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
When the world wearies and society fails to satisfy, there is always the garden. Minnie Aumonier We head to the garden to water after supper. I’m tired, having spent most of the day on my feet in the kitchen canning tomato soup. It’s a simple process, but it seems to take so long by the
Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language. Henry James I’m sitting in the waiting room at the optometrist’s office, on a relatively warm afternoon (it’s maybe 30C / 86 F) and a woman asks me how I like the heat. ”I love it! How
As our lives speed up more and more, so do our children's. We forget and thus they forget that there is nothing more important than the present moment. We forget and thus they forget to relax, to find spiritual solitude, to let go of the past, to quiet ambition, to fully enjoy the eating of