When my husband Matt and I first bought this hundred-year-old farmhouse, we were astounded by the gift of it. In this seaside town north of Seattle, townhouses with postage stamp footprints are being built down the street in both directions, but this old homestead parceled off its farmland to suburban expansion and stopped with a third…
I go into the dressing room with blousey shirts and leggings, chosen for how they highlight my assets and disguise my liabilities. But this one makes my chest look too big, this one’s sleeves are cut at the widest section of my arm, and this one shows the bulges at my waistline. I hand them…
If there’s something my Italian heritage has taught me, it’s that food brings people together. Not just to eat it. Making pasta is a family assembly line, taking an entire day of talking and drinking wine while hands busily fold and seal tortellini. You make lots and you invite the neighbors. Food is tradition and hospitality, love and gift, shared enterprise and social do.
Pruning leads to growth. It’s so counter-intuitive, but the power of this truth continues to astonish me. I see it in the lacecap verbera twisted through the arbor lattice. I pruned it a year and a half ago and now it’s fuller than I could have imagined. I see it in the apple tree buds, twice…
Kindred 