Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep - Much More Happens - Spring Favorites (Encore)

Episode Date: March 5, 2026

Our stories tonight lead you through the vernal season, from the drizzly cool days of March, the on-again/off-again sunlight of April, and into the blossom filled environ of May. There will be long walks in the fresh air, seeds planted and flower beds raked, sweet treats from the bakery, trips to the cottage and the cabin, and of course, some lilacs and gentle larceny. Subscribe to our ⁠⁠Premium channel.⁠⁠ The first month is on us. 💙 ⁠⁠Pre-Order Links for Kathryn's New Book Here!⁠⁠ NMH Merch, Autographed Books and More!⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Listen to our daytime show ⁠⁠⁠⁠Stories from the Village of Nothing Much⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Sit Meditation with Kathryn⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Pay it forward subscription⁠⁠⁠⁠  Follow us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠ Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠Nothing Much Happens⁠⁠⁠⁠ for more Village fun! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Get more Nothing Much Happens with bonus episodes, extra long stories, and ad-free listening, all while supporting the show you love. Subscribe now. Hi, I'm Catherine Nikolai, and if you're looking for something gentle to listen to that isn't news or true crime or self-improvement, I made this for you. Stories from the Village of Nothing Much is like easy listening, but for fiction. Cozy, warm, calm stories. about ordinary moments that feel a little magical.

They're grounding, soothing, and quietly uplifting without being cheesy, relaxing without putting you to sleep, and just dreamy enough to remind you that there's still sweetness in everyday life. Perfect for your commute while you're tidying up, or when you want a little escape, that feels simple and good. Search for stories from the village of Nothing Much, wherever you listen. Welcome. to a special expanded episode of bedtime stories for everyone,

in which, frankly, much more happens. You'll feel good, and you'll still fall asleep. I'm Catherine Nikolai. I write and read all the stories you hear on nothing much happens. Audio engineering is by Bob Wittersheim. We are bringing you something special this evening. something that is usually only available on our premium feed. It is one of our very extra super long episodes.

It consists of 20 favorite stories from the spring and has a playtime over nine hours long, so it will easily see you all the way through the night, or you could leave it to play for your dogs while they're at work. Now, this will only be available here till the end of the month. So if you find it particularly useful or cozy, please consider subscribing to our premium feed, where we release these much more happens episodes regularly. And just a pro tip on a good way to use this episode, set it to repeat and start

with a different story each night. That way you may hear at least a few seconds of something different before you zonk out. Our stories tonight lead you through the vernal season. From the drizzly cool days of March, the on-again, off-again sunlight of April, and into the blossom-filled environment of May. There will be long walks in the fresh air, seeds planted and flower beds raked, sweet treats from the bakery, trips, to the cottage and the cabin, and of course, some lilacs and gentle larceny.

So switch off your light. Set aside anything you've been looking at or working on, and get as comfortable as you can. I'll be here with you, reading and keeping watch with my voice while you sleep. Let your muscles relax, your body, heavy into the bed. Draw slow, deep breath in through your nose and sigh from your mouth. Again,

breathe in and out. Sugar snow. I noticed at first in the evening. I'd been locking up the flower shop, and when I turned toward the street and slipped my keys back into my pocket, I suddenly realized that the air was warm and sweet, that there was still a sliver of daylight glowing in the evening sky, and a feeling familiar, but it had been a while since I'd felt it, a feeling of spring. The next morning, before I'd even opened my eyes, I could hear the slow drip of melting icicles on the roof

and birds. So many birds, I smiled, still wrapped in my blankets. Winter can be very quiet, with the eaves wrapped in snow, working like the soft pedal of a piano, blotting out the sounds from the street, and so many neighbors, whether humans, or avian, opting to stay tucked in against the cold. Now, it sounded like we were about to have a lively day. It had gone on like that for a week or more, bright days, fresh air that smelled of soaked earth,

and the mounds of snow that we'd shoveled away from the sidewalks, shrinking bit by bit. Would it last, we asked each other, as we stood in line at the coffee shop or passed on the sidewalk. We'd all been fooled before. We determined to enjoy it while it was here, no matter the expiration date. I bought a few baskets of pansies, bright purple and yellow, and set them cautiously on my front stoop. I remembered my mother telling me they were hearty and a safe bet in the early spring. For years, I'd spelled that word

H-E-A-R-T-Y thinking that the root of it was tied to a strong heart. Then, when I'd started in the flower shop, I'd seen it printed on packages of Astelby. and realized that the root wasn't hard, but hard. I wasn't sure it was different, though. Brave, open hearts are often that way because they have been broken open.

