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An inauspicious beginning, a bountiful end"Plastic trash, weeds, and old tires greeted us at our garden plot," our essayist writes. "Sweat and nature would prevail."
Confessions of a rapid-fire texterGroup texts may help families and friends stay in touch, but sometimes the ability to respond instantly poses its own problems, our essayist writes.
Mother of all secrets: When the CIA鈥檚 top-ranked woman is your momIt鈥檚 good to be enigmatic if you work for the CIA. But as her daughter, it took decades for me to understand.
Love and patience, I discover, go hand in paw"I like to think I have an affinity for befriending animals. But Rocky was a difficult case," our essayist writes
The perfect garden? I鈥檝e learned to leave it to nature.In spring, a gardener鈥檚 fancy turns to thoughts of creating a perfect garden.聽But one person鈥檚 perfection is another鈥檚 jungle.
The case for running an analog errandShopping, banking, and book-borrowing can be done digitally 鈥� but at the cost of聽kind words and friendly smiles along the way, our essayist writes.
A lesson in fences and freedom from Royal the horseMy life felt bound by domestic chores, our essayist writes. Then a friend asked, 鈥淲hat do you do for fun?鈥�
Awash in a sea of shampooI have fulfilled this role, the consumer of my wife's rejected shampoo, for my entire married life, our essayist writes.
What鈥檚 to be done with a recliner in decline?Two cats and 35 years later, it鈥檚 lost some shine. OK, a lot of shine, our essayist writes. But it still works.聽
It鈥檚 19 below zero and the bird feeder is empty. What鈥檚 a birder to do?People who maintain bird feeders are trading seeds for delight. Sometimes that exchange is inconvenient, and sometimes it鈥檚聽 unexpectedly life-giving.
I make peace with my procrastinationFor years I took pride in arriving on the dot 鈥� sometimes to the mild chagrin of my host, author Robert Klose writes in an essay.
What my mama told me, and when I finally heard itMy mom told me that 鈥渁 to-do list is like a mental compass that you use to navigate the ocean of junk inside your head,鈥� our essayist writes.
Everybody salsa!Decades later it might have qualified as a flash mob, but on this day in 1983 it was a simply a spontaneous outpouring.
As English evolves, I鈥檓 increasingly stumpedI teach at a university. One of the 鈥減roblems鈥� this presents is that, as the years pass, I get older, but my students remain the same age.
A curlicue of hope for cursive writingWhen my grandson was about 8, he watched me as I penned a letter to a friend. 鈥淗ow do you do that?鈥� he asked, his brow furrowed.聽
In defense of punctuation, a texter鈥檚 lamentIf prose is music, punctuation is its notation. So what to make of the younger generations鈥� fondness for punctuation-free texts?
Reliability took a back seat to style and priceMy first聽car would be one of many I owned that had mechanical quirks and character traits that forced me to adapt, improvise, and grow.
When hills become mountains, and other life lessons from childhoodMy old house and the public pool both seemed smaller now that I had grown up, our essayist writes.聽But not the hill in the park.
Bats are cool, snakes splendid: I鈥檓 on the lookout for Sudden Dave鈥淢uch of what people believe about spiders or bats amounts to slander,鈥� our essayist writes. 鈥淲e usually have to be taught what to fear.鈥�
How to roast your own chestnuts this winterHot-chestnut stands dot the streets of Basel well past Christmas, and it鈥檚 the one downside to spring to see them disappear.