Bucolia

People in the PNW love to complain about "February Fake-out", a week or two of spring weather that comes between cold spells. This year, our fake-out began in mid-Jan, and ran all the way through this week, when the temperature finally fell below 40º in

Depending on when this goes live, there will have been 15 consecutive days without rain here on Orcas Island. I am determined to publish something before the first month of the year is over, and my weather app says I only have until 5pm on January 29th to write about

As a junior in college, I spent a year abroad studying in Edinburgh, Scotland. I arrived in early October, and by the time winter solstice arrived, the sun was coming up at 8:45am and setting at 3:40pm. Even as a New Englander, nothing prepared me for a winter

It’s that time of the year when daytime ends abruptly at 4pm, the sweatpants beckon, and you find yourself addicted to re-watching prestige tv drama from the early 2000's. Somehow, it's also the time of year where you're being asked to dress

There is a constant drip in the gutter of the kitchen window overhang. At first, I thought it was because the gutters were clogged, so I cleaned them. It still dripped. So over the summer we caulked silicone along all of the seams of the gutters, and sealed them with

On Saturday November 2nd 2024, I came up to the island, with what I thought was a rational compulsion to spend the presidential election as close a foreign border as I could get. I thought getting a few friends to spend the week with me would be an easy sell,

The last 3 weeks have been a flurry of addition, subtraction, and substitution, mostly in service to winter preparation: firing up a dehumidifier and moving bedrooms, installing a heat pump and mini split for the kitchen/dining area and new wood stove for the living room, taking out kitchen cabinets,

And just like that…almost a month has passed since my last update. The last four weeks have been a blur, a slog, a fever dream, and the opposite of what I look forward to in September, which is a restart and return. Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, was

Summer isn’t over, officially, for three more weeks, but there is no mistaking autumn’s approach. I’m writing this “off island,” from Portland Oregon, where I’ve been for the last 10 days.  Before I left Orcas, the mornings were getting cooler, and the trees were getting yellower.

The first peaches I had here on the property was July 31, 2024. Closing was still a few weeks away, so they weren't technically yet "mine." They were a little too fuzzy, underripe yet mealy, but they were definitively peaches. When I came back to the

None of the weather that’s been wilting the continental US has shown up here in the San Juans, where it hasn’t yet crested 80 degrees. As with the rest of reality, I’ve lost all perspective on what weather even is. At 6am when it’s 56º, it’

There are no stop lights on Orcas Island. I didn’t notice at first, because there is hardly anything resembling traffic here. The first time I realized it, I was in Portland, right off the I-5 from a trip up to Orcas, stuck in traffic on NE Weidler, which

Despite the lack of running water or plumbing, the daily mouse dropping patrol in the kitchen, and the fact that opening and closing two cattle gates to come and go from the property has lost some of its charm, I am settling in and, I think, settling well. I joined

Important!  If you happened to reply to my inaugural newsletter last week, I have bad news—it disappeared into the black hole of no-reply emails, and it was never received. I’ve since reconfigured my settings, so moving forward, it’s safe to reply.  But if you don’t

You’ve stocked up on good olive oil, gochujang, and several jars of Duke’s Mayonnaise. You changed the oil in your car. You’ve forwarded your mail and have pre-addressed packages ready to go with your prescriptions. Over the last few weeks, you’ve been provisioning and preparing

3:24 am, Tuesday April 15. You wake up, as you always do in the middle of the night, though 3:24 am is not customary.  1:29, 2:32, and 4:12 are the oddly consistent clock numbers that you see when you wake up. Your brain says you