garden
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Epiphanies-R-Us
(This column first ran in July 2007, right before I became a Mrs. again.) I drove up to the home county of Sonoma a few weeks ago to pick up one of our girls from a visit to her grandparents. I had some time to spare (shocking but true) and wanted some quality time with my parents, so I hung around for a while. I picked some plums with my mom and she gave me some geranium and penstemon cuttings for the garden. I gave my parents their wedding invitation and I got to see the latest quilts that she was planning to show at the county fair. We talked…
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Guest Post: Kay Ellington, Author of Paragraph Ranch
Happy Groundhog’s Day! Groundhog’s Day has always been one of my favorite holidays. I know, it’s not really what you consider a holiday. You don’t even get the day off from work or school. As a gardener, I find winters to be challenging, living on the plains of West Texas. The short days. The lack of warmth and sunshine. The demise of the perennials. Perusing seed catalogs only goes But Groundhog’s Day—whether the little furry fellow (are they always male?) sees his shadow or not– kicks off the beginning of the end of the dormant season for people and plants. After November and December rife with holidays and festivities, in…
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many changes instantly
Farewell, White House. I used to work for MCI, one of the early long-distance companies, which came into its own after the breakup of the telephone monopoly. Sprint still exists, but MCI was bought up by someone else and is long gone. However, back in the day (this was about 1986), we workers of the early telemarketing plantations often received new edicts from above. So many that we said the company’s initials must stand for “Many Changes Instantly.” So here we are, in MCI mode — many changes instantly. Three months ago I was enjoying a full house of offspring and a healthy husband, chickens, a lovely piano, 5 bedrooms…
- garden, gratitude, green, Green House, House, My Little Country Cottage, My World and Welcome to It, plastic, river, sustainable living
progress and purpose
We’ve been busy at the Green House these days, painting with my Freecycled paint, or paint I purchased at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore, which sells rescued building materials. I look forward to painting our living room walls some interesting shades of green/sage, but they’re still working on the ceiling. Here’s what the living room ceiling looks like (
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green day
This is how I spent my day, but it’s not unusual. It’s fairly typical of how we live these days, and I wanted to give a baseline of how life is at Chez Tracey before the Plastic Purge begins. Note my regal attire, left, as I hold my royal scepter and show off my tiara. It’s not easy being the Queen of Green, you know. Outside (photo): I’m in our vegetable garden, which I’ve grown every year except the handful of years I lived in apartments in San Francisco and elsewhere. But even on my apartment balcony in Concord, a jillion years ago, I grew tomatoes, herbs and strawberries. What can I say? I’m a farmgirl…
