This morning, as I headed somewhere, car keys in one hand, iPod in the other, I found myself yanked momentarily away from my earnest, busy intentions[1]by a glimpse of gold peeping from the green foliage in the corner of our front yard. And then, before I really knew what hit me, I was balanced precariously at the edgeContinue reading “Harvest: An Ode to Sun Golds”
Category Archives: In the Garden
Pubs, Sultry Summer Edition
The Summer 2013 issue of The Massachusetts Review, which includes my story “Plenty” is out and on the metaphorical stands. You can subscribe here. “Plenty” might be suitable for the season, which around here, we just call “Thick of Farmer’s Market” (we also call it steamy-hot): All those years ago, when the guy with the guitarContinue reading “Pubs, Sultry Summer Edition”
The Dance
At the gym, the soundtrack of my younger days is spilling so loudly from the speakers it erases thought, and everybody seems to be running in place. Cyndi Lauper’s Time After Time, Nirvana’s Come as You Are, and then — Good God Almighty! — the theme song from Friends. I am lifting weights, but really,Continue reading “The Dance”
Weather Report: May 24, 2010
The end of May. The sinister, slightly noirish fragrance, of jasmine, of gardenia — those funereal white flowers that always make me think of Raymond Chandler novels and the L.A. of the thirties — moves toward me in eddies early mornings when I walk through the neighborhood. Overwritten? Yes — but also true. The endContinue reading “Weather Report: May 24, 2010”
Weather Report: March 23, 2010
Snow flurries 48 hours ago but winter’s at last behind us: when I drove the Girleens to school soon after sunrise this morning the white haze of the Bradford pears hung above the slopes and redoubts of nearby Grant Park like smoke. Trash trees, those Bradford pears, horticulturalists don’t particularly like them. But the exactContinue reading “Weather Report: March 23, 2010”
Weather Report, November 30, 2009
The tailings of November, when the sky takes on the character of dingy cotton batting and the air smells of newly-cut lumber from the house rising on the corner, and the yellow-and-black sign plunged into the front yard two doors down from it speaks volumes: Bank Owned. Auction. The tailings of November and the treesContinue reading “Weather Report, November 30, 2009”
Happiness by the Handful
My world still can’t make up its mind. On one hand, the dogwoods have already turned that dull crimson that means fall. There are already acorns, polished round worry beads Elder Girleen stoops for and fills her pockets with in the mornings. But on the other, the zinnas, spotted with powdery mildew, persevere. And atContinue reading “Happiness by the Handful”
Animal, Vegetable, Mineral
Because it seems untidy to leave narrative threads dangling (though I suppose that’s what life is full of, dangling narrative threads, and besides, this is a particularly frayed thread to keep going), I have to report that what the squirrels left us, the tomato hornworms got. About the middle of July, the squirrels washed theirContinue reading “Animal, Vegetable, Mineral”
