Small pleasures soften big blows

    Year after year my husband and I reap more harvest from our garden than we can possibly eat in the summer or put up for the winter. And year after year I ask him, "Why do you plant so much?" His answer is always the same. "Because I never know what will grow and what won't."

    So every summer I find myself inundated with heaps of vegetables and barely a space in the refrigerator for a carton of yogurt. He goes to the garden in the morning and comes back with a bucket, sometimes two, full of produce - baby yellow squash picked at precisely the right moment for tenderness, shiny purple eggplant pretty enough for a picture and crunchy cucumbers of which I eat so many, I feel like I'm in a pickle, pardon the pathetic pun. We bag produce and give it to others who like fresh vegetables and don't grow their own.

One Last Thought on The Last Lecture

    Publicity about The Last Lecture piqued my curiosity, so when I came across it at a library sale, I quickly added it to my bundle of books. Now that I've read it, I'm still curious. I kept waiting for the author to say something about his spiritual beliefs. You would think a dying man would have some thoughts on the subject, but he chose not to share those with his reading audience. We are left to wonder.

Pandemic Pandemonium is not for Me

In the 1990's a dream of mine came true when I bought a floor-standing quilting frame. I still remember the excitement of opening the box and putting the frame together. Most people probably think that hand-quilting is about as exciting as watching grass grow, but sitting at a frame with a quilt stretched across it was where I wanted to be.

Humble After Taking a Tumble

    Pressed between the pages of a dusty photo album is a picture of me at about twenty years old wearing an unsightly black eye and a band-aid. A few days earlier I had tumbled off my water skis and the tip of the ski clobbered my cheekbone. In my vain youth I worried about a scar, so I went to a doctor who sewed a few stitches and later sanded it down. If the ski had hit an inch or so higher, well, I’d rather not think about that.