A clapboard farmhouse at dusk with one lit window and woodsmoke rising, frost on the grass

Seasons

The First Cold Night

Sometime in September the air turns, and the house that has stood open since spring is closed up for the year.

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Latest from the season

September

Two people seen from behind on a sofa under a brass floor lamp, one reading, a wool blanket over their laps and a dog asleep on the rug, a wood stove glowing beside a window of snow and blue dusk

Seasons

The Long Gift of December Evenings

At the solstice the dark comes early, and in its lengthening hours the northern towns take up the month's oldest work: reading, handwork, and rest.

A groundhog sitting upright on a concrete ledge in front of summer grass

Traditions

What the Groundhog Inherited from Candlemas

The groundhog's shadow on February 2 descends from an older ceremony of candlelight, carried from Germany to Pennsylvania by settlers who read the sky.

A stone cross and ivy-covered headstones among planted flowers in a cemetery

Traditions

The Long Renaming of Decoration Day

A May custom of flowers on soldiers' graves, begun the spring the war ended, took a century to become the holiday on the last Monday.

Trays of seedlings and stacked terracotta pots on a greenhouse bench, a trowel and spilled soil, frost on the glass

Seasons

Waiting on the Last Frost

In April gardeners order the whole season around a date that is only a probability, and the waiting is its own particular pleasure.

A family seated around a laid table at Thanksgiving dinner, in 1940s black and white

Traditions

The Fourth Thursday

The 1939 fight over shopping days gave the country a fixed date, and a reminder of what the month of the table is for.

A person in a parka seen from behind, carrying two galvanised buckets out across a frozen lake at first light, boot prints in the snow, ice-fishing shanties with smoke rising on the far shore

Seasons

The Thick of January

The month's gift is ice that has taken its time. Thickness matters, but so does the kind of cold that made it.

a wooden rack-and-cloth cider press standing at rest in an orchard yard, iron screw and cross-beam above a sla

Seasons

The Sweet Press of October

October turns the Northeast's orchards gold, and the cider press runs late into cool evenings, making the year's sweetest run.

Green quart baskets heaped with strawberries, set in the straw between two rows at low evening sun

Seasons

Strawberries, Shortcake and the Shortest Night

The season's first fruit ripens in a two-week rush while the year's shortest night comes and goes, and the long light is spent on porches, tables and company.