Rosebud reminiscence
I couldn’t have known then that growth is only infrequently something we have the courage to choose for ourselves.
Growing stuff
Puppy love
These newborn cuties represent a whole lot of dreaming and hard work for me. We will be looking for homes for them in a few weeks!
Our favorite things to do with blueberries
Forty or fifty years ago, someone who lived on our property planted blueberry bushes. Here’s how our family enjoys them.
Under the ice
Today, at last, the snow melted enough for me to check how things were doing. The tulip greens were up a couple of inches, the daffodils barely poking, not even the crocuses showing any color yet. I looked for the Lenten Rose, finally exposed to the light just hours before.
It was tiny and crumpled and distressed.
Regarding herbs
In my husband’s rubber boots, I walk through the crunchy-wet snow to check how things are growing. Brave and hardy, new-sprung leaves are poking through the ice. I always worry about them, and wish I could tuck them up warm. They need another mama while the earth pulls her nasty pranks on them and leaves them to shiver.
The corn people
Held in warmth and darkness, the embryos await the light
Grow whole and plump out of the broken
Push their rumpled heads out of the night
The Grandpa plant: remembering someone I loved
If you thought that story was odd, here’s another even less explicable. Confession: Once upon a time, I noticed a beautiful plant in a loosely monitored location. It may or may not have been the windowsill of my grandpa’s nursing home. Okay, it was. I made sure the plant was hearty enough to withstand a little …
Colors of spring
Confession: I always thought the true colors of spring were rainbow pastels – lilac, mint, pink, baby blue, soft yellow. But when I went driving a week or two ago and really looked at the countryside, the colors weren’t what I expected. Rust was a big one, and chartreuse, scattered through the trees all over …
In praise of the soybean
My dad grew edamame before it was cool. We called it by another name back then. In the garden he claimed from a Minnesota meadow, he planted rows of soybeans, poor man’s food he remembered from his boyhood. When the plants died in the late summer, he uprooted them by the dozen and laid them …
Forbidden fruit
I think of this story around this time of year, when our bushes hang heavy with berries. Once upon a time when I was a little girl, we went to stay in the home of some friends in Virginia. When we arrived, our hosts showed us around and made us comfortable, in true Valley style. …