There’s often a skinny fox trotting down the road by my house. Yesterday she (and I always think of this as a she-fox) was carrying a...

There will come a day when I will empty my pockets, pile the treasures that I carry on the table next to my bed, or perhaps in the basket...

It was the smallest of sounds, but so out of place in that quiet kitchen that I looked up from the paper, thoughts stalled in confusion....

You would think he ate nails for breakfast, combed his beard with barbed wire (if he combed it at all), could bend steel with his bare...

The dog and the cat are having a standoff in front of the wood stove. The cat sits on the brick hearth. The dog lays on her pillow in...

I had all the cabinets ripped off the kitchen walls, replaced with two simple shelves of oak with antique iron brackets. They hold a few...

30 years ago it was scrub and prickers. Of course, 30 years before that it was sturdy oak and beech, soft hemlock and slender birch. But...

Eat when it is offered. Sleep in the sun. If you itch, scratch. Greet people joyously. My four-legged teacher cannot read, but if she...

I clonked myself in the face while splitting wood. It was a bone-headed move. Plus, I knew it was going to happen and did it anyway. My...

I live at the end of a long country driveway. It twists and turns is rocky and rutted ridiculously icy this time of year. You would think...

It’s 6am and I might have had too much caffeine already and I’m on the sofa under two blankets and a cat, hugging a fat book to my chest...

How dare you trade in that old grey truck! I know you in that truck. Recognize you on the road. The distinctive rattle as you approach,...

That’s what Robin told her beloved sister before she died. That’s what her beloved sister told me as we sat around the table one cozy...

We should have asked before trespassing, but something about the golden light slanting through the pillars of trees entranced us,...

It was the most solemn of promises, extracted from me when speech was difficult at best. With fervor and a kind of burning, he made me...

It is nice that Peaches is playing for a change. She is unusually dour for a cat. Not much purring or rubbing against your leg. She’s...

We bought land from a guy named Chance. He promised, among other things, to send someone to clear a spot for the house. Quite by chance...

Gratitude is my thumb in the dike.   Some days it is all that holds back a huge reservoir of loss. The pressure of grief can be so mighty...

For how many years now? You sat on your end of the sofa. I sat on mine. Never    ever    the other way round.   Your glasses went just...

A small goldfinch perched on the windowsill and peered into my kitchen. Well, it didn’t perch so much as cling for dear life with its...