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Dear Folks: November 23, 1992
Zierenberg, Germany
Dear Folks, It’s a Saturday morning and I’m sitting in the cozy study Hartmut and Rike (pronounced “Reeka”) Bossel have let me take over in their house. I’m looking out the window at sleet coming down on the bare branches of the apple and nut trees in the back yard. One mountain ash is laden with drooping clusters of red [...]
Dear Folks: October 16, 1992
Johannesburg airport
Dear Folks, I watched the first presidential debate at the farm, the debate of the vice-presidents in the waiting lounge of the Boston airport, and the second presidential debate at 3 this morning (Johannesburg time) in my hotel. CNN is making me feel close to home!
I am becoming a political junkie. Even at 3 AM after two nights on airplanes, [...]
Dear Folks: September 20, 1992
September 20, 1992
Dear Folks,
Happy equinox!
It’s Sunday afternoon, a brilliant day, so heartbreakingly crisp that I think I’d better cover the tomatoes tonight. The garden, still unfolding slowly, could get cut down by frost any one of these clear nights.
That would be cruel; there’s so much stuff out there. The tomatoes didn’t start coming till the beginning of September. The fourth [...]
Dear Folks: August 16, 1992
Dear Folks,
It’s Sunday morning, gray and misty. The summer continues cool. The garden is in slow motion. Only a handful of cherry tomatoes have ripened. The pepper plants have not even set fruit. The melons sit and shiver. Some of the cucumbers are molding on the vine — something I have never seen before. The sweet corn has been on [...]
Dear Folks: July 19, 1992
Dear Folks, Summer began yesterday, the first hot, muggy, lazy day of the year, the first one where I wanted to do nothing but sit in the shade, or the brook. The lettuce and peas and spinach — the spring-season plants — had been going on and on, well past their appointed time, in the cool and wet of the previous [...]
