When Stephan and I bought our house in 1996, it had two huge silver maples in the front yard. We eventually lost them both in storms. After we lost the first tree, we decided to plant a weeping willow. They're gorgeous trees, but I did have an ulterior motive. The title character in my ballet and novel-in-progress, "The Willow Maiden," is a ( Read more... )

Today I was lying on my back on my balance ball doing a stretch. I could see the branches of the redbud tree in front of the house, upside down. I noticed that the branches have buds, as do the branches of the new baby maple tree. Even in the coldest part of winter, the trees know that spring will come.

Varda's appetite has come back with a vengeance. She's even eaten some dry food, which I wasn't sure she could do with the very limited number of teeth she has left. She was a pretty bedraggled and woozy kitty when we brought her home on Wednesday evening, but she's acting pretty much like her old self now. She's still an old, skinny cat with ( Read more... )

Now that I'm done with college teaching for the semester and with my opera and concert, I'm sliding into that relaxed summer mode where I still teach private students and sing church services and weddings, but actually have time to do things like garden and WRITE ( Read more... )

Another lovely spring day. My willow has a few green leaves, though for the most part it still looks like a disaster. The leaves on the new maple are growing nicely. I'm in for a busy week, but had the morning off, so I got rid of six bags of clothes for Goodwill. It feels good to clean out, though I should have gotten rid of even more things ( Read more... )

Spring is here. Or rather, spring is back. I really hope my willow tree survives. We planted it two, maybe three years ago in a space vacated by an old silver maple that started dropping huge limbs on our house and needed to be taken down. This March, for the first time, instead of just putting out leaves, it put out lots of fuzzy yellow ( Read more... )

Inspired by a couple recipes by papersky, I decided to post a couple of my favorite things from summer, now that it is over and I want to remember to make these again next year!

You will know from the title of this recipe whether you will love or hate it: ( jalapeno mint margaritas )