OSCAR ATE MY MUFFIN

Remembering Summer

If you live anywhere in New England, you know it's been FLIPPING FREEZING for the last week or two. The kind of cold that renders sunshine "ineffective" (apparently that's a weatherman term - and shockingly appropriate!). The kind of cold that crystallizes your tears as you weep at the numbing of your fingers and toes. The kind of cold that makes any activty that doesn't include a roaring fire and volumes of hot chocolate seem downright foolish.

Consequently, if you live anywhere in New England, you may also be finding yourself... day-dreaming of summer...


Oh dearest Vermont woods, your wintery beauty is breathtaking indeed, but some days... some days, it's July's verdant spires and sun-splotched trails that sound the best...

Snuggle down and stay warm, friends. 

Happiest Holiday

Thanksgiving-time brought some heavy sentiment from me this year... so in the essence of keeping today's jingly, ribbon-tied magnificence short, sweet, and full of activities other than sitting at the laptop:

To all our friends, family, and followers: May you enjoy an exceptionally merry, and thoroughly happy, healthy, and hopeful holiday - our love to you all.

~ N-zed & O-Town

Studio Snoozing, Vermont Style

As evidenced by a regretful absence of regular posting, the approach of autumn has found the Beast and I positively swamped by a multitude of projects (flowers and bats and patterns, oh my!), commitments (I've officially re-entered the world of academia!) and activities (oh... to be revealed!) - not at all a bad situation, though it has resulted in a noticable impovershiment of blogging time. The last month or so has been particularly insane... To escape the crazy, I packed up the pup and fled to Vermont for the weekend... our forever home sweet home.

It was a drizzly, damp weekend, and hunkered down in front of a carefully curated still life, with a vintage box of charcoal and kneaded erasers between us, my dad and I (my artistic impulse is actually genetic) thoroughly blissed out to the sound of rain drumming on the tin roof, and a large dog softly snoring in the corner. Heaven. On. Earth.

Labors of a Country Dog

Little known fact: Oscar - the dog who can't bear damp pavement after a rain - is obsessed with wallowing belly-deep in the mud and shallows of small ponds. Why? In a word: FROGS. I'm not sure he even knows what a frog looks like, but their periodic chirps and darting out of invisible hiding spots is enough to ignite his tiny predator's brain, and he'll slog through some pretty disgusting goop - like a BOSS - just to stand... and wait... and splash... and stand and wait again. He simply adores it. Go figure.

This past sunshiney Labor Day the Beast lucked out and found himself in VT, a mere 10 min walk from his favorite soupy mess of an amphibian safari. And slop about he did... I don't love the doggie-deep-clean I must oversee at the end of these walks, but watching him so enthusiastically riveted - hound ears pricked, head canting from side the side, tail erect and wagging all the while - is more than worth a 15 minute hose-down on the front lawn.

Frozen Repentance

I'd say this indulgence was some form of remorseful apology after the "dog-wig" post (did I really just refer to a "dog-wig" blog post, of my own creation? sigh), but at the time, it was probably more of a reward and relief for one very long, VERY hot drive up to Vermont for the weekend. A bum A/C, a black car, and rush hour traffic out of the city combined last Friday night to create a mobile dog oven on 93 South... sure, it was cooking one human as well, but I have the privilege of sweat glands... Oscar dog, sadly, does not. By the time we made it to Montpelier, a maple creemee (VT-speak for "soft serve") at Morse Farm was pretty much mandatory in order to stay conscious for the last 30 miles home. I would have gladly shared my cone with the Beast, but he took it upon himself to go paws up onto the counter at the order window and suggest a dish all to himself. No really. He did.

Return to Vermont

At last, summer has set up it's short, utterly sweet camp across Vermont. The first round of wildflowers are spreading blankets of yellow, purple, and tangerine through yards and fields; the woods steep in what can only be described as the cool smell of green; and one very joyful red dog made the most of the verdant legroom on a visit over the weekend. Each day began and ended with a resplendant walk, and was punctuated by abundant breaks for sacking out on patches of grass to doze in the syrupy sunshine. Raised through his puppyhood in the Green Mountain State, Oscar has never forgiven me for moving south when he was 2. Cambridge is far from a concrete jungle, but I can't blame the beast for his preference... there's no place like this home.