Last fall, a band of nimble men descended on our house. They ripped off crumbling shingles, tore up rotten plywood and installed a new metal roof, guaranteed for fifty years, considerably longer than I—at age sixty-five—expect to need it. Standing…
My last act of renovation—if it can be called that—will be to find a good steward for this house going forward.
As a forager from a long line of foragers, nothing pleases me more than finding wild berries. I will scale a small mountain for low-bush blueberries that ripen in high summer just short of the peak. Sometimes abandoned roads pass…
I used to be an herbicidal maniac. Woe betides any plant that found itself under the deadly-by-default care of my gangrene thumbs. Then, with the purchase of our home in 2013, my husband and I inherited a bountiful 50-foot-by-150-foot garden…
Last August as I was driving home, I got caught in a ferocious thunderstorm. The rain was falling so heavily, I could scarcely find a road I’ve taken for decades. The thunder was right overhead—it felt like you were inside…
My husband says I have a binary sense of time: “now” and “not now.” I prefer to think of myself as “exceptionally present.” This trait isn’t necessarily a good thing for a gardener. After all, a lot of gardening is…
On a spring day a few years ago, my husband and I went walking the trails in a wildlife management area near our town. The area is a bit overgrown, a place frequented by hunters in the fall. The meandering…
Winter makes all activity more deliberate, requiring us to focus on the task at hand, whether it’s bringing water to the animals in the barn or driving.
My kitchen at Black Trumpet—and my home kitchen for that matter—is pretty spartan. By modern industry standards, we don’t have a lot of the cool playthings—immersion circulators, combi ovens, tilt skillets, blast chillers, PacoJet ice cream makers—that make a commercial…
