My husband and I recently arrived in Connecticut for the summer. We avoided the spring rains, which ruined Memorial Day weekend here and probably a lot of other weekends as well. And that in a nutshell is why we don’t come up until June. From my home office window I have a great view of the back yard and, at the very bottom, the Saugatuck River. It meanders through our property and heads toward Westport where it becomes much, much larger. One hundred and eighty feet wide, to be exact, at the place where Route 1 goes over the river near downtown Westport.

The river is almost 24 miles long, begins in Danbury, and eventually empties into Long Island Sound. In the 17th century the river was the site of a Paugusset settlement, the Golden Hill Paugusset Nation being a state-recognized Native American tribe in Connecticut. In the Paugusset language, Saugatuck means “river that flows out.” I love that we have a little piece of

My husband Bob and I recently dog-sat for a week for Miso, our daughter’s Pomsky. We adore this little three-year-old and loved having him with us – greeting us when we walked in the door and cuddling up on our bed at night. When Morgan returned from her trip she and I took Miso to the Saturday green market in West Palm Beach, which is always a fun outing. I love seeing the variety of dogs people bring there. One of the vendors we visited was Dog Deli. They’re based in Hallandale Beach, but they travel to the local green markets. The owner, who remembers Miso from the time he was a puppy, spoiled him with treats. You can see from this photo how eager he was to have her snacks. I’m sure he’s eaten everything Morgan bought there by now.

When we first moved from Connecticut to Palm Beach almost thirty years ago it was in October. Two months later the Christmas season was upon us. I remember thinking how strange it seemed to have warm weather at Christmastime. I’d spent my entire life up north and I was used to the weather being chilly in December. Sometimes we even had snow. I remember going to a local mall to do some shopping and noticing that several of the store windows were decorated with fake snow – that spray-on stuff that comes in a can. (Does anybody still sell that?) I remember thinking how the stores were trying to copy what we had for real up north and it made me miss having a northern Christmas. But I gradually got used to having Christmas in the tropics. The bottom line, of course, is that Christmas is where you make it. Now I can’t imagine being anywhere else.

Photo: Phillip R. Brown
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

We have Barred owls on our property in Connecticut where we spend the summer. I’ve only seen them once, although I’ve heard them many times. A couple of years ago while sitting on our back patio, I happened to be looking at a huge oak tree in our yard when I noticed a Barred owl on one of the branches. It was just perched there, among the leaves, looking very majestic. I was even more excited when I glanced a little to the left and saw another Barred owl, which I assume was the mate. I took a couple of photos with my iPhone, but the owls look way too small for me to post one of those pictures. I think the photo below does the Barred owl justice.

Owls like to talk at night, and I hear ours quite often. It’s always late – midnight, one in the morning, or around then. They have eerie but beautiful eight-syllable hoots, and they often talk back and forth, sometimes interrupting one another. Owls hoot to

Even though I grew up in Connecticut, whenever I’m back here I’m always amazed and delighted by the stone walls that seem to be everywhere. They decorate the front yards of houses, they mark the boundaries between yards, they’re in parks and around ponds. And in some cases they show up in the middle of woods, running  helter-skelter among the trees, with boulders missing or entire sections gone.

New England is a rocky place. If you dig down six or eight inches you’ll hit stones and rocks and maybe the top of a boulder. Anyone who has ever cleared a New England field knows that. Decades ago, farmers put those boulders to use, building walls that marked the boundaries between pastures or farms. But those farms are gone and nature has taken over many of the old fields, filling the land with trees. Still, the walls are there, silent reminders of a time when they served an important purpose.

I’ve been seeing fireflies in our yard here in Connecticut. They rise, blinking, from the grass, flashing their golden lights. Seeing fireflies always sends me back to the summers of my childhood, which took place here in Connecticut. Chasing fireflies at night with my best childhood friend, Rebecca. Picking honeysuckle blossoms for their drops of nectar. And looking for mysteries in our neighborhood. We were fans of Nancy Drew. And we thought if Nancy could have dozens of mysteries fall right into her lap, why couldn’t we have one?