A cloud of whirligigs spin down on a sudden breeze, from the maple trees newly leafed out in the garden. I’m sitting in the sunroom,...

My big, old rhododendron trees are blooming profusely, fat lilac flowers with darker purple starbursts in the center. But it rained hard...

I’m knitting a blanket for my nephew’s baby. He’s due on New Year’s Eve. I thought about making him some mittens, or a hat, but I’ve...

I can hear my brother moving around downstairs in the kitchen. The dogs toenails are making clicking sounds on the tiles, and the cats...

I sip my coffee and gaze out of the large picture window of the sunroom into the garden. A rabbit darts across the edge of the lawn, over...

There’s a cat sleeping on the sidewalk underneath my car. I can see it out my window, periodically moving from the shade to bask in a...

A great egret came to the edge of my pond again yesterday. When I saw him the first time about a week ago I thought he was a blue heron,...

I heard the phrase “shoulder season” the other day, and it stuck with me. Fall is one of the slim ends of the year, a turning point. The...

It’s been over three weeks since Jennifer Dulos went missing. There are pictures of her on signs in town, a pretty brunette, smiling,...

It was technically spring last week, although here in the northeast it still feels like winter. This morning was freezing, raw winds...

Lucy is my daughter’s year old Great Dane, and I met her for the first time last weekend. She is as tall as a Shetland pony, but where...

This year I had five millennials for Thanksgiving dinner and it didn’t really hit me until later that I was the old person at the table....

There are ripples on the water, a soft breeze blowing against my face as we sail. The jib unfurls and my body unwinds in response, as if...

Summer finally arrived in Connecticut yesterday. We’ve had the wettest, coldest spring since I moved here, almost seven years ago....

Hank is waiting for me to do something, hoping I will either scratch the top of his butt or get up from where I sit at the kitchen table...

My daughter gave me a plate for Christmas that has a black lab painted on it. “Doesn’t it look just like Hank?” she asked when I opened...

My daughter and her giant beast of a dog blew back into my life like a hurricane, propelled by a hurricane, and swept out again like a...

“Want to golf around the house?” my friend asked. “What?” I asked, wondering if I had misheard him. We were standing in my kitchen. I had...

My phone rang in the car on my way to dinner on Saturday night. I recognized my daughter’s number and answered in happy surprise. “I...

Summer has finally arrived. The air is warm and soft and everywhere I look there is green. Foliage has exploded in such profusion that...