Dear Folks: April 23, 2000
Hello, Dear Folks!
It’s Easter. It’s the day after Earth Day. It’s solidly cloudy, as it has been for a week, and 40 degrees, and bone-penetrating damp. I spent yesterday out in the garden and got soaked through.
Ah, but it felt good! A carton of plants I had ordered arrived, so I had to get them into the ground, and a [...]
Dear Folks: March 26, 2000
Dear Folks,
Last month we were in the depths of winter, and Stephen drew his Spanish-speaking mouse riding on a snowmobile. Last weekend we had a blizzard. Today it’s sunny and sixty. There’s snow only on the north sides of buildings. Robins and bluebirds have returned to the valley. The mud has nearly dried up. I have to go out and [...]
Dear Folks: December 26, 1999
December 26, 1999
Dear Folks,
“I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills.” That sentence, which opens Isak Dinesen’s Out of Africa, always makes me cry, because of its past tense. Had a farm in Africa. The whole book is a hymn of sorrow for that lost farm.
Even when I still owned Foundation Farm and thought I [...]
Dear Folks: November 21, 1999
Dear Folks,
I wondered last month whether I’d be writing this month from my old house or my new one. Well, the answer is neither. I’m in my office at Dartmouth, because things are chaotic at home — home still being Foundation Farm for another week. Actually my office there is still functional, except that I’m beginning to pack up books [...]
Dear Folks: May 23, 1999
Dear Folks,
Twenty-seven years ago today Dennis and I moved to Foundation Farm. Now it is for sale. And I am soaking up my last May here.
May! I swore long ago never to leave this farm in May, never to miss a moment of this wonderful, magical month. (When the black flies appear and the crabgrass seeds germinate by the gazillion [...]
