“I lost big trees in the recent wind,” I tell the Finger Lakes Land Trust steward who answers my call. “A mature oak, a sugar maple, a big hickory, and a few red maples. Many ash are broken and badly wounded and they’re already struggling to survive. A few big white pines broke off at […]
In 2010, eighteen months after my husband died, I longed for relief from constant sorrow, so joined three friends for an adventure to Gasparilla Island, Florida. Instead of sunshine and warmth, we faced unusually cold, cloudy weather, a little too much like home in Western New York. The wind off the Gulf pierced my winter […]
September I’ve had dogs all my life, so I should know how to raise them. The God Pan brought me a litter of six black pups and said they could be trained to hunt lions. I chose the one that crawled on my lap and stayed to snuggle. A black female with a white streak […]
“I hear a baby calling,” I said to my husband Vic in 1970. After a day at Big Basin Redwoods State Park, we were driving toward the tiny stucco house we rented near a walnut orchard and chrysanthemum farm. My passion for a child had risen in the redwood grove. “I’m ready,” Vic said. I […]
It won’t be long before the Earth is tinged with color in the snowy land where I live. In these cold dark days, it helps to remember Nature is preparing for a new season. Through the winter, the oak stores the knowledge needed to make a massive tree in a tiny acorn. Soon it will […]
The sky darkened from dusk to inky blue. Disco the sweet black pup became an exhausted brat jumping on my old dog Willow, biting at the leash when she went out for a last pee, mad with frantic energy. I knew the antidote. I picked up her squirmy body, held her close, lay on the […]
This ancient prayer of Thanksgiving comes from the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) people. The prayer is used to give thanks, bless gatherings, and greet the day. I plan to read it at a Thanksgiving gathering this year and hope it touches your heart as much as it touches mine. *** The People Today we have gathered and […]