I recently hosted an episode of Wild Kingdom here in my quiet Seattle residential neighborhood. Coyotes live in Carkeek Park, a wildish, greenbelt a mile from my house. They have, in the past, drifted up from the park to terrorize the neighborhood for a night or two. The alarm goes out, we keep our cats  Read the Rest…

Entering our third month of Sheltering-in-Place here in Seattle, I locate myself in the week by when I last showered: I showered today, I showered yesterday, I can’t remember when I showered or that’s really a funky smell. My hair has entered a new length division where it now looks reasonably good. I love hearing  Read the Rest…

I am making this a news free weekend because I am exhausted after the heart wrenching testimony on Thursday of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and the ensuing pissing match between Lindsey Graham Cracker and Brat Kavanaugh to see which could spew their putrid stream of testosterone the farthest in service to their own egos. So.   Read the Rest…

I want to tell you what Jesus has done for me. We’ll have to wait a moment until those who know me regain consciousness. Now say “hay-soos” or for the linguists among us: “xe.sus.” I know I am being juvenile about this but I love it that I have a gardener named Jesus. He has  Read the Rest…

The spring usually brings me a surge of energy and this year I am more than grateful. It has been such an awful winter what with the cold and the rain here in Seattle, the darkness of the season, our precarious political situation and probably more than anything, the death of my kittens. After months of  Read the Rest…

I’ve got malaise. It’s partly due to the way it doesn’t get light in the morning, it gets gray. It’s partly due to having come off an exceptional burst of creative energy in which I sang the Queen of the Night, finished my first novel and helped put together a second volume of the All  Read the Rest…

It all began with an email from Tim, my gardening friend. He’d been here working in the garden and then suddenly he wasn’t. Then I got an email with the subject heading “READ BEFORE WEEDING.” He related that he’d uncovered a hornet’s nest and had been stung numerous times so had gone home to treat  Read the Rest…

On Monday I said goodbye to the most vocal member of my household but one, that one being me. Winston was a big and insistent cat. In the past few days I have been a little surprised at how many people have told me, “Oh, no. He was my favorite.” He was to me, and  Read the Rest…

(This is 9th in a series that begin with A Night in Steerage.) After my experience in Wells, I wasn’t eager to try new bus adventures.  I wanted to go to Nether Stowey to see the Coleridge Cottage.  Sue looked into it for me and said that the bus would only get me to within  Read the Rest…

Eighty eight degrees in Seattle in mid April.  This is an unremembered occurrence, if not unheard of.  I was out wallowing in the earth during the weekend, trying to get ahead of weeding the garden outside the front fence and tending to the peas that I am training up the fence.  It took me years  Read the Rest…