Stephanie says

That is a bushel basket filled with typically sized vegetables. Dwarfing the basket is a mammoth cabbage, weighing in at 17+ lbs.  The head is tight and slated to be shredded this afternoon and fermented into sauerkraut.  Sharpen the knives. Old fashioned green grapes ripened on the vine.  The fig tree produced the largest ever crop resulting in lots of dried fruit and fig syrup. My new favorite is rhubarb syrup.  The stalks cut today are macerating in sugar for a couple days.  The syrup has the flavorful tang of rhubarb.  A refreshing drink mix with club soda. 

Late at night, fast asleep in my bed, Rosie growls and wakes me.   I rouse enough to recognize two men and a woman speaking.   Speaking is not the right word.   “Confessing” better serves.   My neighbors, suffering a horrible time.   One man is so distraught; he is sobbing broken-heartedly, and issues a heart-rending outraged roar of suffering.   It tears me to the core.   My windows are closed but enough sound comes through to recognize another man speaking to soothe, passing through the glass.   To no avail.   The woman spoke too.   Murmured really.   I couldn’t make out the words.   I didn’t want to make them out. The outrage seemed directed at her.   Draw your own conclusions.   Matters of the heart.   Who knows besides the participants? This morning I leave very, very early to walk the dog.   I need to get outside and reclaim my wa on this beautiful morning; dawn is barely breaking; the hor...

Here is a task for you, gentle reader.  Recall a moment of perfect peace and contentment in your life.  Here's mine. I’m somewhere around twelve years, on a late summers day.   Unbidden, I’ve weeded the rhododendron shrubs beneath my bedroom window.   Task done, dappled in shade, I lay my head beneath the plant canopy and breathe in the all-encompassing aroma of healthy soil.   I’m 12.   I know nothing about soil but I trust the richness of scent swirling airborne, caught in olfactory memory forever.   In that moment, (where I can take myself in a heartbeat 50 years later,) I am oh, so content.   I am the world’s laziest kid.   I do things like hide in my closet, nose in a book, to avoid the unending tasks my mother finds for me.   She has to find me first, however.   I’ve got a cozy setup in my closet - a reading light and a stack of pillows for comfort.   The hardest thing is disappearing without a trace.   It re...