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…
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 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…
