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Where were you when the snowstorm hit?
My husband, a lifelong reader and writer, is a stickler about the proper usage of the English language and is constantly after our nieces and nephews for affixing the word “awesome” to every other...
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Do you share my sense of wanderlust?
Perhaps it’s because I grew up in a small, close-knit community, but something in me periodically needs to break free, sail away, explore the wider world. In the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Elizabeth...
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How do the French do it?
French gardens are a lot like French women: chic and elegant and pulled together in a way that makes the average American gardener want to just throw in the spade. I’ve made something of a study of...
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The difference between a lightning bug and lightning
If, as an acerbic but hilarious Colson Whitehead said this past weekend at the Miami Book Fair, “today in America, the literary audience is about the size of a microbe on the butt of an ass,” then most...
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“…Let us not forget to be kind.”
I recently had the honor of being asked to talk to the Tuesday Club in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. They get together once a month in the lovely brick meeting hall of the First Congregational Church...
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Barnes and Noble in Jenkintown, PA— local, welcoming, and thriving
The B & N in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, not far from my hometown of Bryn Athyn could — except for its size — easily be mistaken for the kind of intimate and inviting community-based retailer that...
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Treat yourself to a little bit of heaven — Angel Slices!
When I left home after college, my mother gave me two books that I think she felt equipped me fully for life on my own: The Holy Bible and Irma Rombauer’s original edition of The Joy of Cooking. In...
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Rage against the dying of the Christmas tree lights!
“Do not go gentle into that good night,” Dylan Thomas wrote in the famous villanelle for his dying father. But I think it also applies to this time of year, when all the glistening, twinkling things...
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Glimpsing the bluebird of happiness
One dull, chilly morning a few weeks ago, I looked up from my laptop to see a flutter of blue and red in the living room window of our house in the Berkshires. An American bluebird was snacking on the...
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Telling the truth
I was recently asked if I could share something that was true about my new novel. I thought this was very interesting question. Because, paradoxically, I believe it’s almost impossible to write...
View ArticleWoodchucks
I thought I’d made my peace with them. It hadn’t been easy. Six years ago, a woodchuck family set up a compound on our property. They burrowed tunnels in the mowing field, behind a rotting log near the...
View ArticleQueen Anne’s Lace
This is the time of year when Queen Anne’s Lace flowers in drifts of white across the open fields and along the roadsides of the Berkshires. An immigrant from Europe, this biennial was supposedly named...
View ArticleArugula — who knew?
I was raised in the unenlightened days when lettuce came in one variety: iceberg (and this was well before its recent haute cuisine revival). So my first taste of arugula was something of a culinary...
View ArticleDaylilies
There’s nothing like a daylily to remind us that life is both fleeting and beautiful. The flowers of the Hemerocallis — which literally means “day” and “beautiful” in Greek — last only 24 hours. The...
View ArticleThe Book Barn — a magical place for real books
One of my most prized possessions is a map that the poet John Ashbery drew for me many years ago on the back of an old business card. This was at the end of a long celebratory dinner — the … Continue...
View ArticleThe Clark — old friends in new places
We drove up to see the enlarged and renovated Clark Art Institute in Williamstown recently. It had just reopened after ten years of planning and construction, and we were eager to explore the new Clark...
View ArticleFennel fronds and Black Swallowtails
Some time ago I noticed that my fennel bush was crawling with caterpillars. They had distinctive green, yellow, and black stripes in a dot and dash formation somewhat like Morse code. Despite the fact...
View ArticleRawson Brook Farm and Monterey Chèvre
Last weekend we drove over to Monterey, Mass. where, years ago, we had spent many happy summers. The old brown-shingled Cape we rented there was a mile or so down the road from Rawson Brook Farm which...
View ArticleTelling the Bees
I thought of Deborah Digges this week and her hauntingly beautiful poem ‘Telling the Bees.’ I’ve loved this poem for many years without — as is often the case with poetry — really understanding what it...
View ArticleTomato blight and other sorrows
I prefer growing cherry tomatoes, as opposed to the larger varieties, because they tend to ripen faster and demand a lot less nurturing and support. Surround them with aluminum cages. Throw on a little...
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