Yes, it seems it’s that time of year again… the end of summer. Our school district starts annoyingly early (next week!) and I’m back to school myself for the college slog right after Labor Day, so the twilight of the season is upon us. I hope we have a nice couple of months ahead of… Continue reading End of Summer Reading
I have a great appreciation for the oldways of life, and one quite romantic and meaningful element of times gone by was their use of flowers as a way of communicating feelings and sentiment. Like the nearly-lost art of letter writing, gifting someone a bouquet of flowers is a tangible, personalized interaction, which in an… Continue reading The Language of Flowers
For weeks and weeks on end, it’s rained nearly every day. We’ll have a few hours of sun, a few hours of rain, and if we’re lucky, a few hours of sun again. Or at least overcast and reasonably warm. Mother Nature likes to mix things up a bit and switch around the order, but… Continue reading The Plague of Fake Monsoon Season
I keep failing at offline journaling. I keep trying to jot things down to make a record of my life, as a good family historian, but most of time I forget. Or if I remember I don’t feel like I have anything worth recording. It’s a conundrum. So I started thinking that maybe if I… Continue reading Focused Journaling
Apparently, I need to start the onion seeds as of yesterday (actually, quite a few yesterdays ago). It’s been years since I attempted to grow onions from seed, and even longer since I’ve grown any varieties of onions other than green bunching. It’s only February second, and I already feel a touch like I’m behind… Continue reading Mastering the Art of Vegetable Gardening
The annual flood of seed catalogs began in early December, and as usual I was easily seduced by their offerings. My favorite catalogs are obsessively highlighted, and I compiled shopping lists that approached mildly ridiculous double-digit sums. But as any “responsible” gardener does, I pulled out my seed box to take inventory before dropping hard… Continue reading On Making Good Decisions
I got quite a few review books last fall that I had the intention of reviewing right then and there, but then I got hit by the freight train of life and they languished on the shelf for quite a long time. But now that I’ve got a breather in between school terms, it’s the… Continue reading Overdue Books
