After my disappointment last week I am so glad to say: The 17-year cicadas have arrived. They’re here! We have bugs. The good people of the Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang explained that the cool weather has hurt the cicadas. A lot came out when it was too cold for them to molt properly. And, […]
Tuesday evening, May 11 It’s the biological event of the decade, and it’s almost here. The cicadas that have spent the last 17 years underground as nymphs, feeding on tree roots, are beginning to emerge. For the last few days, I’ve been seeing friends’ posts on Facebook, of those red-eyed 17-year cicadas, in neighborhoods only […]
The other day I started counting scissors. Why? Because there’s a pandemic. That should be reason enough. But if you need more, it’s because, spending all this time at home, I got started thinking about how many tools I have that do more or less the same thing. The stand mixer, the hand mixer, the […]
Here’s something I’ve learned about myself in the pandemic: I open produce bags by licking my fingers. My entire life, after touching the car keys or the inside of the metro, and my shoe, and the cart, and anything else that is around, and before touching my fruits and vegetables, I have been sticking my […]
A while ago I found this post-it note on my desk. Here’s the list of items I had written down: Skyrim pie Star Wars Firefly Star Trek Nancy Pelosi tax brackets Elsevier sucks Marvel Gene Kelly tap dance Drama Book Shop Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse What…on Earth. That is my question for you. What is […]
A friend gave me the cyclamen for my birthday, in early December. I’d had a potted cyclamen once before, in high school or so, and it didn’t last long. In the rush of the holidays, I mentally categorized the new arrival as a temporary plant, and I didn’t do very well at watering it. One […]
Thank goodness for ravines that are inconvenient to build on. This one cuts through the suburbs near my parents’ house. You can hear the Beltway from the spot where I took this picture, but the deer wander by anyway, and the squirrels, and the occasional human. Photo: Helen Fields
Recently Ann wrote that, in the pandemic, she’d been paying attention to “the world that exists when I’m not noticing it, the world that goes on about its own business.” The other day, the world did something fantastic. It passed through the dust from an asteroid, giving us the Geminids. This is apparently one of […]