They've been through hard things and continue to beat. Sure enough, a few days after I'd set out my pansies. I woke up to three inches. of fluffy snow, laying thick on the ground. I dusted off my flowers and pulled them inside to warm up on my kitchen windowsill. I still had a pair of boots and a coat by the door, a combination of laziness and superstition, had kept me from putting them away,

and I pulled them all on and stepped back outside. The clouds that had dropped this, snow had moved on when the sky was a bright, enthusiastic blue. I started to walk through the neighborhood, feeling the snow, so soft and full of old raindrops, disappear into nothing underfoot. It was a lovely combination of sensations. The sun warm on my face. the quiet of the snow, and the air still sweet and smelling of spring. I turned a corner and watched as a couple of dogs were let out of a side door to run in their yard. They leapt through the snow, flipped over and rolled joyfully in it.

I'd heard someone say once, that play is a sign of safety, that once our basic needs are met, and we feel protected from harm. Well, that's when we can play. We can be creative and open and silly. I watched the dog skidding through the soft snow. One found a ball and squeaked it in his teeth, and they both went running along the fence into their backyard.

I put my hands in my pocket. and kept walking, thinking about the places in my life, where I felt like I could play. There were a lot of them, I realized, and the places I didn't play. Well, that was useful to think about, too. Sometimes there are things we can do about that, and sometimes it's just time to move on. At some point, I realized I'd been walking toward a tiny part. park, hidden down a dirt road on the edge of my neighborhood. I'd walked by it a few times before I'd ever seen the sign inviting passers-by to enjoy the spot from dawn till dusk. There was a patch

of open space, now covered by a smooth expanse of unbroken snow, a few tall trees and a path that led through a grove of maples that eventually came out at a dead end a few blocks over. Here the snow had a thin crust of ice, like the crackly caramelized top of a creme brule. It was oddly satisfying to hear its faint snap with each step. The air was warming in the sun, and I had a feeling this snow could eat. easily be gone by sunset. I left footprints all the way up to the edge of the woods, where the thicket of trees had protected the gravel path from snow.

A few feet in, I noticed, at chest height, on the nearest tree, a galvanized bucket, suspended from a hook in the bark. I rushed over to it. With the excitement, of a child. I had seen this before, and the memory was sweet in every sense. For many years in my childhood, my siblings and I had spent our week of spring break at our aunt's old white farmhouse, a few hours north of home. Some years the winter would drag her feet through that week,

and we'd spend our days baking muffins and cookies in Auntie's warm kitchen or bundled up on sofas, watching funny old movies, and playing board games. And sometimes we'd arrive for a week of fine, warm weather, and we'd play croquet in mudboots in the yard, and hunt for treasures in the hayloft of the house. the big red barn. And once or twice, we'd been there for a sugar snow. It was a time, just like now, when after a bit of warm weather, a sudden cold snap fell, making the sap run quick from the trees. We'd all gone out together to see how the metal spouts, spiles, she'd called them,

were screwed into drilled holes in the bark. We'd hung buckets from hooks to collect the sap, and some days had to empty them every few hours. In the barn, she had an old wood-burning stove, and it was one kid's job to bring firewood, another's to stir the pot of sap on top, and another's to pet the barn kitties when they came out to warm themselves by the fire.

Auntie watched over, laughing at our goofy stories and songs as we worked. With a big batch of sap, it might take us all day to cook it down into syrup. But once we'd done it, we'd pour it carefully into jugs and go stickily into the farmhouse. We'd make plates and plates of pancakes.

and eat them for dinner with the fresh syrup and slices of banana and chewy pieces of pecan. If we could find clean patches of snow, she'd help us pour the hot syrup into it, making shapes, stars, and hearts, and our initials to eat like candy. I laughed, walking through the woods, thinking of my poor, saintly aunt, to have a household full of rowdy children, stuffed full of sugar for a whole week. I guessed someone would be out soon to collect the sap. I hoped they might have a little helper with them, and that they might feel as safe as I had with Auntie and play as hard as they liked. pillow forts and tree houses.

