What Could Go Wrong?

This post first appeared in 2016, but I started thinking about it today while I was watching “Young Woman and the Sea,” a Disney movie based on the book by Glenn Stout. In it, Trudy Ederle encounters a bloom of jellyfish while she’s swimming the English Channel–and the filmmakers manage to make the experience look […]

Once Upon a Phylogeny

This post first appeared in 2013. My dancing shoes no longer have heels, but at least fairy tales are timeless. One of the ornaments that lives in a box in the attic has a fairy wearing a blue gown on it; she’s sitting on a crescent moon. This picture has a quote below it: “If […]

Weather the Weather

Yesterday afternoon, all at once, my son and I started to feel a little sluggish. For me, a little afternoon slump isn’t so surprising. But for a kid who’s usually climbing up doorjambs, ripping off pull-ups, or teaching himself how to do a corkscrew flip on the trampoline, it’s weird. But there we were in […]

Green

Last week I went sailing for the first time since I was a kid. It was a beautiful day, and I was out with my son and some friends, and they were learning to sail and I was watching them learn to sail and watching the harbor become a beautiful expanse of coastline as we […]

Small

This week, a mourning dove has started to build a nest in the walnut tree outside my office window. I see it flying back and forth with twigs in its beak, perching on a piece of webbing, waiting for the right moment to swoop in. Why is a mourning dove building a nest in August? […]

Volunteer

I really did think they were sunflowers. The seedlings had the same broad, happy green leaves. And I had planted sunflowers there. I think I planted sunflowers there? This is my problem with gardening. I start with enthusiasm and good intentions, and then somewhere I lose my drawings that I’ve made of what seeds went […]

Cloud Cover

I wrote this post a few years ago after being off the grid for a week and coming back to a bunch of messages about an emergency. I’m about to head out again, and I do always have that worry–what if something happens when I’m gone, and I’m not here to help? But reading this […]

Bloom Where You’re Planted

On May Day, my brother and I used to sneak around our neighborhood with our mom, secretly delivering flowers to unsuspecting neighbors. Here are some May Day flowers for you. In spring 2020, I wasn’t sure how to use Instagram. I mean, I technically knew how to use it. When I logged on, it was […]