Down Home Blog

I live in a hardscrabble landscape, where the soil’s freeze-thaw cycles break up and thrust rocks deposited by the last glacier to the surface every spring.

There's a famous New Yorker cartoon from the early 1990’s (click on image to enlarge) about recycling.

I’ve found I can’t do much to prevent the rise of strong negative emotions—anger, panic, fear, anxiety, frustration, sadness, hopelessness, resentment.

A serious mid-January thaw turned our dirt driveway into the quagmire that usually doesn’t develop until late March or early April.

Last summer we harvested a bumper crop of Anaheim-type chili peppers, many of which I roasted, peeled, and froze.

It’s winter! In central New Hampshire where I live, snow from the first big storm of the season is falling and ice has covered the pond behind my house.

Flaky skin, peeling lips, flyaway hair, cracked fingertips, crumbling fingernails, bloody noses, dry eyes.