In looking toward holidays or vacations my tendency is to become Rockwellian. I prepare with zeal for the ideal. Months ahead of the vacation walking down long isles in stores I toss small boxes of sparklers, hard packs of playing cards, twelve packs of lime seltzer, chunky bars of chocolate and fancy gin into my…
Author: Melissa Perley
Barbara
Summer arrived officially with the Solstice although we had been enjoying the warmer temperatures for several weeks. After two years of pretty blank calendar pages I was finally getting out and playing live music, doing book readings, etc. I’d played in my jazz duo, String of Sheeps, for International Make Music Day. It felt amazing…
The Season For Growing
Each year in late winter, which for us is around April, we begin to think garden thoughts. We’ll sit on stools in the kitchen and map out future plots. We think about the fruit and vegetables that we want on our table and in our larder come fall. Farm catalogs come in the mail and…
How To Retire Like A Boss (by Sam Perley)
While reclining under the dining room table one afternoon I overheard my family talking about certain athletes and performers who decide to retire and then soon afterward, decide to unretire: coming back to a game that they have clearly grown out of. I shook my head and not just to scratch my ears. I just…
Watching Main Street Go By
Last Saturday evening Paul and I stepped out of our car into the early evening light in downtown Montpelier, the capital city of Vermont. As it always does after a long winter, the summer air felt soft and smelled sweet as we crossed the street to our favorite Nepalese restaurant. We were seated in the…
The Other Side Of The Fence
“When the grass is waving in the wind” is the standard for when sheep can begin to go out to graze in spring. We have had some very warm weather with cooler nights which has made the grass grow even faster than it might normally this time of year. Around June first is when I…
Stone Walls
The spring before my father died, Josh and I took him back to his family farm site in Worcester for Father’s Day. Nothing left of the house and barns but the cellar holes. My dad was in his mid-eighties and the weather was as well. We could only drive so close to the farm and…
The Lusty Month Of May
Spring in Vermont doesn’t show up the way it does in some other states with their quiet unveiling of green in the month of April. Here we diddle with mud and brown and snow for about two months, vacillating between boots and Crocs: Mother Nature seemingly unsure about the exact season to put us into….
New Beginnings
Because it has been a cold spring I was somewhat surprised by May. Normally I have been combing seed catalogs with my old lady glasses on, being a plant voyeur long before now. Suddenly it was the weekend before Mother’s Day and I realized a truth that all serious gardeners take to heart; always, always…
Wanting What You Have
I shut the barn door for the final time Monday evening. As the wooden bar thunked into place, three ewes crowded close to be sure that I didn’t have one more feeding in me. I stood in the dark, looking up at the millions of stars and breathed in the temperate spring air. I woke…
For Seasons
The greatest percentage of the joy of living in Vermont comes from the fact that we have four very distinct seasons. Cue Vivaldi. For us it isn’t about the clothes that we wear or the photo-ops that present themselves, it is about who we are because of these seasons. Summer in Vermont is our short,…
For The Love Of A Dog
The warmer weather means more than just ruts and mud boots; driving past the pond on some of these newly-above-freezing nights we begin to put our windows down in anticipation of the familiar sound of the peepers. For about a week or more in April we’ll pass the pond in the evening, roll down the…
Many Ways To Say It
Just outside my studio window, sitting on a ledge, is a robin’s nest. It has been there for several years. Prime real estate, under complete cover, high off the ground, comes fully furnished. A turn-key deal: all you have to add is eggs. I walked past the window a week ago and noticed some new…
Ancestral Memory
The mud has been unusually deep this year: does that seem a bit metaphoric? It is, but it is also the truth. Vermont, statistically, has more dirt roads than paved. My hand always goes up to keep my dirt road, but it is a long season. At some point, perhaps when we are all so…
Opportunity Arrives In Disguise
I’m the person that doesn’t read the manuals. It isn’t that I don’t understand the value in doing so: I just don’t do it. I’d like to tell you that the reason is because I enjoy the process of figuring things out for myself, but the truth is that I hate reading manuals more than…