Ruth Bass

It's getting hard to be a stalwart New Englander asserting that it is, after all, wintertime and in these parts it does snow in the winter. Under a dusting overnight, the driveway today was what my mother called "glare ice." The dusting kept Tracer and me from breaking our necks because it gave us something to grab -- he with little leathery pads and me with dependable Yak-Trax. It was sunny enough yesterday to let the salted town crumblage (whatever the substance is) soften a bit, so the edging tool broke some of that up in hopes the sun would attack any open space. But the sun was laid off not much past noon, and snow started to fall again. No need for color photography this afternoon -- the world is once again just black and white and 80 shades of gray. The snowdrops must be worrying by now. Read More 

Bluebs, Grandma Haskins always called them. Her fingers were as gnarled as the branches of an old apple tree, but she would scoop a handful out of a bucket and quickly thumb them into either the keeper bowl or the discard, brushing away the small leaves and stems as she went. It was hard to pick over the pails used by the men in the family, especially my father, who liked to "squabble" them off the wild, high bushes in someone's pasture. Needless to say, "squabbling" meant perhaps a dozen berries picked at a time, along with a dozen leaves or bits of dead branches. His blueberry harvest was huge and a mess. So, the women grumbled a bit as they sat on Grandma's porch and sorted, but mostly they talked about this, that and everything.

With too many cucumbers, many cultivated blueberries to pick, lots of weeds to pull and a lawn that grows even when it doesn't rain, poor Rose is quite neglected in the early days of her marriage. Perhaps she will reappear and I will still be able to hear her when we get to the Cape for two weeks. "Rose Runs Away" is nearly finished, but so far I do not see the finale. So I have to keep remembering Milt saying, "It will end when it ends," a promise that holds little comfort!

With drought in May and deluge after deluge in June, the garden is a mixed bag. The beautiful pea plants, green and starting to attach their tendrils to the fence, went brown and rotten even as the blossoms started to come. The first beans look scruffy and produced warped beans. But carrots, potatoes, lettuce, peas, cukes, onions and tomatoes seem to be thriving. And at least two winter squash are there, along with one sugar pumpkin. Last year, the pumpkins grew vines and no orange globes at all.

Pat's tomato soup is on the stove and needs a stir.
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