Out here where we live, in the middle of what most would call “nowhere”, it’s not just easy to fill the space with song when you’re alone, it’s practically compulsory.

Runner beans, even in their youth, do look as if they want to wrap ‘round your neck and stay there.

I remember the first time I ever tried to flip someone off.

Lifting the lid on that Rubbermaid tote sure did reveal a lot more than silk ties and manila folders.

Patrick has been home since early March, like so many others whose lives have been interrupted and rearranged by the pandemic, and has not let the spring grass grow beneath his feet.

In any project like this—part engineering and part emergency response—even the most solid of relationships can be tested.

Listening to the robins organizing their days, and the sparrows arguing, it’s easy to imagine a different world than the one we’re currently experiencing.

Nimble and responsive we must be, and that leaves precious little time for noticing, much less reflecting on how we’re coping with it all.

The girl with the colorful sticky sugary treat was now licking it and pressing it to the hem of every dress on the clearance rack, having to peel the fabric off the sucker ever so often so she could put it back in her mouth.

I was lifting it ever so carefully past her salt-and-pepper hair when it happened.

Food and I have a complicated relationship, and I’m certain that it’s my fault.

I’ll offer up a few sore muscles in exchange for a dinner salad I bent over to pick after changing out of my work clothes on a Wednesday in June.

The view from the top is rurally remarkable—all rolling pastures and horses grazing and the sun gilding it all like God’s front yard.

If you need a nap, try to do it within earshot of a warbler or a mockingbird.

We never know who our roommates are in this old and crevice-filled abode.

I peeled off the price tag, snapped the ends together and headed off with Patrick to buy shrimp by the pound.

One spring afternoon, I yanked open the even more-rusty door and startled a ground-nesting vulture sitting on three eggs.

In the late fall and right through until spring, I sleep beneath the quilt I made for my parents’ 45th wedding anniversary.

In the twenty years we’ve been here, I’ve noticed and willingly surrendered to my hunger for silence and solitude.

Not one of the cats missed its aim in the litter box last night.