A man down the road grows dahlias, the magnificent and ancient starbursts of color that in northern climes only really dedicated gardeners will grow. Ted and his wife, Wendy, are schoolteachers in another state. Several years ago, they bought this small dormered Cape as a summer place. It faces the mountain and was at that […]
For her son Harold’s first birthday, Esther Foskett found a recipe in an old Farm Journal so that she could make him a birthday cake. “And then I made one for my daughter, and it’s been going ever since,” she explains. That’s 60-some-odd years of cakes. In her small, bright farmhouse kitchen in Woodstock, Connecticut, […]
My three-year-old border terrier, Harriet, has been a big discipline problem since day one. Black with a white star on her chest and brindle legs and face, she’s curious, rugged, and wicked cute. Good thing. She once chewed on the emergency-brake handle in my car so vigorously that the town fire chief had to pitch […]
Around this time of year, I start thinking about pruning my fruit trees. A few years ago, I planted a couple of Macouns, my favorite of all apples, and a Reliance peach, known to be rugged in cold climates. I still worry about mice chewing on their trunks at ground level, and then there are […]
At a Jewish day school in Northampton that her children attended, Simona Pozzetto was known as “the challah lady,” despite the fact that she’d been raised Catholic in Milan, Italy. Her bread was so beloved that some children refused to eat any loaf that wasn’t Simona’s. As it is, Simona’s is an unlikely story. But, […]
When I was growing up, a funeral was considered a somber event, one too gruesome to allow children to attend. As a result, I wasn’t allowed to attend the funerals of my grandparents or my great-aunts and great-uncles. Maybe that was a good thing, I don’t know, but I do know that for the past […]
Nowhere is the whaling history deeper than on Nantucket, where whalers set sail and didn’t return for years, their ships filled with whale oil.
Next summer, my house will turn 250 years old. I’m at a loss as to how to celebrate this once-in-a-lifetime milestone. I’ve taken part in only 14 of those years, fewer than 10 percent, and yet I feel its protection like a turtle in her shell. I have no diaries to tell me of the […]
Connecticut artist Jilly Walsh presents two favorite English dishes, Coronation Chicken and Summer Pudding.
Like the house, the property’s bullpen has had many lives. This stout little post-and-beam barn sits on a solid foundation of quarried granite. Inside, the ring that once held a bull in check by his nose remains embedded in the stone wall, but not much else is the same. At first, Jilly and Alex Walsh […]
“When we first moved here, I was designing greeting cards and prints, but what I always wanted was hand-painted designs on ceramics,” recalls Jilly Walsh. “So I started with trays. I took my trays and cards to the New York International Gift Fair, walked through the Italian section, and saw an exhibitor selling ceramics with […]
What’s unique about an old house is its history: who owned it, how they lived, the spirit they left behind. By the time Jilly and Alex Walsh came to live in the northeast corner of Connecticut, this Federal-style house, built in 1780, had already sheltered many lives. There was once a law office here, and […]
