Old Compost Breath has been laid to rest. We buried our sightless Border Collie—in keeping with his nature—at the foot of the garden, just ten feet away from his beloved  …

When I can, I look for land for sale, midway between Raleigh, North Carolina, where the kids and grand-children live, and the Urgent Care office in Fayetteville, where I work.  …

Last year, my family hosted a German exchange student for a few weeks. As a gift, he left us a cookbook with traditional recipes from his region. Being a foodie  …

I was in my 20s when I bought my first house, a dilapidated Victorian in the little town of Winters, California. I was delighted to get out of my 8  …

I teach ESL, English as a Second Language, to immi-grant adults at a community college in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The students’ ages range from 17 to 65, although most are under  …

Studies have shown that gardening is therapeutic. It boosts our bodies’ own mood-enhancing chemicals, serotonin and dopamine. I know I need all the therapy I can get, and when I’m  …

The comforting brush of warm air that stroked my nose during a February thaw here in eastern Pennsylvania woke up my Spring fever. I grabbed seed catalogs and lovingly fingered  …

Perhaps more than other occupations, gardening lends itself to philosophizing. Knitters, I suppose, can make something of dropped stitches; or cooks can conjure shattering associations with a fallen soufflé. But  …

I had a friend, a little old man, who lived over the hill in Pos-sum Run Valley in a small white house on a farm which is known as “My  …

A few years ago I was asked to plan the gardens of a big estate in northern New Mexico. The site was in a lazy bend of the Rio Grande  …