When I was a kid, playing with my friends, it seemed like our constant ambition to build a fort, to make a clubhouse, somehow to construct a space for ourselves. That could only be permeated by grown-ups, when snacks were handed through a flap in the blankets. The best version of this dream we could imagine was a treehouse. And I remember sketching out plans with the stub of a pencil

in a spiral-bound notebook with most of the pages ripped out, as long as you're dreaming. You may as well dream big, so our treehouse would have, retractable stairs to keep out siblings who might try to take over the place as well as maybe bears

we were kids it made sense at the time we'd have a fridge stocked with drinks and snacks where would we plug it in maybe a knot in the tree. Maybe we could figure out how to turn sap into electricity. Yeah, I'd make a note to invent that later.

We'd have binoculars for spotting friends in their trees a few yards away. A slide or better yet a zip line to carry us back. down, and we'd hold our meetings up there. About what? You know, nine-year-old stuff. Very important, you wouldn't understand. We never achieved our ambition of a tree house. The logistics quickly overwhelmed us, and when our friends, who claimed to have a cousin in the country, who had one? We looked at them with a good deal of skepticism. Maybe treehouses were only in movies, or adventure stories, still. We kept attempting to make forts wherever we could, with school canceled. On one sunny snow day, we met up at the end of the block where there was an important.

lot, full of knee-high snow. It was late winter, and the deep chill was giving over to slightly less frigid temps, so the snow packed together nicely. And we had a genius idea to shovel it into milk crates, the plastic kind with faded writing on the sides. All garages have them. Though they aren't acquired in any way than I know. They just appear in a corner or on a shelf and get filled with battered soft balls or swim goggles. We found when they were packed with heavy snow, they turned out perfect blocks to build with. We shoveled a flat space and started to lay them. First a foundation and then rising walls. When the walls got to their third or fourth layer of blocks. We realized we'd forgotten to leave a space for the door and had fun kicking one out. Also,

a ceiling stymied us, and as we started to make plans to swipe tarps from our sheds and basements, we got hungry and all trudged to the nearest of our houses, to be fed soon. To be fed soon. and sandwiches, while our snow pants dripped dry by the back door. Overnight, the snow turned to rain, and by morning our ice palace was a lake, with the few small, square icebergs floating in it. I'm sure we hadn't given up. Just changed tactics again. after all, what's better on a rainy day than a blanket for it?

I'm sure we'd regrouped in someone's basement or living room and stacked couch cushions and bed pillows into a frame and draped blankets and coverlets over the whole thing. We'd probably had enough room to set out a board game. and huddle around it to roll the dice and mark down on the tiny pads of paper if we thought it had been Professor Plum in the conservatory with a lead pipe or Mrs. Peacock in the billiard room with the candlestick, years later when I was a teenager in the last year of high school.

I'd been on a hike through the woods in the back acres of my grandparents' farm and found a tree with flat wooden rungs, nailed into the trunk like a ladder. I'd looked up and seen a little house, a platform, balancing on a broad branch with a few walls of mismatched lumber nailed together, and a small square window cut out. The wood was bleached by the sun, and when I reached up to test the strength of one of the rungs,

came apart in my hand. So, treehouses were real. someone had made this one and played here. And though I couldn't climb up to see it myself, I bet there was in a corner under a pile of dried old leaves, a toy or a book or a box of treasures. Even now, I'm still looking for those little play. to tuck into. Maybe less a clubhouse and more a nest. Today was a day like the one that had turned our

ice house into slush. Rain coming down over the crunchy drifts of snow that were slowly shrinking. water ran off the roof, drumming in the gutters, and rushing in rivulets down the sidewalk, and into the storm drains. I'd wanted to get out for a walk. It would be a chilly, muddy mess, and so I'd reframed my thoughts a bit. if I couldn't go out, could I make staying in even more tempting? Was I too old to make a pillow fort? It turned out I was not. I chuckled to myself as I took the cushions off the couch and spread a tartan blanket over the living room rug.

