A long-awaited rain, a Tehran love story, a film about sisters, and a spring outfit to share. I stood on the front walk Saturday afternoon with my arms out like I was trying to catch something. Which I was. Rain. Twenty minutes of the lightest sprinkle — and I was not going to miss a…
It is not a candle. It is not a robe. Here is what women over 50 actually want for Mother’s Day — and what it feels like when someone finally gets it right. Every year around the first of May the internet fills up with Mother’s Day gift guides. Candles. Robes. Coffee mugs that say…
Peonies, a mathematician in the jungle, RHS Wisley, Chatsworth and retirement advice nobody gives introverts How can a flower bring so much joy? I have been asking myself that all week. Before I moved to North Carolina I had never grown peonies. Florida near the ocean was not the right climate, and in Virginia I…
Three recipes worth making, three books worth reading and a week that smelled like honeysuckle The weather this week has been something. Cool mornings, warm sunny afternoons, and everywhere I go in the yard there is honeysuckle. That smell. The birds are carrying on like they haven’t caught up with one another in weeks. The…
Rosy Quartz on my fingers, three OPI shades fighting for position on my toes, and the drugstore impulse buy I did not see coming. There is a moment every spring — somewhere between the last cold morning and the first really warm afternoon — when I look down at my hands and think: it is…
A crunchy graham cracker crust, a silky cheesecake filling, and a fresh strawberry swirl — one pan, no water bath I was maybe fourteen the first summer my sister and I picked strawberries. We went out every morning with our cousins before the heat of the day set in — because in a strawberry patch,…
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…
