Category Archives: outdoors
Every Once in a While . . .
. . . living on Martha’s Vineyard seems worth the tradeoffs: the high cost of living, the rent insecurity, the widespread head-in-the-sand attitude to long-term challenges, and so on and on. Unfortunately there’s plenty of sand around for people to … Continue reading
Hunting Season
It’s Sunday in the middle of shotgun deer season and there’s no hunting on Sunday so I didn’t wear my orange vest when Tam and I went out this morning. Shotgun deer season began the Monday after Thanksgiving and runs … Continue reading
Don’t Look Now, But …
. . . the first ice disk of the season arrived last night. It did indeed set a record for earliest disk, but it wasn’t as much earlier as I’d been thinking: the previous record was held by the winter … Continue reading
Three Seasons on the Line
The oak leaves have turned from brown to crispy. They’re falling, and I still can’t resist kicking my way through them on the path. The birches and beeches are still yellow; the yellow is thinning but it’s still enough to … Continue reading
Tam Lin Goes to a Selectmen’s Meeting
How is writing about Martha’s Vineyard like a puppy chasing its own tail? Real life inspires fiction and fiction starts looking like real life and pretty soon you’ve forgotten which came first. Round and round and round . . . … Continue reading
The Solar System Is Growing
Tam and I went out yesterday in the early evening to see what progress had been made on the planets. The answer was “A lot!” For one thing, a sun has risen at the head of the solar system. Mercury … Continue reading
The Planets Are Coming Back
From mid-2016 till almost the end of 2018, the late Travvy and I walked the planets on the bike path across from the West Tisbury School. They were the creation of fifth-graders and their teachers, a blending of science and … Continue reading
Tam Lin Starts Socializing
Good dog trainers emphasize the importance of early socialization for young puppies, with a focus on the first three months (13 weeks). Travvy’s early socialization was mostly hit-or-miss, which most likely contributed to the, uh, challenges we had later with … Continue reading
Nesting
From where I sit to work, read, write postcards to voters, and (don’t tell anybody) play too many games of Spider solitaire, I have a clear view out my front door. My front door is mostly glass and opens onto … Continue reading
Reds
On Martha’s Vineyard, fall foliage is often underwhelming, probably because the landscape is dominated by oaks. Oaks seem to go from green to brown overnight: blink and you missed it. But some years the maples, beetlebungs, birches, and beeches do … Continue reading
