Nobody taught me how to take care of myself. Not in any meaningful way. I was taught to take care of other people — to show up, to contribute, to keep going. And I did all of those things willingly and for a long time without stopping to ask whether I was taking care…
A chilly rainy weekend, a driveway circle in transition, and some wonderful things to watch and follow It is 48 degrees this morning and it is going to rain. Again. Yippee — we need it, so I will not complain. I am sitting with my drinking chocolate, listening to it drizzle, and thinking this is…
Good recipes, good reads, and the floral dresses I cannot stop thinking about This spring I seem to have had two things on my mind: the weather and the peonies. If you are tired of hearing me fawn over these flowers, skip ahead to the recipes, I will not take it personally. Between the gray…
I have been a wallflower my whole life. So when women tell me they feel invisible after fifty, I have a question for them. It is late April and the peonies are blooming. Two of the four roots I planted actually took. I held my breath for three full seasons waiting to find out which…
May arrives like a promise kept. The peonies are open, the garden is full, and for one glorious month the year feels entirely within reach. “Now every field is clothed with grass, and every tree with leaves; now the woods put forth their blossoms, and the year assumes its gay attire.” Virgil wrote that two…
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…
