Snowdrops! A dandelion! A red-winged blackbird! A flicker at the suet! A purple crocus! Ten or more whistling swans — there is a new name for them but I like the old one better, crooning their way through leaden skies on leap day. A pair of geese grazing in the pasture in what looks like [...]
At last! While we were sleeping and even the stars shivered, he finally came, bringing with him his brushes to paint an icy forest on the window. Who? Jack Frost, of course. The artist has been waiting for the disgusting (to him) warm days and nights to end so he can get to work. Every [...]
Have you listened lately to your house, especially if it is an old house? Over the years you’ve learned to identify its creaks and cracks, its rattles and bangs, without becoming alarmed. You also know its smells, not just from the kitchen, and if a skunk is passing through.
Now is the time to pop corn, drink hot cocoa (or beverage of your choice), play favorite music, read a good book — and fall asleep — at least that’s what happens here.
Awaiting my morning wake-up call — Toby knows exactly when 8 a.m. comes — my mind rambles, and on this morning I reflect on what my imagination can create. (What would we do without a good imagination? It can make or break your day.)
Last December I saved a column from the Boston Globe titled “Merry Retro Christmas” and saved it because I thought it said everything about nostalgia and memories.
This is the first Thanksgiving in many years that I won’t be cooking dinner, with all the trimmings. I’ve said all along I’d do Easter and Thanksgiving as long as I could and I’ve finally had to concede.
With the holidays lurking just around the corner — who needs to be reminded? All the stores, commercials, etc. have been reminding us since the Fourth of July.
Mother Nature has already dismantled her art gallery and set the stage for her annual striptease. The performance is usually accompanied by wind music, sometimes as in the rattle of dry leaves — veils? — flung wantonly into the sky, sometimes without fanfare when raindrops keep the dancers grounded. Some veils lie in mosaic skirts [...]
This is anniversary month. It will not be celebrated or even observed. Don’t anyone dare to wish me happy anniversary! It was one year ago on Oct. 3 that a tumble — more like falling off a cliff — from my high bed in the middle of the night, changed the course of what is [...]
How many times have you — the homemaker, not the housewife as today the homemaker can be any gender, married, single, with or without children — sat down to look for a special recipe you know is in this cookbook, or is it this one, maybe in this envelope … The first thing you know [...]
In Farm and Dairy’s Classified Advertising section — we used to call them Want Ads — there are always many intriguing headings. I enjoy reading the Dogs and Dog Supplies, Horses and Ponies, Hay and Grain, Miscellaneous and Wanted To Buy.
At last! All the suspense, all the practice, all the preparation and hard work are gone — well, not really — and the big day has finally arrived: the Mahoning County Fair, proudly known as Canfield Fair, is underway and as of this moment the fairgrounds are ready to be wall to-wall with people through [...]
Twenty-four years ago, when On My Mind was “born,” I promised myself I would try very hard to not dwell on the past in what I wrote because the present and the future are usually much more interesting. But in these troubled times, both the present and the future are almost too scary to be [...]
Could be you’re tired of reading about the mundane happenings on this quiet island, and so I’m calling on my mother to rescue you.
Now that summer has decided to stay for a while, we can quit worrying about whether it is too wet or too dry or too cold or too warm. Sit back, sip a cold drink, make potato salad and meatloaf or fire up the grill, whatever you prefer. Enjoy the fruits of your labors, literally and figuratively.
Already morning sunlight is diffused and late afternoon shadows are longer sooner. At dusk, there is a spectacular show as the trees become the stage for fireflies that gather to perform their love dance, and the darker the night the brighter they shine. Just think: fireflies have been texting and sexting and have had GPS [...]
It must be because of the “aging process” — med-speak for growing old — but little annoyances are doubly annoying.
Was it magic? Was it time-lapse photography? Was it a mirage? How is it that the thicket — my jungle to the west — was dark and bleak one day and by morning was swathed in a green veil? What spread the lawn with a duvet of purple violets and pushed smiling dandelions through sodden [...]
Safely tucked away in my wallet, the clipping is beginning to yellow but it only sees the light of day once in this mesmerizing season. And it has become a tradition for me to present it to you each April. If thou of fortune be bereft And in thy stone there be but left, Two [...]
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