The other day I was stuck in one of my home state’s infamous “jug handle” intersections, waiting for traffic to clear so that I could get on with annoying but pressing errands. While waiting, my eyes caught something red in the untended island in the middle of the “jug handle”. Amid a tangle of overgrown … Read more
When I was growing up, poinsettias, especially red ones, reigned supreme in the holiday decorating sweepstakes. Big stores arranged hundreds of them in tiers to look like giant red Christmas trees. The crimson blooms adorned church altars and ornamented multiple rooms in large houses. People with a more modern aesthetic sometimes turned to white poinsettias … Read more
The Lion in Winter is a play by James Goldman that was made into a film in 1968 starring Richard Harris as English King Henry II and, most memorably, Katherine Hepburn as his estranged wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine. The play was set in the twelfth century during the Christmas season, and the titular “lion” was … Read more
As the holiday season looms, some of the rosebushes in my garden are still producing a few flowers. They are all beautiful in the late autumn light, but perhaps the most striking is the rose-pink rugosa rose. It has grown large, thanks to the abundance of fall rain, but now its leaves have turned bright … Read more
Walking or driving down the street in fall can be perilous. In my part of the world, the drivers are bad enough at all times, but from September through Thanksgiving, both drivers and pedestrians also have to contend with the falling acorns, beechnuts and other tree-born fruiting bodies falling from the sky. An acorn hitting … Read more
