overwinter as adults, dark brown, almost black, with a line of iridescent spots and a border of bright yellow.

Great Outdoors

Candy Corn Brownies

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If someone asks what’s your favorite color, most likely brown is not high on the list. Yet for those who love walking in the November forest, the burnt siennas, umbers, chestnuts, taupes, rusts and many related hues offer a earthy warmth to calm the soul.

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 Birdsong has been replaced by the late afternoon droning of insects.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.