Armonk is a hamlet and census-designated place in the town of North Castle, New York located in Westchester County. As of the 2010 census, Armonk's CDP population is 4,330 and it has a total area of 6.1 square miles, of which 6.0 square miles is land and 0.077 square miles, or 1.54 percent, is water. Notably, Armonk is the headquarters of IBM. Situated 10 miles from the coast in the Southeastern corner of New York, Armonk shares a border with Connecticut; the landscape is hilly and forested, with a mean elevation of 387 feet, is home to the highest point in Westchester County with an elevation of 1,396 feet. Armonk has a humid subtropical climate with cold, wet winters with occasional snow and hot, humid summers. Precipitation is plentiful, with the winter months receiving more precipitation than the summer months. Snowfall varies a lot from year to year, some years seeing just a few inches while others may see upwards of 35 inches, but average snowfall is 28 inches. Winter precipitation comes in the form of coastal storms that bring rain and wind to New England and the Mid-Atlantic.

Summer brings stable, hot weather with 18 days per summer reaching 90º. Summer is dry but not rainless, with scattered thunderstorms and the risk of a rare tropical storm in August and September. Spring and fall are transition seasons with moderate precipitation; as of the census of 2000, there were 3,461 people, 1,172 households, 995 families residing in the CDP. The population density is 568.9 per square mile. There are 1,204 housing units at an average density of 197.9/sq mi. The racial makeup of the CDP is 93.38 percent white, 0.61 percent African American, 0.06 percent Native American, 4.16 percent Asian, 0.00 percent Pacific Islander, 0.40 percent from other races, 1.24 percent from two or more races. 3.76 percent of the population are Latino Americans. There are 1,172 households out of which 44.5 percent have children under the age of 18 living with them, 74.7 percent are married couples living together, 7.7 percent have a female householder with no husband present, 15.1 percent are non-families.

13.1 percent of all households are made up of individuals and 6.0 percent have someone living alone, 65 years of age or older. The average household size is 2.95 and the average family size is 3.23. In the CDP, the population is spread out with 29.8 percent under the age of 18, 4.4 percent from 18 to 24, 27.2 percent from 25 to 44, 26.7 percent from 45 to 64, 11.8 percent who are 65 years of age or older. The median age is 39 years. For every 100 females, there are 90.6 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there are 90.2 males. As of the census of 2013, the median income for a household in the CDP is $159,530, the median income for a family is $189,163; the per capita income for the CDP is $92,750. 1.3 percent of the population and 0.0 percent of families are below the poverty line. Out of the total population, 0.0 percent of those under the age of 18 and 3.9 percent of those 65 and older are living below the poverty line. The Byram Hills Central School District serves North Castle, New Castle, Mount Pleasant, Bedford.

All of the schools in the district are located in Armonk. The district has one high school, Byram Hills High School, one middle school, H. C. Crittenden Middle School, two primary schools, Wampus Elementary School and Coman Hill Elementary School. Before 2002, grade 5 was in Crittenden, grades 3 and 4 were in Coman Hill, grades K through 2 were in Wampus; the Byram Hills district placed first at the 2006 National Academic Championship, H. C. Crittenden is the winner of the National Blue Ribbon award. Athletics at the high school have seen success in the soccer and baseball teams. In 2001 and 2006, the soccer team finished second in the state tournament for Class A. In 2007, the team won the first team state championship in school history; the Byram Hills track team finished second among class B teams at the cross country state meet in the fall 2006 season. In the 2006–2007 indoor season, they finished fifth at the Nike indoor national meet in the 4×800 relay. In the spring 2007 season, they set Section One records in the 4×1600 relay and the distance medley relay.

They placed third at the Nike Outdoor National meet, while on player finished second individually in the 2000m steeplechase. The team won thirteen All America honors in two years. In 2015, the Byram Hills baseball team captured the Class A State Championship; the 2015 Byram Hills Baseball team now joins the 2007 Soccer Team as the only two Byram Hills High School State Champions across 50 years of athletic history. IBM has its world headquarters in Armonk. In addition, M. E. Sharpe has its headquarters in Armonk; the second-largest reinsurance company in the world, Swiss Re, has had its U. S. headquarters in Armonk since 1999. It was expanded in 2004, has more than 1,200 employees; the 127-acre site overlooks Westchester County's Kensico Reservoir. The Indian information technology giant Wipro hosts its headquarters here; the Smith Tavern, a historical site and landmark of the Revolutionary War, is located in Armonk and is the home of the North Castle Historical Society. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places along with the Bedford Road Historic District.

The Witthoefft House was added to the National Register in 2011. Near current day Elide plaza was once a small airport. Armonk is host to several annual events; the Armonk Outdoor Art Show is a fine art and crafts juried show sponsored by Friends of the North Castle Public Library where approx

"Anecdote of the Jar" is a poem from Wallace Stevens's first book of poetry, Harmonium. First published in 1919, it is in the public domain. Wallace Stevens wrote the poem in 1918 when he was in the town of Tennessee; this much-anthologized poem succinctly accommodates a remarkable number of different and plausible interpretations, as Jacqueline Brogan observes in a discussion of how she teaches it to her students. It can be approached from a New Critical perspective as a poem about writing poetry and making art generally. From a poststructuralist perspective the poem is concerned with temporal and linguistic disjunction in the convoluted syntax of the last two lines. A feminist perspective reveals a poem concerned with male dominance over a traditionally feminized landscape. A cultural critic might find a sense of industrial imperialism. Brogan concludes: "When the debate gets intense, I introduce Roy Harvey Pearce's discovery of the Dominion canning jars."Buttel suggests that the speaker would arrange the wild landscape into the order of a still life, though his success is qualified and imagination do at least impose an idea of order on the sprawling reality.

