Margaret Hartley

New York and California both opened back up last week, lifting most pandemic restrictions, with their governors touting a “return to normal.” These past 15 months have been anything but normal.

When the Bootleg wildfire started in southern Oregon a couple weeks ago, I started checking smoke conditions in Bend, where my nephew and his family live. Last year, right around the time their baby…

When I was in seventh grade, my friends and I started a recycling club. We found a place that would pick up office paper and coerced the PTA to fund wastepaper baskets, which we painted and placed in…

Today marks the return to standard time, and the return of the grumbling choruses that greet the 4:30 p.m. sunsets…. Read more »

My husband planned to pick something up at the local grocery store last week but kept driving when he saw the parking lot. “Too many people,” he said. “I couldn’t go in.” Twenty months into the pandemic and we’re still wary of crowds, plus we’re trying to be extra careful right now so we might be

Shares0FacebookTweetEmail My husband planned to pick something up at the local grocery store last week but kept driving when he... Read more »

The little wine fridge we call our cheese cave is pretty empty right now, save for some jars of sauerkraut and kimchee, and a single round of goat cheese. It’s my first attempt at cheddar, or at least a goat milk cheddar-style cheese, and we meant to eat it at Christmastime when it had aged six mont

The last week of February brought some wild weather — cold and windy, warm and rainy, warm and windy, frigid cold. It’s been the kind of mix of elements where the temperature itself doesn’t matter as much as the wind and moisture. It could be 20 and feel mild, or 45 and feel bitter. I went for a br

“Eight eggs!” I said. “Nice job!”I was talking to the hens. It is suddenly spring, and they suddenly doubled and tripled production, and I like to encourage them when they do a good job.Our flock is small and the hens range in age from prime layer to geriatric. We have more roosters and drakes than

When we bought our house 30-something years ago, it had been vacant for a couple of years. We were so… Read more »

GREENPOINT - The sun’s going down around 7:15 and not rising until about 6:30, and I feel like I’m racing the darkness to get all the summer things done before the days really shrink to winter hours. It has me trotting back and forth from job to job on my days off from work, in the most inefficient

GREENPOINT – I made a trip out west earlier this month, first to see my dear friend in Minnesota and… Read more »

I was at my sister’s in Rhinebeck when she got her first freeze warnings. She started her winter mourning: “There are still tomatoes in the garden, and my zinnias! They’re still so beautiful and I don’t want to bring them all in.”I found a scissors and went out to the little flower garden in front o

GREENPOINT – It was stormy in the days before Christmas, and the moon was new. We heard someone talking about… Read more »

GREENPOINT – The baby goats have reached trouble age — old enough to act like packs of hooligans but not quite… Read more »

The pumpkin patch, as is usual this time of year, is a sea of enormous leaves with surprises lurking under… Read more »

I had a chance to view another world for a few days last week when my annual visit to my friend in Minneapolis was recast into a joint trip to see her daughter in California.

The snow came early this year, way up north anyway.

So how do we not give up? How can our singular actions make any real change in the world? A reusable coffee cup, a couple of reusable shopping bags, a vow against single-serve plastic bottles — but the oceans are still full of plastics and, frankly, so are our bodies.

This is the end of the run for Greenpoint, but I’ll still be here, noticing the bees on the flowers, the greening of the mountains in the spring, the shooting stars and fireflies. You look out, too, for all the beauty this old Earth of ours offers us.