Coffee on the Step
I have been drinking the first coffee of the morning on the back step, not in the kitchen and not in the chair by the window, but on the step itself, which is concrete and slightly cold and faces east. The change is small....
Slow Living
Evenings in, simple food, and the small rituals that fill the indoor hours.
Mornings on the Porch Again
The porch came back this week. I do not mean the structure, which has been there all winter, but the use of it. The first morning warm enough to take coffee outside happened on Saturday, and I have been on the porch for at...
Spring Cleaning Without Spring Cleaning
Spring cleaning, as my grandmother understood it, was a real thing with a real timeline. Windows came off their frames and got washed inside and out. Rugs went over the line in the back yard and got beaten with a broom. Curtains came down...
The First Long Light
The first long evening of the year happened on a Tuesday at the end of February. I noticed it because I was washing dishes after dinner and the light over the sink was still natural light, not artificial, which it had not been for...
Mending Clothes by the Window
I have been mending clothes by the window. This is not a thing I expected to write a paragraph about, and yet it has become one of the steadier parts of my winter. The basket has been there for years. It is small, lidded,...
The Stack of Books I Finally Touched
The stack of books by the chair has been there since before Thanksgiving. Five books, all things I meant to read this winter, some bought new and some pulled off the shelf in a moment of resolve back in October. By mid-January I had...
A House Full of Nothing to Do
Christmas Eve at our house is quiet. There are no small children anymore, and the larger family travel happens on different days, so the evening of December 24 has settled, over the years, into a long stretch of unscheduled hours that we have learned...
The Solstice Walk We Almost Skipped
The solstice walk was almost not a walk. The forecast had been wrong all week and by Sunday afternoon the gray had thickened into the kind of low ceiling that does not look like weather, exactly, but makes you not want to go anywhere....
First Frost and the Quiet List
The first hard frost arrived on a Tuesday. I noticed it before I noticed anything else, because the back step was white when I opened the door to bring in the empty mug from the night before, and the mug had a fine rim...
The Card Table Comes Back in Winter
When the weather keeps everyone indoors, an old habit returns: a deck of cards and a few hours around the table.