Robins are everywhere this year. They’re common birds here, but there seem to be more of them than usual. One mother robin has hatched her chicks in a nest high in the fork of a birch tree outside my second-floor window: at least twenty feet in the air. It’s a good spot for protecting them from predators. Skunks couldn’t climb
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As May ends, the clematis have begun to bloom. The dark purple blooms are on a vine that has twined around an old light post in front of the house each summer for at least nineteen years. It was here the first summer after I arrived, and has returned annually, though I’ve cut it to the ground each year. The
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Alice Hoffman’s newest book, The Red Garden, was perfect for dipping into over a chilly spring weekend when rain interrupted outdoor tasks. The book’s fourteen independent but interrelated stories are set in the fictional town of Blackwell (originally called Bearsville), Massachusetts, somewhere in the Berkshires. It follows the town’s founder, the enterprising and restless Hallie Bradley, and her descendants, from
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