It started with Love’s Baby Soft. If you are of a certain age you remember it — that pale pink bottle, that powdery sweet cloud of a scent that was less a perfume than a promise. The promise of growing up. Of smelling like something other than your mother’s Ivory soap. I was twelve, maybe…
Heat, hawks, a nest I can’t stop watching, and the most beautiful spring garden I’ve seen in years By 9:30 Sunday morning, the front yard had turned into a congressional hearing. Not the quiet kind — the kind with everyone talking at once and nobody listening. I had been out earlier on the front porch…
I did not plan my morning ritual. It found me — piece by piece, season by season — and now I cannot imagine starting a day any other way. Before I do anything else — before the dogs, before the drinking chocolate, before a single word is spoken to another living soul — I lie…
Three films, Monty Don, and Kristy Woodson Harvey’s new novel It has been one of those weeks. Pisa had an ear infection — which meant two vet visits, ear drops twice a day, and the outrage of a dachshund who could not hear and was sick of the vet and me. Then Paris and Patches…
Three spring recipes I cannot stop thinking about, three books for slow weekend reading, and everything else worth knowing this week It is still technically spring, but Mother Nature apparently decided to skip the middle part and go straight to summer. We crossed eighty degrees twice this week and I found Patches panting in the…
The Classic Pound Cake That Tastes Like Early Summer There is a moment every spring when the strawberries finally taste like strawberries again. Not the pale, sorry ones that show up in January — and yes, I know, if we were truly seasonal eaters we would not be buying them in January, and yet. The…
Some flowers do not just bloom. They take you somewhere. A spring meditation on lilacs, lily of the valley, and the memories that live inside a scent. A year or two ago I was walking through the village when I smelled it. I stopped mid-stride the way you do when something catches you completely off…
The best peony year I can remember, two nests in the holly and a book set in three of my favorite cities What an amazing weekend. The weather was the kind I grew up with in the Midwest — cool in the morning, then sunny and warm and just about perfect as the day goes…
I am not an ornithologist or a serious birder. I just pay attention. And yesterday afternoon, paying attention turned out to be exactly enough. I should tell you upfront that I am not a serious birder. I do not keep a life list or belong to an Audubon chapter, although I do own a field…
 A busy week, the best peony year yet, three garden videos I could watch on a loop and a film about an octopus that I cannot wait to see I started this week with two things on the calendar and ended it completely wiped out. That seems to be how weeks work lately. The good…
Spring recipes from three bloggers I love, three books for the season, and everything else on my radar this week It has been a good week. I went back to yoga after a long break, which felt more significant than it probably sounds. And yesterday I got what I think was winter’s last hurrah —…
Fifteen years and nearly 600 recipes. Here is how I cook, how I entertain, and where to find what you are looking for. I never set out to write nearly 600 recipes. Fifteen years ago I was simply writing about the life I was living — and food has always been at the center of…
