Tea Time Stories

Winslow Tudor
July 16, 2014

A hot, humid, sunny, windless July day invariably brought an extra degree of happiness to Tasha, especially if she was gardening. By July the perfection of a June garden has mellowed into a green and pastel sprawl of perennials and annuals, some still in bloom but also preparing fruits and seeds. 

Winslow Tudor
February 10, 2014

Winter evenings brought to Tasha a quiet expanse of hours between the end of evening chores and bedtime. After the dishes were washed, dried and put away, the goats and chickens fed and watered, corgis walked and the canaries' cage covered with an old grey apron to diminish drafts, Tasha sat in her wooden rocker with the blue wool checked blanket over the back, put her feet up on a chair near the cook stove fender, and wrote letters. She wrote to family, friends, publishers and people she had not met but whose lives and endeavors were of interest to her. 

Winslow Tudor
January 13, 2014

By January the snow on the ground at Tasha’s home in Vermont is here to stay until spring. Tasha was always grateful for the snow and the cold. Her perennials were far more likely to come back in the spring if able to sleep beneath the snow, and the cold killed some of the diseases and troublesome insects that haunt all gardens. Her barn, house and animals were warmer when a nor’easter banked two feet of snow around the foundations and on the roof. She always commented on the beauty of blue shadowed snow immediately after a storm. 

Natalie Wise
October 31, 2013

This year marks the 75th anniversary of Tasha Tudor's first published book, Pumpkin Moonshine, published in 1938, and still in print and available to this day.

Winslow Tudor
March 31, 2013
Each Easter Tasha made hot cross buns. She baked them in the large cast iron cook stove, frosted the cross on them, and visitors ate them hot for tea.
 

Winslow Tudor
January 31, 2013
 
Snow horses are a mainstay of winter, but only visit when the snow sticks properly. Tasha called it sugar snow, as it often falls around the time sap runs in the sugar maples. It sticks to all the branches of the trees and collects in great heights upon tops of fence posts and birdfeeders.

Natalie Wise
December 11, 2012

 Did you enjoy your St. Nicholas Day last Thursday? We sure hope so! we heard from many of you that you included Tasha's traditions of the first appearance of Dundee Cake at tea time on December 6th, one of our favorite traditions!

Winslow Tudor
November 1, 2012

By this time of year the garden has been weeded for the last time, cleared of dried stems and brown leaves, and compost spread upon the beds. The ground will soon be frozen, and the long shadows that shield the frost on the grass for much of the day, arrive late and depart early. In between it is dark, for winter is here.

Winslow Tudor
August 31, 2012
Beyond the grape arbor and to the south of the greenhouse resides Tasha’s hollyhock bank. Its proximity to the herb circle subtly unites it with the rest of the garden, but by late July when much of the color in the garden has faded it is the focal point, for the hollyhocks are in full bloom. Ranging from pure white to varying shades of pink and yellow, the hollyhocks are a wonderful presence, particularly very late in the afternoon when the sun sets beyond the field and for a moment casts its light across the entire garden.

Winslow Tudor
March 2, 2012

Though the snow is on the ground spring is near. The trees are budding against the full moon, and the days are longer. Yet spring in the hills of New England is relative. It is near, only in that it may be seen from afar, rather than not at all.