What with 4 1/2 inches of rain one afternoon and a severe colic or twisted gut three days earlier, I’ve come to the conclusion that Mother Nature has decided I need to be taken down a peg or two. Or three.
One thing about the rain, though, I can once again see the pond. The pasture […]

In just a minute or two, the longest day of the year will dawn and summer will officially arrive.
Someone had better tell Mother Nature, though. If her rendition of summer is as cockeyed as that of spring was, don’t expect the rhapsodic example of which Henry Wadsworth Longfellow gushed: “…then followed that beautiful season…summer…filled was […]

A dear young friend — she is 45 and to me that is young! — and I were discussing the upcoming holiday weekend and I asked if she had any plans for Decoration Day.
“For what?” she asked. “What’s that?” and I corrected my question to Memorial Day.
Which got me thinking about the last Monday in […]

Yes! Yes! Yes, I did go horseback riding — not on my exact 87th birthday but 10 days into my 88th year!

I know this is not the most important happening I should write about — like the fragrant blizzard of pink and white blossoms now blowing across the driveway, like the two darling goslings paddling […]

No, I didn’t go horseback riding on my 87th birthday, the first time in many, many years I haven’t observed that tradition — but only because no “suitable” horse was available.

Last year, there was a darling mare, Angel, visiting at Judy’s during one of her dressage clinics, and I was privileged to ride her. At […]

If you’re not from the tri-county — Mahoning, Trumbull, Columbiana — area, you might not find this column of interest.

On the other hand, if you have a hankering to know what it was like to live in the early 1900s in a small community along the Sandy and Beaver Canal and the middle fork of […]

It’s about time, Mother Nature! You must have finally been paying attention to all the hoopla about “Going Green” and decided to give it a try because everywhere there is, indeed, green!

Not all at once

This hasn’t happened all at once. I watched the barberry hedges begin to sport a filmy veil that gradually evolved […]

Never having lived with a cow, I know almost nothing about cows — and I truly believe that unless you actually live with an animal, even another person, you know next to nothing about them.
It’s that day-to-day contact, not necessarily under the same roof, but better if that’s possible, which lets you “see” into their […]

Full-figured Bingo is not quite sure where she is just yet.
But, with typical feline curiosity, she is exploring every corner of every room, every cupboard, every closed door, every possible hidey-hole.
In fact, this morning — her first here, having arrived only yesterday — I almost panicked because I couldn’t find her anywhere. We had become […]

I do not want to write this column. But I must.
February has once again taken a beloved member of this family.
Beginning in 1965, February took my mother. Through the years it took a dear Dalmatian, Maggie; my father; my sister; my Arabian, Pinkie.
And now, my Lisa.

She spoke to me

Lisa came to me as a […]