I took a few tries, and I had fun along the way. But soon I had a little structure with cushions as walls. I got creative and wedged a broom between two chairs, so it stood upright. Through the hole at the end of the broomstick, I threaded a strand of dental floss, which is sturdy stuff, by the way. When you need to hang something heavy, get thee to the medicine cabinet and stretched it from the broom to a nail

that usually held a painting behind the couch. Then I crossed my fingers and flung a top sheet over the floor. It made a draping cover. A tent to my little nest. I took the comforter from my bed and crawled inside with it, added more pillows,

and laid back and looked up at the tented ceiling. I let out a slow sigh. I felt a little giddy. So glad now to not. be going out. I could stay in here all afternoon. But first, snacks. I wriggled back out and padded to the kitchen, where the rain was thrumming against the window over the sink. The snow was shrinking fast. At this rate, we'd wake up tomorrow to bear lawns on clear roofs. My neighbor still had a few reindeer and a light-up snowman in his yard.

And I had a feeling this weekend would be the one that saw a lot of us, taking down our decorations and twinkle lights. I made myself a tray of treats. Apple slices sprinkled with cinnamon, a glass of grapefruit soda, and a bowl of those little peanut butter-filled pretzels. I slid my tray into my hideaway, along with my book. I could watch movies, listen to music, read and nap, or just watch the light change through the walls of my fort.

We would come out of hibernation soon. but not quite yet. Sticks and stones. I followed the train tracks out of town from the little depot, past the corner shop, in my boots. As the ground was still spongy and wet with spring rain,

I'd been taking this walk for ages. Decades. It was one of my favorite, trails, even though it wasn't quite a trail, just a worn path through the grass with the train tracks on one side and thick woods on the other, how this little patch of wilderness had escaped turning into a neighborhood. I didn't know. But I was so glad it had. It was solitary, and except for the train that came through a few times a day. Very quiet. It had been cool when I left the house, but now, even in the shade of the trees, at the edge of the path, I was getting warm.

I slipped my sweater off and tied it around my waist. edged around muddy spots. I walked carefully where the ground was soft. I spotted a thin fallen branch hanging where it had caught

in the crook of a tree on its way down after a winter storm and left the path for a few minutes to tug it down. It was sturdy about as big a

as a baseball bat, and the perfect height for a walking stick. I stripped off the tiny branchlets from its length and found a spot near a crook at shoulder height, where my hand fit fit just right. With the lines of bark, I'd learned to love a good walk for my grandfather, who, like me, was most at ease in the quiet, thinking back lots of those tracks, which had seemed like epic safaris at the time, had only been around the long edge of the garden and into the apple trees at the back of the lot.

But he'd always kept an eye out for a walking, stick for me as we went, and we'd found one nearly every time. He was a patient man, and never rushed my short legs to keep up. He fit his pace to mine instead. We'd pick up horse chestnuts and shiny rocks and look for birds' nests in the trees. When we cleaned out his house a few years ago. In the garage, in an old barrel in the corner, we'd found a few dozen, short, thin sticks. My cousin had guessed. It was just kinling. He'd collected for the fireplace. But I recognized them. They were all my walking sticks from our adventures. He'd saved them one by one and kept them all these years.

It was the only thing I'd asked for from all the things we packed and sorted. And now, that little barrel sat by my own back door. I was too big for those little sticks. But maybe one day I'd have someone little to take on walks and point out nests and spider webs too. So I kept them. Back on the path, I strolled on, liking the sound that the stick made

when it crunched into the gravelly earth. I found that walking with the stick also helped me slow down a bit. Sometimes rushing just became second nature. And I would find myself, hurrying through things needlessly and missing a lot of the best parts. When I added the stick into my stride, it took me off autopilot, and I enjoyed a true walking pace. I'd read years before, a study on rushing and kindness that found when people felt

under pressure to hurry. They were less likely to help someone in need. That had stuck with me, and I suspected that lots of harsh words and didn't considerate acts were rooted in feeling like there wasn't time to stop and consider a different way.

My walks were a way to regulate my own inner metronome. I always came away from them, reset to a better tempo. I started to feel a rumbling in the ground, and I watched a few kernels of wheat that the last cargo train had dropped, bouncing, vibrating on the tracks. A train was coming. I always tucked into the woods when one came.

by. I don't know why. I was on public land, and no one would object to me walking here. Maybe it was because I didn't want my solitude interrupted. I liked not being seen. So I turned toward the trees and walked a dozen feet in. The train came closer, and I liked the rushing sound of it. and the way the wind blew over my legs. In the woods, bright colors caught my eye, and I noticed a blue and green scarf wound around a low-hanging branch. Often, when I walked in the winter, if I found a glove or hat lost on the trail,