Helen Vendler, in a reading that contradicts Brogan's and Buttel's, asserts that the poem is incomprehensible except as understood as a commentary on Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn." The poem alludes to Keats, she argues, as a way of discussing the predicament of the American artist "who cannot feel confidently the possessor, as Keats felt, of the Western cultural tradition." Shall he use language imported from Europe, or "plain American that cats and dogs can read", like "The jar was round upon the ground"? The poem is a palinode, retracting the Keatsian conceits of "Sunday Morning" and vowing "to stop imitating Keats and seek a native American language that will not take the wild out of the wilderness." Brogan, Jacqueline Vaught. "Introducing Stevens: Or, the Sheerly Playful and the Display of Theory." In Teaching Wallace Stevens, ed. John Serio and B. Leggett. 1994: University of Tennessee Press. Buttel, Robert. Wallace Stevens: The Making of Harmonium. 1967: Princeton University Press. Vendler, Helen.

Words Chosen Out of Desire. 1984: University of Tennessee Press

Vera Scarth-Johnson, was a noted botanist and botanical illustrator, remembered for her continual efforts to teach others to treasure the flora and environment of Australia and, in particular, the botanically rich region of Cooktown and the Endeavour River Valley, on Cape York Peninsula, in far northern Queensland. Vera Scarth-Johnson, OAM was born in 1912 near Leeds, Yorkshire England, she attended school near the birthplace of James Cook. She was sent to finishing school in Paris. An avid gardener from childhood she was always keen to pursue a career in horticulture, she studied art at both the St. Albans College of Art, she was keen to pursue a horticultural career but could not find an employer willing to take on a female apprentice. She worked for a Leeds market garden until her grandfather, a wealthy woollen manufacturer, by now resigned to her implacable choice of career, gave her two thousand pounds to start a piggery and market garden of her own. In 1947 Vera emigrated to Australia, after some time in Victoria moved north, settling in the Wide Bay district of Queensland, where she purchased a small property near Bundaberg.

She grew vegetables and tobacco but soon changed to sugar cane, being only the second woman to obtain a sugar assignment. Vera was no slouch when it came to being involved in the hard work of farming and had a fund of lively tales of her life as a cane farmer. In the evenings in winter, when farm work was less demanding, Vera sketched and painted flowers. In the mid-1960s she heard a radio interview featuring the Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, England, he was discussing how poorly funded botany was, how the Gardens relied on the voluntary assistance of collectors around the world. Vera wrote to him offering help and enclosed some of her drawings, so beginning her long association with herbaria at Kew. Vera's collecting trips, all at personal expense took her travelling over much of Australia – and around the Pacific Islands. Herbaria in Australia, in Europe and the North America benefited enormously from her research and passion. Entranced by the beauty of the Endeavour River valley, in 1972, at the age of 60 Vera settled in Cooktown and began collecting and recording native plants of the region.

With Aboriginal friends from the local Guugu Yimithirr people, Vera made extensive trips locating species and recording information on their uses. Inspired by the early botanical work of Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander and Lieutenant James Cook's voyage of discovery, she set out to paint the wonderful plants of the area. To her great sorrow, the onset of Parkinson's disease meant. In 1990, Vera gave her wonderful collection of botanical illustrations to the people of Cooktown to enrich the public appreciation of the Endeavour River area; the collection is exhibited in the striking building inspired by her – Nature's PowerHouse, in the beautiful Cooktown Botanic Gardens. Vera, slim and beautiful, was a feisty, larger-than-life character, who enjoyed friendships, a glass or two of claret and good conversation. There was no beating around the bush.... She made her straightforward views known to all, from high-profile scientists and politicians, to farmers and children. Vera was an active campaigner against developments that could adversely affect what she called'my river'.

In the 1970s there was a proposal to establish a silica sand mine on the north shore of the Endeavour. The Endeavour River National Park was created. In 1995, Vera was awarded the Order of Australia Medal for her contribution to art and the environment. Vera died in May 1999 surrounded by loving friends and family; the people of Cooktown are the proud guardians of her priceless collection of botanical illustrations, In 1989 Vera donated 140 of her botanical illustrations to the people of Cooktown of the flowering plants found in this unique region. Vera managed to obtain a grant of land over a lovely heathland area of about 93.5 hectares or 231 acres, as a wildlife reserve, about 17 km southeast of Bundaberg. In 2006, Burnett Shire Council, formally named it "The Vera Scarth-Johnson Wildflower Reserve". Vera's wish was that the Nature's PowerHouse Interpretive Centre would educate both current and future generations about the wonders and the importance of the environment and the need to protect the few remaining pristine parts of the planet.

Vera was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia in the Queen's Birthday Honours list in June 1996. A rare shrub, Argophyllum verae, commemorates her name; the book of Vera's collection, entitled National Treasures, enhances Cooktown's international reputation and its important contribution to botanical history and Australia's history. National Treasures includes 152 full-colour reproductions of Vera's illustrations, her notes on them, lots of other information. List of Australian botanical illustrators Wildflowers of the Warm East Coast. Vera Scarth-Johnson. 1967. The Jacaranda Press, Brisbane. Wildflowers of New South Wales. Vera Scarth-Johnson. 1968. The Jacaranda Press, Brisbane. National Treasures: Flowering plants of Cooktown and Northern Australia. Vera Scarth-Johnson. 2000. Vera Scarth-Johnson Gallery Association Inc. ISBN 0-646-39726-5. Brilliant Careers: Women collectors and illustrators in Queensland. 1997. Compiled by Judith McKay. Section on Vera Scarth-Johnson by John Clarkson. Queensland Museum.

ISBN 0-7242-7693-9 Cooktown Local News, Issue No.200, 20 May 1999 Australian National Botanic Gardens Vera Scarth-Johnson Gallery at Nature'