Recently my niece posted a picture on Facebook. It was a plump red tomato on a blue and white plate. She’d come back from a week at the beach to find it, their first homegrown tomato of the summer. It made me nostalgic for lush summers, even though all that waiting can be very trying. Continue reading
Month: July 2013
Summer Food
The realization of a radical truth takes place in many ways, but often it seems like a surprise: You didn’t know something and then, all at once, you know it. This happened to me just the other night. I stepped out, late, to accompany Travis on his last potty of the day, and it was hot. Really hot. Not the romantic, Greek-isle-sexy-breezes kind of night, but hot. Once it’s still 90 degrees and over after 10 p.m., you know without a doubt summer’s arrived. Continue reading
The Sage’s Wisdom. Or Not.
It is a mid-July Sunday in central Texas. The streets are quiet, the two neighborhood pools half filled with families doing family things. This summer’s weather conversation is as follows: It’s hot, says one person.
Yes, comes the reply, but we were lucky this year. It didn’t start till late.
[End of conversation.] Continue reading
Some of the Grasses
Forty years ago and more, I read a line in James Beard’s classic American Cookery that was very permission giving. “I loathe divinity,” it said. Continue reading
Rocks
Our neighborhood has a website, of course, with a conversation space called “The Back Fence.” It bears the typical messages about traffic, Christmas package thievery, problems with the swimming pools, and lost & found quadrupeds. Along with these come some that might not be typical in your neighborhood: sightings of coyotes, rattlesnakes, coral snakes, tarantulas – stuff like that. Continue reading