Short stories and photos shared with humor and love
I've long been confounded by the capricious nature of life. Last year, I planted two large begonias in identical pots, equidistant from the center of my front porch. While each pot received the same amount of water and sunlight, one flourished and one slowly withered until, by August, it lay sad and petal-less. The more [...]
If spring in Wisconsin teaches us anything, it's to seize the sunny days. We're good at that here. Like daffodils, we rise through the snow and turn our faces toward the light. We shrug off approaching storm clouds and dance, push strollers through puddles, bounce basketballs off muddy pavement and, when the rain washes away [...]
With snow still piled outside the window, we planted seeds of hope in an indoor garden yesterday. A little friend helped me choose the seeds and we ended up with quite an eclectic collection -- True Lavender, to remind me of an excellent afternoon I spent on Washington Island last summer, Bouquet Dill, for it's [...]
I found my friend Carol in my backyard Saturday morning, cheerfully yanking weeds and making plans for a giant hosta that has never been anything but terrifying to me. "We can split it, and plant hosta along the side of your house," she said. I explained that I've always had a Little Shop of Horrors [...]
The gifts of the Erb Park neighborhood just keep giving. Yesterday, we, who can't always tell an orchid from a weed, enjoyed a genuinely lovely garden walk though the hood. We noshed on Queen Ann's Lace (did you know it tasted like parsley?), learned about rainwater irrigation techniques, met some talented landscape artists, dug up [...]