Saturday, October 17, 2009

Success in the hunt for the perfect small sprig of Winterberry.


The Winterberry makes it's appearance, and with it, memories of Winters Past come back to say hello.


We went to one of our favorite farms the other day, to Beth's to see the new flock of chooks, on Greely Road here in Springfield, Vermont, famous for beautiful eggs with the most vibrant and colorful yokes around.

Bongo also insisted on a new chicken drawing for the blackboard outside.



Happier chickens would be hard to find, and the day was glorious to boot, but what a pleasure to have a short conversation with a neighbor we hadn't met yet.


Bongo was most interested in the fruited branch ported about most tenderly by the newly met neighbor, and when asked, she identified it's place in her personal mythology, and it's gathering up as being part of the suite of things one did in the Late Fall when she and her sister were girls here abouts, long ago, in the Vermont we all seek to find on a walk in the woods in October.



Her father called this the Winter Berry. It is one of the things that the birds feed on if they winter over, a point of connection with nature and magic, and mighty delicious looking in the eyes of Bongo.