As my daughter Stella gets older, I sometimes think back to my childhood. The very young years are often a blur. I do remember feeling loved and safe and being filled with wonder. My earliest memory is from about four years old, I would guess, and I am in the front room of the first […]
I fought my battles I did my time, I did it well Bitter memories of the hell I lived. Broken dreams and broken men Are all behind me now Many miles I walked alone To stand on one last hill. Now I see the desert, my journey’s end. Add one bloody green jacket, All I
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Winter is a dangerous time of year for a gardener. The catalogs feature rediscovered heirloom seeds with gorgeous sounding names: Dragon’s Tongue beans, Crimson Curtain and Banana Leg tomatoes, Painted Serpent cucumbers, King of the North peppers. They sound like legends and poetry. The herbs sound like characters from old fairy tales with names like
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I don’t know which woke me first, the bright light or the loud boom. What I do know is that the combination scared me out of sleep and out of bed. The hair on my nine-year-old arms was standing straight up as I ran into the living room where my father was holding his newspaper
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The wall was vast and freshly cream-white, bordered by oak runners. There was only the blemish, a spot where the paint chipped away, digging a shallow groove lost among shadows. But Lydia Parfitt found it. “Here,” she said, tapping the spot with a buffed red nail. “I knew I saw it. It’s a chip in
They know the price of everything, Hatchet to rake, handsaw to lantern, Pflueger reel to Peters shell. Prices go up through the years. They always keep track. So they know what it costs To chop, to burn a pile of leaves, To let the blade drift through a plank Welling yellow sawdust, To light a