The weather was not traditionally “Christmas-y” two weeks before the holiday. We had unseasonably warm temperatures leaving only traces of earlier snow spilling into darkened crevices in the woods. Any precipitation fell in drops rather than flakes. We braced ourselves for a green (brown) Christmas. We planned on taking the week of Christmas off, knowing…
Author: Melissa Perley
Solstice
The snow starting to quietly fall yesterday, as if someone flipped a switch. It arrived without a fanfareof great winds, a soft gift, and it continued through the day piling about six inches before dinner. Ipulled on boots after dark and headed out to settle animals for the night. Although Paul had cleared thedriveway with…
Gifts
The trees are strung, the lights are lit. We have wreaths on each outside door and a jumble of sleigh bells swinging from the door handle whenever someone enters the house. December. Every year we host a neighborhood gathering. In Covid, we had everyone outside: we rented a large space heater to warm the garage,…
Gratitude
Yesterday we spent the day transforming the house from fall to winter celebrations. We cut the two Christmas trees that we had tagged in October: a cold, wet drizzle falling, reminding us that it was still November. The dogs stuck their heads out the window as we drove through town, making us look a bit…
Wrapping Up
It is the week of Thanksgiving. Snow is on the ground. Temperatures will plummet to fourteen degrees tomorrow night. I pile wood into the stove and take my place beside it to write: my brain filled with details of Thanksgiving dinner. My hands perpetually smell like the Music garlic we grew. I take delight in…
Change
It is November in Vermont. The in-between, stick season. Autumn: time for long sleeves, hats (the warm, not cute kind) and mittens. However, this past week was in the seventies. I stubbornly continued to dress for pre-winter and, although I did grin and bear it, I admit I perspired. We can’t really call this a…
All Hallows Eve
Muir is sitting next to the front steps. Guided by intuition, he knows I have the ATV key in my front pocket and chores to do I walk past him and he trots along behind me to the lower hay storage. He lies down and looks up as I swing myself onto the seat, start…
Bending
The red and orange leaves are down. The remaining are gold of Beech & Poplar and rust of Oak. While there is an emptiness that arrives with their departure, there is also brilliance as the sun flits through those still hanging in there. The lowly Poplar is the first to leaf out and the last…
Boys On The Field
By the time I am done teaching at six each evening it is heavy dusk. Not quite full-on dark, but getting there. I walked down the road to gather sheep and stood by the garden looking up at a melon sky surrounding a fringe of clouds still lit by a far away sun. As I…
Parenting Older Children
The rain and wind started today, whipping the leaves into autumn confetti. The temperature outside hovered around fifty degrees, not terribly cold by VT standards in October but cold enough to warrant throwing a few sticks into the woodstove to take the chill off. I looked out the kitchen window and could see the sheep…
Moving: The Spookiest Word
Moving. Even typing the word upsets my stomach. We are currently looking at the back side of moving my mother from the home that she and my father were in for twenty years before he died, into an apartment I’m still having moving nightmares. There are only a few things I hate more than moving,…
The Importance Of Impermanence
Listen! The wind is rising, and the air is wild with leaves. We have had our summer evenings, now for October eves. -Humbert Wolfe, (1885-1940) It is the opening weekend of October and we are ablaze. If you don’t see it now- you don’t see it. Paul and I try to save Sunday for projects…
Woolen Mill
We grabbed the three dark bags bulging full with wool. Some that hadn’t found its way into our last shipment to be made into blankets and some from a recent shearing. We’d decided to use this smaller batch to make some specialty yarn from a small Vermont mill that we had heard good things about….
The Other Liquid Gold
Putting sheep into their paddock on September mornings I scan the hillside that rises up behind them. Each day now color creeps across the mountain. Yellow arrives first, looking more like the green leaves are feeling a little “off.” There are teasing splotches of reds and oranges visible through morning fog. I call to Bronte…