Plastic Farm Animals
The sun is low in the sky as my Polish Nana and I settle into her living room with our customary after-dinner wine. The enormous picture window frames the lush oak-shaded lawn beyond her rose garden. The wall on the other side of the room is stone and wood, a magnificent fireplace flanked by custom […]
Bob wasn’t wearing rose-colored glasses when he promised me a rose garden. Moreover, we were determined to grow hybrid teas, the most finicky of blooms, without chemical pesticides. No scentless knock-out roses for us, we wanted the sweetest of the sweet, Fragrant Cloud and others of her ilk. Yet, although our goal appeared Utopian, our […]
The plastic shutters riveted onto our house catch my eye as I walk across our front yard. Some are still green. Others have turned brown. They were put there purely for looks. Flimsy window-dressing on the faded yellow siding of a thirty-year-old manufactured house, the shutters are a sad testament to the folly of “form […]
“Wow!” I think, walking to the back of the line, “I’m doing that again.” My sinuses are infused with rosemary and roasted red pepper. A flake of pastry lingers on my lips. I snag it with my tongue and savor the perfect blend of shortening and flour. The aftertaste eludes me. Is it garlic, nutmeg, […]
Emily is getting married this afternoon I think, slowly shrugging off a night’s sleep. The train whistle sounds like church bells to me this morning. I’ve never heard them this way before. We don’t hear the train so much from our place in North Carolina, but here in Colorado their calls surround us like jays. I’ve […]