Last summer I wrote in this space about discovering figs. This summer I was ready for them. My neighbor with the fig tree started texting with progress reports in mid July. In August, they hit: Figs. Figs, figs, figs, figs. I’ve been on many fig-retrieval expeditions in the last two weeks. I arrive, bowl in […]
Food/Drink
It’s fig season again! But this year, it’s a little lackluster. It’s not the birds getting to the figs. It’s not the squirrels. There are only a few figs, and the ones that have appeared seem tired. Some of them are falling to the ground before they start to ripen, others are sitting small and […]
Awwwww yeah, it is peach season again! I am so happy! And I am so peach-silly that I can only think about peaches, so I am returning to this post from 2019 while I recover. One update: I have not made a peach pie since. Last week I made one from apples instead. Save the […]
Did you know…that food…comes from plants? A few weekends ago I went on an edible plant walk led by a local guy who knows his plants. That’s probably what his resume says. “Knows his plants.” Ten or so of us met on a sunny Sunday morning in a school parking lot to learn how to […]
When I was in my 20s and we liked to be out professionally drinking after a day of professionally working, a study made the news – I have no idea which study, by whom, or exactly what it said because I only heard about it through the bitter complaints of my friend. She was a […]
On August 17, a magical text arrived. It read, in part: “I have many many ripe figs just a block or so away. They are in the tree ripening as I text. Can’t eat them fast enough. Please come on over whenever and pick yourself some!!” I don’t know that I’d ever eaten a fresh […]
It’s fig season again! This post first ran in October 2019. Now we have a squirrel who I’m competing with to get the ripe ones off our bigger tree. And our little tree? It’s still little, with about six figs and two leafy branches. Maybe I’m imagining it, but the branches seem a little stronger […]
This week Elise and I completed one of our lives’ great adventures, the John Muir Trail, the legendary footpath that wends along the granitic spine of California’s Sierra Nevadas. In point of fact it’s more accurate to say that she completed it, walking virtually the entire 200-mile course from Yosemite National Park to Mount Whitney’s […]
