BasilandFig

Every spring a sparrow nests in the eaves of the porch.

She arrives at the end of April, like clockwork.

She uses whatever’s left of last year’s nest, fluffing it up with a little more grass, a bit of moss, a tuft of something-or-other scavenged from the yard.

And then she sits.  And waits.

In the mornings I take [...]

It is about this time of year that I notice them—the wild greens.  I see them in highway medians, in fallow fields and front lawns, distinguishable only from other weeds only by the clustered spikes of yellow flowers swaying gently.

Where I used to work, at a non-profit, many of the families we worked with were [...]

Andy went out of town for the weekend.  Three days he was gone, and in that time I started talking to the dog; tried to rescue an injured feral cat that clearly did not want to be rescued despite his piteous yowling & three-legged hobbling; and I tried to make friends with the crows by [...]

It is late fall.

A couple of weeks ago we had our first hard freeze, which came earlier than last year’s but later than, on average, it’s supposed to.

Just before the freeze the tuberose bloomed, an eye-level flower spike of dusty pink and nearly sickly-sweet blooms.

The ginger lilies bloomed, too, and late one evening when we [...]

If there’s one thing that’s sorely lacking on food blogs these days, it’s poop.

I should know, because I bet I haven’t mentioned poop here in at least a week, maybe two.

My apologies.

Although technically what I’m talking about today is referred to as ‘scat,’ but unfortunately ‘scat’ is not as much fun to say as ‘poop.’

This [...]

I haven’t been sharing much with you about my garden this summer.  And that’s because it was just terrible, and it makes me sad whenever I think about how terrible it was so I try not to think about it.

Garden?  What garden?

It started out promising: summer squashes, a handful of currant tomatoes, a couple of [...]

Let’s say that you are house- and pet-sitting for your parents.  It’s a lovely afternoon—the sun is shining, the birds are chirping and the kittens want to play outside.

You have nothing better to do so you sit at the kitchen table and read a magazine.

The door is propped open so that the kittens can come [...]

Well, it’s happened: The squash vine borers have invaded my garden and killed off all but a handful of squash plants.

I did my best to keep them at bay, digging them out of the stems with a knife (lesson learned: next time I’ll be using a pin or straightened-out paper clip, as the knife seems [...]

Hello there!

Well I blinked, and then I missed it: the summer solstice and the official start of summer.

Actually it wasn’t a blink.  Things got busy, and then there was a family reunion.

I made note of the summer solstice (mentally, in passing) and then made note (mentally, more thought-out) that even though it had just [...]

I love when petals fall from trees and shrubs like snow, sweetly-scented and soft as cotton.

I love when they land in unexpected places, when the wind blows them into drifts, when they blanket pathways and make what is familiar seem brand-new.