by Carole Duff | Aug 13, 2018 | Faith, Nature, Writing and Reading |
Torrential rain coursed the down mountain yesterday afternoon here at Vanaprastha, creating rivulets along the driveway. This morning, I went out to assess the damage and rake gravel into the erosive paths. Every few years, we hire our landscaper to grade and...
by Carole Duff | Aug 6, 2018 | Faith, Nature, Writing and Reading |
Encouraged by last week’s rain, my square-foot garden’s squash, tomatoes, and cucumbers leaped beyond the confines of their boxes—as you can see. All other vegetation here at Vanaprastha grew happily, too, including weeds. Thus, in the light of today’s sunshine,...
by Carole Duff | Jul 30, 2018 | Faith, Nature |
Last Saturday afternoon, on my way down the mountain to fetch the mail, I noticed a black swallowtail (Papilionidae) sipping nectar from cardinal flowers blooming on the slope beside the upper driveway. The bright red trumpet-shaped blossoms of lobelia cardinalis,...
by Carole Duff | Jul 16, 2018 | Dogs & Other Creatures, Family, Local or Human Interest |
Heathcliff and Freya barked and whined in excitement. “As soon as you sit down, we’ll let the dogs out of our bedroom to greet you,” Keith and I said to our family houseguests. My daughter sat on the sofa, holding her thirteen-month-old daughter in her lap. Heathcliff...
by Carole Duff | Jul 9, 2018 | Faith, Nature, Writing and Reading |
Juxtaposition: the placement of two or more things side by side. This morning, along the meadow edge, I noticed a lone daylily in bloom, its buds somehow missed by the deer. What a blessing, I said to myself, and perhaps more blossoms to come if the deer don’t...
by Carole Duff | Jul 2, 2018 | Dogs & Other Creatures, Local or Human Interest, Writing and Reading |
Today is shower day for Heathcliff and Freya—and you know from this post that bathing is not their favorite activity. Here, drying on the deck, they might play bitey-face or snooze. If they hear a vehicle on the mountain road, their whines, yips, and barks alert us,...
