Welcome to Sunnyhill

07/07 eleven years since Joe died. My writing last night, instead of a blog post, was a long email to his niece, Stephanie, whose husband died recently, far too young, leaving her with their four year old son. All during Yony’s long illness Stephanie displayed remarkable courage, strength, and balance.  And she has carried those…
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A happy bobolink sang the sun up this morning just after 5:00. The sunlight was streaming in through the bathroom window by the time I got up.  We are two weeks past the longest day, and sunrise has started appearing a little bit further south on the horizon. By the time we are back on…
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The last day of June.  After a couple of rainy days it is hot in earnest, and due to be hotter the next couple of days. With the first of the summer renters coming on Friday, we will hit the road in our Casita on Thursday.  This last week has been bittersweet. Sunnyhill seems even…
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I killed a deer.  Jay and Dan and I were driving back from lunch in Cooperstown on Tuesday.  We were on Gulf Road, just before the intersection with Schoolhouse Hill Road, where the trees are very close to the road.  I was driving the Prius, listening to the conversation, not scanning the edges of the…
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The winter wind rattled the bare tree branches.  They clattered against each other like animated dancing skeletons, angular and jerky in their movements.  But now each full leaf catches the wind, each flips over to reveal a silvery underside, each operates on its own separate hinge at its own moment with its own shape. In…
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The early dandelions have gone to seed.  When Dad was in his later years he usually went days without shaving, and getting up from a nap with his wispy white hair and scraggly white beard, Jay said he looked like a dandelion.  It was so apt, and it stuck with me, so that dandelions gone…
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Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with blooms along the bow And stands about the woodland ride Wearing white for Eastertide.   Now of my three score years and ten Twenty will not come again. And take from seventy springs a score It leaves me only fifty more.   And since to look…
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Roll into dark Roll into light Night becomes day Day turns to night It’s a lovely song we sing at Beth Am at the start of Shabbath on Friday evenings.  Watching the sun go down Friday night, focused to the west on the end of the secular day, I thought of this song and remembered…
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The daffodils are almost all gone.  Now it seems that there are lilacs everywhere – although none planted yet on Sunnyhill. The leaves on the trees are full sized now, and no longer have that brand new sheen.  Trees reach across the roads to each other, often making a green canyon, and sometimes a tunnel.…
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We came home after dark last night, and as I turned the light on in the kitchen, I thought I saw something flit across the living room.  A big moth perhaps? But then, after the lights were on I saw Charlie jumping at something dark on the floor near the table.  Jay was close enough…
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