Skip to content

Category Archives: Life in the Catskills

Not a Human Anything in Sight.

23-Sep-11

buy Latuda for dogs Except for my shadow, of course.  A view into Woodland Valley from the top of Slide Mountain, the Catskills’ highest peak.

Compost Tomatoes.

23-Sep-11

Villeneuve-sur-Lot This spring I had a compost-pile full of tomato seedlings.  Apparently the seed has no trouble overwintering.  I pulled three or four of the largest plants out and put them in good soil, and still had a number remaining.  So I decided not to turn over the compost pile at all this year, and let […]

Garlic Festival.

20-Sep-11

I should be at my first-ever Hudson Valley Garlic Festival this weekend, a festival which I have long heard about but never attended, in part because I take no interest in garlic whatsoever.  In fact, I avoid it when possible.  However, the festival is supposed to be interesting in itself.  I’ll be working – manning […]

The Hungry Forest.

20-Sep-11

I found an old box of Cheerios that I had forgotten about in a cabinet; tasting them I determined they had gone stale.  I figured I’d use them as bird food during the fall migrations.  I went out with the bag a few nights ago and tossed some about a hundred feet from the cabin […]

Understanding and Virtue.

15-Sep-11

“I began to see, however dimly, that one of my ambitions, perhaps my governing ambition, was to belong fully to this place, to belong as the thrushes and the herons and the muskrats belonged, to be altogether at home here…. It is a spiritual ambition, like goodness. The wild creatures belong to the place by […]

Well, this is the Forest of Arden.

04-Sep-11

At the Woodstock Shakespeare Festival this weekend, where I was treated to the pleasures of the usual players, including David Aston-Reese’s melancholy Jaques, immersed in nature, “weeping and commenting upon the sobbing deer.”  I intend to enlarge on this theme later. After watching these shows, I swear, I am so immersed in the language that […]

Too Many Cucumbers.

02-Sep-11

Looks like I need to research new and exciting ways to eat cucumbers.  I harvested 15 today, and the plants are not slowing down in the least.  15 per week seems plausible for the rest of September. The payoff is really quite amazing.  I bought a pack of something like a hundred seeds for $1.69. […]

Botanical Latin.

01-Sep-11

I’ll be attempting the impossible this Saturday, trying to make botanical Latin interesting at a talk at Catskill Native Nursery.  Ten a.m.  Probably headed that evening for the Woodstock Shakespeare Festival.

Encounter with the Archdruid.

25-Aug-11

Barred owls are supposedly fairly common in the woods of the Northeast, and occasionally they will set up shop on the edges of the field and boom through the night – they have incredibly loud voices.  Last night one started booming so loud I thought he might be on top of my cabin – so […]

The Harvest Starts.

23-Aug-11

Finally things are ripening up here.  The bulk of the harvest is a month away, but I have enough tomatoes and cucumbers to start giving away.  The standout so far have been the pink mini-beefsteaks, a 1.5 inch cherry tomato called “Ping Pong.”  Also pictured here are yellow and red cherries, Amish paste, San Marzano, […]