I'd prop it up somewhere, its owner might spy it. And I guessed that was what was happening here. A lost scarf, keeping a branch warm. But as I got closer, I saw that there were also dried flowers. Hydraanges that were tucked into a big open knot, and looking down a score of shiny, smooth. rocks. It may have started with a lost scarf, but was becoming a place where little gifts to the forest itself were left. I noticed a bunch of lilacs, still fresh and sweet, bound together

with a string were propped by the roots and the two halves of a bright blue robin's shell. gently cupped in the earth. The sound of the train was fading in the distance. I felt that I wanted to add something to the offerings. I knew where some of those pretty stones had come from and cut a bit deeper into the woods. There was a stream, not even wide enough to be called a creek

that ran, like a crooked line through the land, and I walked till I heard the tinkling sound of it. My walking stick and I left prints in the silt of the banks till I found a spot to squat down and hunt for rocks. I usually resist the urge when I go to the beach or some other stone-rich place to pick up the smear, moothest, prettiest ones.

Put them in my pocket. What would I do with them when I got home? But here, I thought I might just take one, and I let my fingers trail through the water. It was so clear that I could see the rainbow of pebbles underneath. And I plucked a few up and let the moving stream rinse them in my palms. They were shades of earthy red and green,

and even as pretty as they were. They didn't feel like the right ones. I dipped my hand back into the water and felt my finger slip into something that might have been a ring. When I drew it out, I saw that it was a stone, with a hole in it. It was about the size of my palm and a light gray that grew paler as it dried.

I'd heard about stones like these, but I'd never found one before. It felt like reaching into the grass and coming away with a four-leaf clover. I rinsed my hands in the creek and pushed up on my walking stick and headed back to the tree on a low branch. I threaded the stone over a clump of budding leaves and stepped back to admire it. I took a deep breath of the forest air and let it out and went with my stick back to the trail. Fiddlehead ferns. I'd taken up foraging when I'd moved into the country a few years back. I'd be out on a walk and spot something that looked familiar, a leaf, a mushroom, a nut in a shiny shell, a berry on a vine. And I'd know that I just did not know enough to identify it, certainly to know if I could snap, and I'd know if I could snap,

on it. Luckily, I'd spotted a flyer at the library for the community education classes scheduled for that spring. Among them, a week-long course in foraging. It promised plenty of fresh air, forest bathing. A beginner's handbook to identifying edible plants and fun. I signed up immediately, and it had delivered on everything it promised. It had felt like a week of grown-up summer camp. We'd met each day at a different location and set out on a hike. Along the way, our guide would encourage us to notice as much about the environment as we could. The sound of the woods.

Of wind up in the leafy branches. Of animals and insects going about their business. Of moving water. And the sound of our own footsteps on the trail. We stopped frequently. to gather around clumps of leafy plants, or to look down at a bunch of berries in the guide's hand. We learned which conditions worked best for which foods,

how to identify plants and how much to take so as not to harm them. We'd gathered berries, several different kinds, as well as leeks, nettle, dandelion greens, and cat-tail roots. We'd found golden chanterelles, wild asparagus. And on a very exciting day, a paw-paw tree, absolutely overflowing with fruit. We ate lots as we went. whatever could be eaten raw and that we had an appetite for.

The rest we carted back to the kitchen at the high school, which we were borrowing for the length of the course. We'd cook our greens, saute our asparagus or sun chokes, and share them, all sitting at a long table in the cafeteria. My field guide was well-thumbed and marked now. I kept notes as I continued to forage through the summer and fall, where I found things, how ripe they had been, the date and the weather, how much I had taken. It was still early in the season, but I was fairly sure not too soon for a favorite of mine. Fiddlehead ferns. In the city, I'm sure they felt like a delicacy. They had been for me

before I'd come here. In our woods, they were abundant, a staple, in fact, and so, so delicious. So on went my boots, my foraging apron with its deep pockets for collecting, and my woolly cardigan to keep the breezy chill from my skin. The mid-morning sun felt good on my face as I trekked toward the edge of the forest. Ferns like the shady spots near water, places where the soil is dark, dark and damp. So I took in the light while I could. I drew deep breaths and felt a natural, soft smile spread across my face. Even when I don't think it will work, that being outside, walking briskly in the cool air will lift my mood, it still does, nearly at least. It still does, nearly

