Fans of the work of Annie Navasky will find an example on display with a variety of other small works at The Third Floor, painter Joan Griswold’s new studio/gallery in Great Barrington.

Winter Trees

All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the disattiring are completed!
A liquid moon
moves gently among
the long branches.
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold.

—William Carlos Williams

We sowed the seeds for a cover crop in the new community orchard, an organic blend of Winter Rye and Hairy Vetch, selected by Eva.

The idea is to plow the crop under after it grows, to prepare the soil for our delicious new fruit trees. The snow had other ideas; we’ll see what the coming months bring, but the instant winter was beautiful:

I’ve spotted it twice now, once in the winter and once in the early fall (see photo below).  If the two sightings were one and the same bird, it seems we have a goshawk in the neighborhood.

The goshawk is a large hawk, with a reputation for secretiveness, and among falconers, for its unruly nature.  It’s fast and graceful in flight (look for two wing beats: “flap, flap — glide”).  You can remember it by its light shoulder and belly, dark red eye and pronounced eye-stripe (hard to see in my photo above, but easy here), and by its appearance in the breathtaking H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald, as well as this poem by Hillsdale poet Peter Kane Dufault:

Goshawk

That harbinger of God’s hardness,
North American Goshawk —
storm-grey above, ice-grey beneath,
segment of a winter azimuth —
detached herself from this morning and
seized a black hen and caromed
thirty yards through the soft snow, wrenching
feathers and flesh out, too
blood-crazy to kill clean. . . .

Tell me
if it’s not hard how a haggard
hasn’t even the hangman’s mercy
but tears the heart out alive — that she
should have been made so;

and so, too, that when the dog
ran yapping and drove her off,
the grey crucifer levitated
in such a cold pride of windblown
lightness over the tines of the trees

you’d have forgiven her, even
if she could have torn
in that worse way there is:
with a word, never breaking the skin.

“What leaf, this time of year, is so pale?”  —Carl Phillips

The luna moths had their week earlier this May, and that was  about all the spring we got in the mad rush from winter.  Everything sprung at once — there were fawns and fox kits in the woods, baby minks and bobolinks in the marshes and meadows.  And the stage was set for summer.

In other news, Debbie Meier has a friend visiting during the first week of August with a toddler.  If anyone knows someone who wants to pick up a little babysitting income, please contact Debbie.  And Eva Thaddeus and family are back on the east coast, and we all look forward to their increased presence in the community.

Welcome back everyone.  See you in the pond!

We all love it.  It’s had highs and lows (but mostly highs since the outlet was dammed, although honestly I miss seeing all the tadpoles), but it’s beautiful all day long and the perfect antidote to a sweltering August day.

The pond has recently been stocked with friendly, voracious, vegetarian Grass Carp, in an attempt to control the filamentous algae that has been quickly taking over.  We’re all watching with bated breath to see what happens.  If the algae win, it’s gefilte fish for everyone, and back to square one.  If the fish do their jobs, we can expect a decade or so of weed-free swimming.

I’m adding a dedicated Pond Page to the website.  I’d love to include a history of its making, a schedule of changes, and notes on its various adaptations over the years, but I’ll need some help.  For starters, I’m putting up some basic facts — take a look and see if there’s anything you’d like to add.  If so you can send me a note, or if you want direct editorial access, let me know and I’ll make it so.

It was great to spend a few weekdays up here, enjoying the quiet roads and the woods noisy with birdsong.  Everything is popping out to enjoy the warm weather:  there are minks by the stream, a good assortment of warblers and thrushes in the woods — and the pond is hosting a growing mat of filamentous algae (which, it must be admitted, interferes with a good swim).  Susan is ordering some grass carp which we hope will partly address the problem, and Debbie suggests we acquire a new kayak and/or inflatable raft, so that some of the kids in the community can do some algae-gathering (it’s good for compost and mulch).  For further information, see the link above, and also here.

In other news, I have updated the website, and will be creating new login accounts for everyone.   You should receive an email within 24 hours of this post with your new login information, but if you have any questions, as always, don’t hesitate to contact me.

The new platform allows for more secure file-sharing and a bunch of other features (for starters you will notice that you can sign up for email alerts on site updates in the sidebar, bottom right).  I’m also planning a searchable photo gallery and a page on the pond, but as always, I’m open to suggestions, as well as feedback on the site design, and would welcome contributions (photos or text) by any community member.

The community’s own Martha Bone is being featured at the Ann Street Gallery in Newburgh, and you’re invited!

Opening reception for PRACTICE AND PROCESS

The Ann Street Gallery
104 Ann Street
Newburgh, NY
Saturday November 16th, 6:30- 8:30.

Exhibiting artists: Kathy Goodell, Martha Bone, Stephana McClure, Jill Baroff.

The show is on view from November 16, 2013  through January 11th, 2014, and if you miss the opening it makes a great stop on the road between Hillsdale and New York City — right across the river from the DIA Art Center in Beacon.  Here are links for the Ann Street Gallery, driving directions, and Marty’s website.

For anyone who is looking for a good place to sled, Susan reports that Simon and Kimi enjoyed the slope behind the pond, down to the tennis court.  She also notes that Butternut has a snow-tubing park, and that there is a good-looking slope “by the school on Rte 7 beyond the shopping center.”  There are also the meadows on the upper loop trail, and the “Falcon Ridge” hill down by the farm to consider.   If there are any other favorite sledding spots, let me know.

Thanks to everyone for helping to make a great picnic in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the community.  It was great to see all the kids (and grown-ups) playing together, and amid the splashing in the pond, soccer by the barn, good conversation, sunshine and great food from everyone, I felt really lucky to be a part of this place.

Here’s a link to some photos of the event — sorry they’re not great — I was so distracted by the beautiful day that I forgot to take pictures until it was almost too late.  If anyone else has pictures, please let me know and I will add them to the gallery.

Let’s do this again soon!  Suggestions for our next community get-together are much appreciated — feel free to post comments here, or email me with ideas.

Faintly, along the shadowed shores of night
I saw a wilderness of stars that flamed
And fluttered as they climbed or sank, and shamed
The crouching dark with shyly twinkling light;
I saw them there, odd fragments quaintly bright,
And wondered at their presence there unclaimed,

Then thought, perhaps, that they were dreams unnamed,
That faded slow, like hope’s arrested flight.
Or vanished suddenly, like futile fears—
And some were old and worn like precious things
That youth preserves against encroaching years—
Some disappeared like songs that no man sings,
But one remained—an ember in the dark—
I crouched alone, and blew upon the spark.

—Louis L’Amour