Saturday May 28th Mother Robin flew off this morning as always and I crept closer to her nest which I haven’t done for days. Three small heads, silent but pointing towards the sky, looked out, her babies are born. I wondered what happened to the fourth egg. No sooner had a smile appeared on my […]
New life in the gardenias Read More »
Saturday May 7th A large and if I didn’t know better, pregnant, red robin has made her new home in a gardenia bush that faces my office window. The plant sits in a large tub against the turquoise wall of the secret garden, it is neither large nor small but seems an extraordinary home for
Mother Robin makes a nest Read More »
Monday February 21st A large pile of miscellaneous cookbooks sits on a side table in the small red room where we watch television most evenings, to give me inspiration. The room has one wall full of books, others crowded with paintings and during Covid has become the place we spend most time when actually sitting
Sunday February 20th I played my first game of bocce ball yesterday and, to my amazement, threw the ball in the right direction, even occasionally landing almost where it should have gone. The court is long and narrow and covered with tiny, smashed seashells glistening in the sun, this one surrounded by orange trees heavy
Bocce ball bonanza Read More »
Friday February 11th Today is the day we have decided to take ourselves out to lunch, down to the biker bar to sit outdoors in the warm sunshine and eat whatever they are offering. Masked and hungry for a new adventure, we were told by Sophia the very chatty waitress, to sit anywhere we liked
At the biker’s bar Read More »
Wednesday February 9th Fifty years ago, when our house was built, the owners planted an almond tree next to the house. Today it is twenty feet tall and equally as wide. It is completely out of place in a forest of oak trees, and we considered cutting it down when we first arrived. Almond trees
Spring and the almond tree Read More »
Wednesday February 2nd Many years ago I was a political science exchange student in Finland at the University of Turku during the middle of a below-zero Arctic winter. This happened as a result of a confrontation late one night back in the English student bar where boys went to drink beer after studying in the
Below zero in Finland Read More »
Thursday January 6th. This is the anniversary of the Storming of the Capitol in Washington, and the papers and television news are full of it. I don’t think I can bear to listen to yet another discussion or read one more article. It was horrific at the time, has divided America in half and
Monday January 17th. I have been considering tossing out all my old sketchbooks and diaries from twenty or thirty years ago but thought I should look at them first. I found a series of self-portraits drawn in crayon, from the dark blue and black Critic drawn with fierce lines to the Girl with the
Girl with the Red Face Read More »
