44F at 9am with bright sunshine poking through the hazy cloud cover. The thermometer was reading 52F at 10am and 55F at 2pm. Today seems to mark the point of no return (to winter).
© J.N. Urbanski 12.30pm
© J.N. Urbanski The main house
Up the hill behind the train tracks of the DURR opposite The Emerson, a new inn is being fitted out with ten rooms, restaurant, bar and lounge named The Foxfire Mountain House. Most of the furnishings are second-hand items found in the Catskills, with the decorative Moroccan tiling found in a warehouse in Brooklyn. There are still chairs to be sanded, beds to be built and raspberry banquets to be fitted, but proprietor Tim Trojan hopes to be open by June. An adjacent cottage has been ready for a while and has been rented for weekends on AirBNB. Tim owns the inn with his wife Eliza Clark a television producer and Eliza’s daughter Arden Wray, a photographer. He’s been directing the renovation for the past year, but the style has come from his wife Eliza who produced renovation television shows.
40F and sunny at 9am with partly cloudy skies. Update: 45F at noon and warm without a coat.
© J.N. Urbanski 11am
32F, overcast and lightly snowing at 8.30am. As far as Spring is concerned it appears to be one step forward and two steps back. The windowsill sage continues to bolt regardless. Update: moderate winds for most of the day with a smattering of hail. The clouds parted at about 5pm.
© J.N. Urbanski 4pm Bolted sage
© J.N. Urbanski 5pm
34F at 10.30am with bright sunshine casting vivid, long shadows of the forest in the snow; clear skies stretching down to a hazy horizon. Signs of Spring: your dog finds all the balls he lost in the snow and my obsession with my dead birch tree continues…
© J.N. Urbanski 3pm
© J.N. Urbanski 1.30pm
20F at 8am with barest of snowfall. Did we blink and miss Summer? Update: light snowfall continued throughout the morning and was much heavier by the afternoon. Really, more snow? Yes, really. 30F by 1pm.
© J.N. Urbanski 12.30pm Local, fresh eggs for sale at River Run, from Lazy Crazy Acres $4 in the cooler
32F at 9am, a light icy rain and the remnants of last night’s fog lazing over the mountains. The snow banks have dissipated and a grungy landscape is emerging. 36F at 1.30pm and no rain.
© J.N. Urbanski 12.30pm There’s a swimming hole in there if you look hard enough
A thrilling 37F at 9am, rising to 45F by 1pm. Mysterious fog thickening heavily into the evening. Spring on the way?
© Margaret Helthaler Rondout Reservoir
25F at 9am and partly cloudy, partly sunny. An enigmatic day.
© Margaret Helthaler View from the top of Thunder Hill in Grahamsville
14F at 9am, rising to 25F by noon, with overnight lows dipping into the single digits: the arctic torturer rolls up his sleeves, but this time we hope its brief.
10F at 8am, partly cloudy alternating with bright sunshine. Update: 23F, clear blue skies and sunshine by midday.
© J.N. Urbanski 9am My Monday morning radio show on WIOX
© J.N. Urbanski 10.30am
To continue the British punk theme for the remainder of the weekend and into Monday. The DIY ethos of the punk movement merged with my British obsession with tea, (made from Organic Traveler’s Tea) ready for The Economy of Punk on WIOX FM Radio tomorrow morning at 9am. Making my own cold tea while choosing content for the show.
© J.N. Urbanski 2pm Organic Travelers Tea
28F at midday, lowering to 22F by 2pm with bright sunshine alternating with fast-moving cloud and high winds. Gloves essential.
© J.N. Urbanski 2pm
Second day of spring = glorious winter wonderland. Mud season in abatement after yesterday’s low temperatures. 36F at 10am with morning sun occasionally peeking through the rolling grey cloud cover. An inch of yesterday’s powder remained on the branches. 40F at 1pm: overcast, with only brightness from the snow.
© J.N. Urbanski 1pm Firepit buried under snow.
28F by 10am with snow beginning shortly thereafter. A dismally grey, overcast Spring Equinox. Update: heavy snow into the afternoon with an inch of powder laying on roads and tree branches.
© J.N. Urbanski 5.12pm View from the Office
© J.N. Urbanski 3.45pm
© J.N. Urbanski Sprouting seedlings planted on 15th March
It feels like spring has been put on ice, but don’t put the cork back in the champagne yet. Today, March 20th is the vernal equinox, with two additional bonus features of a solar eclipse and a perigee moon, in which the sun looks about 15% bigger than it usually does: dubbed a “Supermoon”.
For the 24 hours of the equinox, the durations of the day and night are equal because the sun shines directly at the equator. The suns rays are perpendicular to the earth. When you live in the mountains, you notice the position of the sun more keenly and during winter months it rises and sets much lower than its summer east/west positions. Days will now start to get longer until the longest day of the year, which will be the June Solstice.
So the days may be long, but nothing has sprung except the indoor seedlings planted last Sunday 15th March and sprouting in the spare bedroom. If you don’t have a heated greenhouse outside, you can “start” your seeds inside, but don’t use potting soil: use peat. These cauliflowers are five days old.
© Erik Johanson/@halcott718 Molly Marquand at her office at CRISP in the Catskills Center
“My muse is always nature.” Molly J Marquand, Catskills transplant and fellow native Brit, photographer, writer, naturalist, and wild flower gardener dishes the dirt to Upstate Dispatch in our new series Catskills Conversations.
How long have you lived in the Catskills? About two and a half years, I moved from New York City where my fiancé and I, Martin, lived for three years. I was born in England and moved to the Hudson Valley just before high school. I did go back to England to get my Masters Degree, in Taxonomy and Conservation of Plant Diversity (Botany) a joint programme with Kew Botanical Gardens and The University of Reading. But my undergraduate degree, which was in Ecology, I did at Bates in Maine.
What made you move here? I’d always had my eye on it, because I knew that I always needed space. We had this dream of having a farm and having wide open tracts of land. At the same time, I wanted to be close to my mother who lives in the Hudson Valley. [My fiancé and I] were both attracted to landscapes like the Rockies and Montana and places like that, but knowing that we were never going that far away because Martin’s family live in New York City.
