Finding fresh ways to write timeless truth.
A mountain of green beans in the kitchen sink invite me to a time of rumination as I fall into a pattern of washing and snapping them into bite-sized pieces. Swish, see, snap, snap, set aside, next. It’s a good time to pray. Tending to vegetables grown from tiny seeds, in awe of the master gardener who
First it was strawberries, then raspberries. I made jam and tucked plump red packages in the freezer; we feasted on handfuls of the sweet spring fruit. My favourites came next: blueberries. We tossed them on cereal and fresh-from-the-garden salad. I stowed some in the freezer for later. Best of all: fresh, handful after handful, staining
It’s fruit season. I’m tucking raspberries and strawberries away in the freezer, making jam, and enjoying handfuls of the sweet berries throughout the day. Also on ice cream. Of course. I’ve been on a canning hiatus, and the familiar sound of pinging lids and the sight of jars liked up like red-jewelled soldiers on a towel
Gerry leaves early for a hike and I putter in the kitchen making pasta salad and a big batch of granola. It’s 9:00 when everything’s done, cleaned up, and put away: the time I head down to the woman cave to write. But the sun is shining and it is warm outside. The deck looks
I putter around in my kitchen putting lunch dishes in the dishwasher and wiping counters. I empty the coffee pot and grind beans for the next morning’s must-have elixir. I snip Thai and Genovese basil leaves from plants growing in my Aerogarden, putting them in dishes for later use. I rub my thumb and forefinger on thyme
How many evening meals have I’ve prepared over the course of my sixty years? Enough to make me weary of the daily dance of preparing a meal at a time of day when I’d like to be doing nothing. It starts in the morning when I decide what I’ll make, check ingredients on hand, and
. . . the most ordinary things could be made extraordinary, simply by doing them with the right people. Nicholas Sparks, The Lucky One Thunk, thunk, thunk. The rhythmic percussion of the knife on the wooden cutting board is a meditative addition to the quiet Christmas Spotify playlist music coming through the Bose speaker. I’m
We take a drive because the sun is shining, and it’s too bad that the mountains are in the way of the view, I think it every time. The colours of autumn are gone now, the season’s finery crisp beneath our feet, and messy. It’s stick season. I hold my camera on my lap, and
Once I committed a couple of hours to being in the kitchen, I found my usual impatience fade and could give myself over to the afternoon’s unhurried project . . . There’s something about such work that seems to alter the experience of time. . . It seems to me that one of the great luxuries
Without darkness, nothing comes to birth, As without light, nothing flowers. May Sarton Gerry throws open the curtains in the bedroom and I see an outline of mountains across the valley visible through the smoke this morning. That’s improvement, and a good start to the week. Still, I feel the need to dig through my
It is the still, yellow kind of afternoon when one is apt to get stuck in a dream if one sits very quiet. Dodie Smith I look forward to a run of still, yellow August afternoons. My weary body tells me it is in need of rest by manifesting symptoms that need attention. My mind