every time. I find myself three minutes into a walk, smiling, humming, thinking about how glad I am to be outside, awake and alive for another day in the world. I stopped just inside the woods to let my eyes adjust to the dim light. I looked down at the roots. growing through the path, the green fuzz of moss on bark, the may-apples sprouting. In the near distance, I heard crunching leaves and saw a scurry of squirrels chasing each other through the trees. I started down the trail, in no hurry, just taking in the spring moment. before I knew it, the trees would all be budded out. Then, seemingly moments later, in full leaf,

the cliche that time moves faster as you age felt true enough, and the only way I could find to slow it down was to pay close attention to the moment I was in, There was a creek, which sometimes dried up completely in the summer, but was now a few feet across of slow-moving water and the sound it made, the soft liquid ripple and burble, signaled that ferns were likely close by. I found them in clumps, tightly furled fronds. about five or six inches high. I'd learned to check first that these were the sort for eating, so I felt their stalks, noting that they had a deep, B-shaped groove along the inside, a bit like a rib of celery would, and that they were smooth rather than fuzzy. Some of the heads had a papery covering, which came away easily in my hands. All of these characteristics confirmed

that I had found my quarry. I didn't even need my foraging knife to free them. I just felt along the stem and snapped them where they easily gave, like you would with a stalk of asparagus. from each clump of six or seven fronds. I only took one or two, any more and the plant might struggle through the season. It was something we'd talked about a lot in our week of classes, that nature is sending you signals. If you'll venture to speak her language,

you can communicate, there are things intended to be taken. Seed pods intended to be broken open, not meant to be carried away. So help yourself, but don't be greedy. Some plants were trying to teach you about respecting boundaries. Poison Oak, for example. Wasn't she just saying, this isn't for you? please don't touch me. Not everything in the forest was for me, realizing that there was a way to be here, to receive and give and feel a part of it all, and that that way involved intention and attention, made every trip out a sort of meditation. Every trip not only lifted my spirits.

It nourished them. It took more than an hour or so, wandering along the creek in the shadiest corners of the wood to fill the pockets of my apron with the tender bound-up chute. I stopped on a log and added notes to my field guide. April 1st found several cups of fiddleheads near creek, light breeze, warm, water flowing,

no ice left. Then I started back, thinking of the dish I could make with what I'd found. Ferns have a flavor like asparagus mixed with green peas, and they are delicious when briefly boiled and then sauteed in olive oil. I might mix mine with some pasta and lemon, top with toasted pine nuts and fresh black pepper. I was looking forward to a summer of learning and walking, tasting, and making many more entries in my book. In the bakery, I stood inside the front window of the shop

and looked up and down the street for a few moments. Morning light was cutting through the lines of the buildings, and a few of the storefront windows were lit up. The neon sign in the diner on the corner, flickered and glowed steadily on. I knew they'd be down in a few minutes for their order of bagels, pastries, and loaves of fresh-sliced bread

that they'd soon be toasting for the day's first customers. I dusted off my flowery fingers on my apron and flipped our sign from closed to open, unlocked the heavy oak door, and stepped back behind the counter. Our cases were full of just-baked muffins, rolls and loaves. Our coffee was brewed, and I had a hot cup poured for myself, tucked behind the register.

We were ready. Saturday mornings were my favorite at the bakery. During the week, customers rushed in and out. eager to get their breakfast and their coffee and get to work. We had hectic rushes and stagnant slow times. But on the weekends, all of us, bakers and customers alike, were more relaxed. People lingered over coffee, turned the pages of newspapers slowly, and took the time to really enjoy. The jelly donuts and the wedges of coffee cake. that we love to make each day.

The bell over the door rang, and I looked up to see the familiar face of a waitress from the diner. Her spring coat pulled over her apron. Hands ready to receive the tray of goods we had wrapped up and ready. In a hurry? I asked her. No, it's Saturday, she said with a wave of her hand. We've only got a couple regulars who pour their own coffee anyway. We smiled.

Well, try this then. I passed her over a slice of still-warm biscotti in a wax-paper wrap. I'm trying new recipes, and I need an opinion I can trust. She took it gratefully, and I poured her a quick cup of coffee to go with it. It's orange and pistachio. And you might want to dunk it, I said, sliding the cup across the counter. I don't trust people who don't dump, she observed. This is why I'm asking your opinion, I said, tapping my finger to my nose.

