Category: Home Sweet Home

by Angela

On holiday ‘table talk’

It’s way too early to be obsessing about the complexity of timing that a full-tilt Thanksgiving dinner requires, so I’ve been obsessing instead with the need to keep the day pleasurable and comforting. Translation: No heated discussions about politics or anything else (including tasteless jokes) that makes volume escalate and tempers flare. By nature reasonably […]

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by Angela

The peach, with apologies to E. E. Cummings…

…given its perfectly splendid nature, perhaps the line should have read, “Do I dare NOT to eat a peach?” All bad J. Alfred Prufrock jokes aside, the peach is surely the most splendid of summer fruits… not only for its singular taste and texture, but also for its range of luscious color, from the fairest […]

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by Angela

The family farm… an appreciation

Summer, like each of the seasons, has its own enchantments… “abundant sunshine,” lots of evening light. We can be outside morning, noon, and night without the burden of outerwear. We have the pleasure of flowers, shrubs, and trees that give us shade. If we’re lucky enough, we can read on the beach, take a boat […]

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by Angela

Supermarket sweep…

Though I’m not averse to trying something new and do occasionally divert, I’m largely a brand loyalist whose grocery store of preference is Wegman’s, an East Coast US chain still owned by the family that started it all years ago in Rochester, NY. I began shopping at Wegman’s where we used to live and was […]

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by Angela

Spring forward

When I spring forward, I fall back. Like most of us, or maybe all of us, I rather look forward to longer stretches of daylight as winter breathes its last. I’ve noticed, however, that with each year my internal clock become a little more recalcitrant regarding the twice-annual game we play with time. It’s only […]

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by Angela

Start-of-March miscellany

Apart from wishing away what is hopefully the last of the cold weather, I can’t say that I’ve been full of ambition in the last few weeks. I can say with reasonable reliability, however, that I have hit this same slump every year of my adult life. I expect I’m not alone. On the bookshelf… […]

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by Angela

The birthday brunch

It isn’t easy to be a Christmas baby. It’s a lifetime of competition with much of the world’s very favorite holiday when your birthday falls on December 23 or thereabouts. When my daughter was tiny, we had half-birthday parties for her in June, after school was out. In adulthood, she’s mostly enjoyed her own celebrations […]

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by Angela

Our cousins, our elves

My cousins Liz and Dorothy*, Liz’s husband Buddy, and their Shih Tzu Bella came all the way from Maine and New Hampshire, in December, to exhaust themselves decorating our house for Christmas. I helped, of course, but mostly I just let the elves have at it.  When the Good Lord was doling out talents, Dorothy […]

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