My cousin George Odell moved to Jamaica in 1973 to teach math and came home four years later with his bride, Hazel, a tiny girl with a big smile, skin the color of coffee beans, and a melodic laugh. Her Jamaican accent was hard to decode–but her Jamaican recipes were not. Since Hazel’s arrival, our […]
winter
Ever wondered what it’s like to live cheaply for a month and to paddle 325 miles in a kayak? Try the Maine Island Trail.
New England
The Best 5 Public Gardens in New England
Where are the best public gardens in New England? From coastal Maine to Berkshires, here are five of our favorites.
Magazine
Inside Yankee: Finding Summer
We wait so patiently, don’t we? We find all sorts of ways to enjoy winter–snow sports, cozy inns, reading by the fire, bragging about snow tires and wood piles–because we either do that or be miserable, or join the snowbirds. So we wait. And spring comes. Café tables appear like welcome blossoms; we put away […]
Magazine
Red Is the Color | Mary’s Farm
Last year was one of the worst years for hay that I can remember. Aside from the need for sun to dry the hay before baling, these fields are wet anyway, so if it rains too much, the fields are too wet to bear the weight of a tractor. So the farmers wait for that […]
Gardens
Roses | Advice from Suzy Verrier
Yankee Classic from June 1992 “I hate to tell you,” Suzy Verrier said, pausing sympathetically, “but your roses are wimps.” “Come again?” I wasn’t sure I had heard her correctly.Get Our FREE Yankee Best New England Vacations Guide! Email(Required) Subscribe “Wimps,” she repeated. “They’re wimpy commercial roses that are packaged and sold like canned tuna.” […]
Connecticut
Passport to Wine Trail in Connecticut
Find great wine in Connecticut with the summer passport program, sponsored by Connecticut Department of Agriculture. The goal is to visit at least 14 of the 30 vineyards participating from Connecticut’s wine trail. You get your blue passport stamped at each one, and then hand it in at the last vineyard you visit. The program […]
New Hampshire
New Hampshire Best Lodging 2010
Best FarmStay INN AT VALLEY FARMS, Walpole The 18th-century house on this glorious 105-acre organic farm is elegantly comfortable. Angus cattle graze on the hillside and free-range chickens “contribute” to the candlelit breakfasts. Rooms: from $175, including full breakfast. 633 Wentworth Road. 877-327-2855, 603-756-2855; innatvalleyfarms.com Best Reason to Rise & Shine WILDERNESS INN, North Woodstock […]
New England
Lake Umbagog
“Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl,” Thoreau wrote. “It is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling.” Even sealed in a car, you’ll hear that howling as you approach the town of Errol in far northern New Hampshire, the gateway to Lake Umbagog. The region is even a long drive north […]
Yankee
Wood and Canvas Canoes
Twenty years ago I paddled down the St. John River in northern Maine on an eight-day wilderness canoe trip. I remember much about the rhythm of that ice-out trip: how the eight of us put in below Baker Lake into a shallow, smooth current. The water quickened and grew more powerful with each gathering day, […]
In the ring at Clark’s Trading Post, a six-foot seven-inch, 440-pound black bear named Pemi stands up like a man and tosses a basketball through a hoop. Pemi’s mate, Echo, a 340-pound female, has just finished her act, riding around the ring on a Segway, raising the flag, and dancing. With them is a pixie-like […]
There are, of course, a lot more than two signs of spring in New England about now. But these are my favorites… After the various early signals of spring in New England — the Boston Flower Show, spotting a robin among snow patches on the lawn, and gathering pussy willows for the dining room table […]