AT LARGE

Welcome to ice cream cone season. We doubt that there’s an official governmental edict designed to distinguish these summer days from the rest of the year, but with the way things have been going, that might not be far away. That, however, is a different subject. These are the days when we find our way to a local emporium with a few windows facing a [...]

Above photo courtesy of iStock user Marina Lohrbach. “You still have time.”   The young lady at the garden center had been watching from a distance and edged closer to overhear our conversation rife with indecision. There was a bit of laughter in our back and forth, with remembrances of a small garden plot created well in the past just outside a distant kitchen door. “Just [...]

It was in the middle of yet another winter storm. The “New England Cocktail” was in full view – snow, sleet, and freezing rain well stirred with a gusting wind of 40 mph pushing against the windows. The age-old quandary of “shovel now or shovel later” was temporarily displaced by another cup of coffee and a stint at the computer. News headlines first, we braced [...]

It was not too terribly long ago that the doldrums of winter, stretching through January and February, could be mitigated with one visit to the mailbox. Long nights and days of howling winds seemed to be on the menu day after day with the dejected weather forecasters droning on about “mostly cloudy and cold with a chance of snow.” But then, without warning, it appeared. [...]