When planting a garden, it is tempting to put in full-sized plants so that your garden is completely filled in as soon as you are done planting. The problem with this is that very soon, your garden will be overcrowded, and you’ll need to divide and thin many of your plants. Dividing is hard work, […]
It is very difficult to find a Hollywood movie that depicts a truthful relationship. Most depict relationships in one of two ways. The first involves two people who fall madly in love, often portrayed through a montage of happy activities set to music (my husband calls this “The A-Team Sequence”). Inevitably, someone messes up, and […]
I have only gone rock-climbing once in my life, and that was enough for me. My siblings adore this activity, so they introduced it to me one year at Joshua Tree. When I reached the top of my first wall and it was time to come back down, I felt completely stuck. I was roped […]
Sometimes, we act as if the world of our emotions is flat, a two-dimensional sort of place. We may very badly want something to turn out a particular way. That desired outcome stands in the future, on the edge of a flat world. We picture it turning out the “wrong” way, and believe that we […]
The first place I lived after college was Eugene, Oregon- a town with many unusual but endearing characters. One day, my roommate came home and said, “I met this funny guy. He calls himself a botanical revolutionary, because he likes to plant dandelion seeds in sidewalk cracks and perfect lawns.” As coincidence would have it, […]
One day, I was washing a window, which is an activity I don’t much care for. I was in a big hurry to be done with it. Suddenly, the window fell onto my thumb and I was stuck. For a moment, I went straight into denial, took the cloth from my trapped hand and continued […]
The other day, I walked past a garden alongside a building. There was a beautiful, single yellow iris blooming against the wall, but barely visible because there was a giant bush in front of it. This seemed tragic to me. Here, this gorgeous flower is baring itself to the world, but hardly anyone will see […]
I recently switched my composting to a tumbler, from an open pile. The old open pile is mostly decayed, and pretty tall. In the fall, we couldn’t keep up with the volume of potatoes we’d gotten from our farm share, so some of them got tossed and left for dead. Or so we thought. Recently, […]
Near my neighborhood, I often used to see a man pushing an ice cream cart with the word “Zacatecas” painted on the side. I just assumed that “Zacatecas” is Spanish for “ice cream.” One day, I was having ice cream with a friend and his father. His father only speaks Spanish, so I excitedly pointed […]
There is a story called “The Golden Windows” by Laura E. Richards. I read it as a child, and it made an impression. Every day, a boy sees a house in the distance with shining windows made of gold and diamonds. One day, he decides to find the house, and wanders until he does. When he gets […]