Greetings from Wachusett Meadow

We had gorgeous weather on Saturday, so after lunch we met Adam and Haley at Mass Audubon's Wachusett Meadow park. We got there first, so we walked around the farm with sheep before Adam and Haley's car arrived, then we hiked in the woods for a couple of miles past mushrooms, wildflowers, and eventually apple trees, ending up by a pond with dozens of frogs. The nature center has several bird feeders with a variety of finches, red-winged blackbirds, sparrows, and hummingbirds, with chipmunks underneath cleaning up dropped seeds.

 

We stopped at Shaw's on the way home for food for the week, fed the cats, ate dinner, and watched Masters of the Universe, which I enjoyed enormously although I think they should have marketed it as a retro superhero comedy rather than an action movie. A lot of the jokes would be missed by anyone under 40 -- references to previous iterations, Highlander jokes, Queen music, Idris Elba shots stolen right out of Thor, lots of laughs! Then we watched this week's Sugar, and now we're watching the first episode of Pompeii.

Greetings from Hollis Hills

After two days of rain, Wednesday was a warm day. I did chores in the morning, then after lunch my usual chat with my high school friends got canceled because all the rest of them were busy with family stuff so I did some reading and wrote what was supposed to be a short Facebook post that turned into a longer blog rant. 

Kristen and Laurie and I watched some second season Good Omens, including the whole episode with Job and then Aziraphale thinking he's a fallen angel, which is my favorite of the whole series. Then we took a walk in the late afternoon and had frozen pizza for dinner during the unfortunate end of the Orioles game. 

We've been spending the evening watching the rest of the second season of The Agency, which has been excellent, although I wanted more Fassbender and Turner-Smith; the cast is all superb, it's surprisingly emotional for a spy story, there's no contemporary BS politics. From last weekend, animals and scenery at Hollis Hills Farms:

Greetings from Gore Place

I had a quiet Monday mostly doing chores and going hunting for one of those things that disappeared in the move but I needed to track down. It was a gorgeous day in the 60s, glorious outside, and we had bunnies and birds and a duck hanging around. 

We watched this week's Maul episodes (I was glad there was more Maul this week!) and now we're watching Margo's Got Money Troubles, which is really well done, at least the first couple of episodes. Here are the real stars of the sheepshearing festival at Gore Place: 

Greetings from Waltham and Boston

Spent a lovely Saturday out since morning so we could meet Meredith in Waltham at the Sheepshearing Festival at Gore Place, which is more like the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival than what it sounds like -- there was sheepshearing and demonstrations of sheepdogs herding sheep, plus lambs and alpacas, but there were also over a hundred craft and art tents, musicians, Federalist-era reenactors, and tours of the 1806 Gore Mansion. We enjoyed all that, then walked to John Brewer's Tavern, named for an original from 1770, for lunch. 

Then we drove into Boston to the Arnold Arboretum, Harvard's public gardens, which has a variety of cherry blossom trees, nearly all of which are past peak bloom and a bunch of people posted that this was really the last weekend to see them flowering. There are also lots of forsythia, some flowering quince, and many non-flowering trees, all of which had birds around including blue jays, yellow warblers, and red-winged blackbirds. Now we're watching Rivals, in which Alex Hassell and David Tennant are competing to be the biggest jerk!

Greetings from Sturbridge

Wednesday reached 82 degrees before a cold front came through along with damper weather. I did some chores in the morning, chatted with two of my high school friends, took a walk and tried to find the snapping turtle (no luck yet), and watched an episode of Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power with my usual group before Paul got home. We took another walk before dinner. 

The Boys is always a guilty pleasure when it's not just too horribly violent, and it was insanely violent this week, but I'm not sorry I watched it because Soldier Boy had so many hilarious lines and somehow they predicted that Donald Trump, excuse me, Homelander would envision himself as Jesus. Now we're slogging through the second season of The Forsyte Saga. Lambs at Sturbridge Village:

Greetings from Old Sturbridge Village

Sunday was another gorgeous day, not quite 60 degrees and sunny, so we ate lunch early and went to Old Sturbridge Village to see the lambs -- they have ten of them! We walked through the farms and along the river, where the turtles are out, and saw several chickens and cows as well as the sheep. We also visited a few of the farm buildings, then stopped in the Yankee Candle outlet and a pottery store in town before going to Shaw's for food for the week.

 

The Orioles had won before we got home, but we saw some of the Mariners game, which was nice because they won and even more nice because they beat the Astros. Then we ate bread and cheese with tomato soup for dinner -- I'm told it was National Grilled Cheese Day, but I prefer mine spread on fresh hard sourdough -- and watched Billy Idol Should Be Dead, the documentary with lots of music and animated sequences (I loved the David Bowie one).

Greetings from Green Hill Farm

Wednesday didn't have any snow, but it was as cold as Tuesday -- around 40 degrees at midday and wind chill below freezing, so not much like April as I think of it. The bunny across the street was out anyway when I took a walk, though the spring peepers are quiet and the duck pair were curled up asleep next to the pond. I did chores in the morning, chatted with my high school friends after lunch, and watched some season two Rings of Power with my usuals in the late afternoon. We saw the first two episodes of Maul: Shadow Lord because I can't resist any new Star Wars; it's on the dark and violent side and at times reminded me of Daredevil set in Blade Runner's L.A. 

Now we're watching the first two episodes of the final season of The Boys, which I probably should not be enjoying as much as I am. Denethor (John Noble) plays Eomer (Karl Urban)'s dad! Daveed Diggs is a Vought-bought preacher who hates powerful women! Countess Crow, the influencer supe whose power is talking to birds, has crows named Russell and Cameron! Soldier Boy accuses Homelander of having some kind of incest thing for him! (Someone's been reading the Jensen Ackles fan fiction!) So it's violent and horrible and I've been laughing through the whole thing. Since I'm a sheep, here are the sheep -- mostly Icelandic -- at Green Hill Park Farm last Sunday:

Poem for Sunday and Green Hill Park

Pesach 

By Jehanne Dubrow

        post-op 

We are hungry tonight and pass 

quickly through the story 

of suffering, to the plates of food

before us: the bread flattened 

as though with fear, 

the apple ground to the rough 

consistency of mortar, 

forced labor of many hands.

Forty evenings out, my mother 

rises so easily from the table. 

We all admire how her body 

has been returned to her.

She cuts into the meat 

without wincing, the calm twisting 

of her spine. Yes, we think, 

we have come through our own 

small division of the sea. 

Escape from pain is a narrow 

passage carved into water—

no turning back, and anguish 

like a stretch of desert up ahead. 

My mother keeps holding 

a platter of roasted vegetables 

as though it is an offering 

to a god who will not have his fill. 

We hurry past the narrative. 

Some angels don’t mean light, 

but rather terror hovering, 

all that lies between us and disaster,

a swept palm like a scalpel,

a reddened scar above the door. 

-------- 

It rained nearly all day on Easter Sunday, but when it was lighter after lunch, we went to Green Hill Park to see the animals at the farm and walk around the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. We had the place practically to ourselves, besides the goats, pigs, alpacas, peacocks, chickens, donkeys, miniature horses, and Icelandic sheep, plus the Canada geese who live near the pond. On the way home we stopped at Shaw's for some lunch food for the week. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Older son called us on Google Meet to chat, and we had Impossible Burgers for dinner. Now we're watching the start of the most important Easter movie, Jesus Christ Superstar, after finishing the second-most important Easter movie, Monty Python's Life of Brian. The latter feels more relevant every year -- I absolutely howl through the Middle East politics -- and the former, my first exposure to the Passion, remains my very favorite version of it.