Full moons, phone calls and velvet. Enticing indeed. So let’s go back to Sunday morning, July’s Buck Moon  in the overnight sky waxing toward its full Tuesday splendor. And, oh, how beautiful that full moon was at 3 a.m. Wednesday, casting a surreal silver light across the front yard that even fooled the cat, which […]

Approaching noon on a sunny Fourth of July morning — a dry, refreshing northwesterly breeze perfect for hiking — and we’re crossing Gen. Pierce Bridge from Bingville to Montague City for a quick Rock Dam tour. Having never visited the site, a dear old pal from South Deerfield had called the night before suggesting a […]

The query came from Lynn Stowe Tomb of Gill, where, as editor she is leading a dedicated collaborative of local historians and town officials to put the finishing touches on a new, comprehensive book focusing on the history, deep and shallow, of Riverside — that small village butted up against Barton Cove’s tail before the […]

An unusual spring it is, a peculiar winter it was in the Happy Valley, where haywire harbingers seem to be the rule. Take, for instance the lilacs now sweetening local neighborhoods. Do they not typically bloom a little later, when mornings are warm enough to allow the pleasant fragrance to enter homes through screen doors […]

As the annual fiddlehead-picking season fades into its brief overlap with that of asparagus this week, vocal word arrived in the Upper Meadows of Greenfield that a shad bush down road not far from Greenfield Community College is in bloom, signaling the real start of the Connecticut River shad run. Yeah, yeah, it’s true that […]

Subtle, wild purple violets cling to the green front and back lawn, awaiting their first spring mowing, while splashes of daffodil-yellow color the triangular common out front and along the low stone wall marking the western perimeter. Soon the large tulip magnolia in the slim, roadside east yard will burst into its full pink splendor, […]