Russian Garden It’s a crisp Saturday morning in late October and I have nothing on my agenda today before going with Kim to a Halloween party this evening. For that party, I will be dressing up as I have several years past as a Russian. This is less a political statement on my part than it is an attempt to make sense out of keeping a large Russian fur hat that I acquired 35 years…
In the Still of Autumn Is it just me or has everything sort of gone quiet all of a sudden? I know the world is on the precipice primarily because of the Israel/Hamas/Gaza situation as Israel pauses before making a ground incursion into Gaza. I know that the fighting Ukraine continues, but that Ukrainian fighters are infiltrating Crimea and sending more an more drones to attack Russian positions in Eastern Ukraine and in Russia itself.…
Walking Myself Home I just read a beautiful story in the Washington Post about a man who spent a year of his life caring for his cancer-ridden wife until the moment of her death. He described it as walking her home. Many people over the years have written about these final moments, and we have seen movies like Terms of Endearment, that capture the wistfulness of someone beloved’s last moment of consciousness. But despite the…
Secret Gardens As I’ve mentioned recently, I characterize my property as having 30 or so separate gardens. Perhaps that’s just a reflection of how easily I can, or cannot, manage the scope of my gardening. But nonetheless, I do attack my gardening in segments that reflect my thinking or at least my aesthetic interests of the moment. I have always thought that compared to many people I have a pretty good three dimensional sensibility about…
Feeling Better In my morning review of my normal news feeds, I happened upon an article in Apple News about a 77-year-old bodybuilder named Joan. It seems that she has become somewhat of an Instagram influencer under the heading “trainwithjoan”. Apparently, back when she was 70 or so, she was a bit of a physical mess, declining rapidly into old age and decrepitude…like us all. That was when her daughter, who is a fitness buff,…
Adjusting to Form There are times when everything in the garden seems perfect and stable. There’s been enough sunshine and enough water and the weather has not been too hot or too cold. Everything is prospering and there is no reason to make changes just for changes sake. There are whole stretches of time when that seems to be the case and nothing is amiss. And then there are other times when everything seems to…
Memorabilia Wall When I was a kid growing up in Maine, my friend next door, Jimmy, had a step-father that had been an acclaimed Boston journalist. I remember wandering into his study one day and marveling at a wall that was covered in photographs of him with famous people, some of who I recognized and some who I probably should have better recognized. He told me that this was his memorabilia wall and that it…
Magic Sauce Maybe its just me, but I have been hearing on TV, in the car on the radio (both Sirius and streaming) and even online, a seemingly endless set of pitches for natural and organic “medicines” for the easing of joint and muscle pain and other ailments of the aged. These advertisements are clearly directed to aging Baby Boomers. I read recently in the AARP monthly magazine that the U.S. retired population, defined as…
Pitching Pups Now that we are in September, it seems to be time to get back into the gardening business I around the hilltop. Springtime seems like an obvious time for planting and growing things, but the autumn is not so intuitive. If I lived in the Northeast, autumn would be a time to prepare plantings for the harshness of winter, but this is San Diego, where the harshest month of December has an average…
The Universe Speaketh All throughout my youth, I enjoyed school and learning. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t cry when it was time for school letting out for summer or the holidays. But I was clearly on the side of liking the learning process. I cannot remember all of my teachers through my grade school years, but I at least remember Mrs. Hunt, who was my fifth grade teacher in November, 1963 because I remember…