She held the slice up close to her nose and smelled. She looked at it all over, and I saw her taking in the ratio of pistachio pieces to ribbons of orange zest. Sometimes when I hand someone a sample and ask them for feedback, They gobble it down in two bites and say, it's great, and move on, which is not very helpful. This woman knew what she was about. She had a bite without dunking first, chewed slowly, then thoughtfully dipped it into her coffee and took a second bite. She looked up at me, ran her tongue over her teeth, nodding slowly. I think the orange should be a big,

it stronger. But the bake is right on. It's crispy and a pleasure to dunk, but if you want to eat it as it is, it's not going to break your teeth like some biscotti will. I'd say it's a winner. Pleased down to my clogs, as any baker is when something she makes is properly appreciated. I slid the coffee thermos back onto its warmer and went to fetch the order she'd come in for. I handed it over to her. She thanked me for the treat, and we said, see you tomorrow, and she headed back to her customers. For the next few hours, we had a steady stream of patrons. Some were regulars, whose orders we knew by heart, and some were new faces, who stood staring at the cases, biting their lips, and asking for recommendations.

We brewed pots and pots of coffee, packed dozens of donuts into paper boxes tied with string, handed over plate after plate of muffins and scones and toasted bagels. We handed out soft, salty pretzels, wrapped in wax paper. We sliced loaves and wrapped them up for afternoon sandwiches. We put pies into boxes and piped names onto birthday cakes. We wiped crumbs from the counter and the tables and started to deliver the sad news, but this or that had sold out for the day. As the day moved on and the bell rang less and less,

I pulled out a few of my favorite cookbooks from the shelf in the office and poured a fresh cup of coffee. I set up at the counter where the spring sun was shining and flipped through the pages of a book that was older than I was, with pages stained and creased, and filled with handwritten notes, It was a gift from the baker who'd first opened this shop, who I'd bought it from when he retired.

A kind man with a quiet voice and flour in his eyebrows. I remembered coming in for my daily bread, and one day taking a bite of something and saying to him that I could always tell his bakes from any others, but he seemed to have a sort of signature her flavor. He'd smiled and leaned his elbows on the counter, and turning his head side to side, to make sure his secret wouldn't be heard by anyone else. He whispered, Graham Flower, we'd been friends from that day, and I came to work for him soon after. Looking through his book of recipes, made my stomach crumble, and I stepped behind the counter and took a baguette from the shelf. I sliced off a good long bit and slid it open. I had a bottle of olive oil,

green and fruity, the kind that catches you in the back of the throat, and I drizzled it all over the bread. In the fridge I found some artichoke hearts and a jar of capers, and in the pantry a container of soft, sun-dried tomatoes. I layered them all over the oiled bread, cracked black pepper on top and took my plate back to the sunny spot at the counter. My bread was delicious, and I proudly enjoyed every bite as I flipped through more biscotti recipes. I took the pen from my pocket and added a note, more orange flavor. Maybe add marmalade. My next plan was for hazelnut and chocolate biscotti, and something for spring. Strawberry and rhubarb?

I carried my cup back to the window where I'd stood that morning before flipping the sign. I looked up and down the street. Saturdays were my favorite. Spring at the allotment. When I'd first seen the flyer, snow was still on the ground. I'd been coming out of my neighborhood market, a bag of groceries in my arms, and seen it pinned to a bulletin board. Community Garden, Plots Available.

It was decorated with someone's hand-drawn flowers and baskets of vegetables. I stood for a bit, booted, mittened, zipped into my heavy coat, and wrapped in scarves and hat, and dreamed about green things and blue skies. I'd reached out with my clumsy mitten and pulled off a scrap, from the flyer with a phone number, and fumbled it into my pocket. A few days later, when a friend was sitting at my kitchen table for a cup of coffee, I'd pulled it out, and we'd made a plan.

We, each of us, had a few hand-me-down garden tools, and just a little bit of experience. But we also had a deep yen for becoming successful gardeners, and we figured our zeal would fill in the gaps of our knowledge. We divvied up the work. She'd go to the library and get us a few books on what was best to grow in this part of the world, and I'd have a long talk with my green-thumbed grandfather.

And borrow his almanac and seed catalogs. We'd both root around for gloves and rakes, spades and shears and loppers. Soon we had a stack of books With torn out magazine articles folded into the pages Charts of what was going where and when And a dusty basket of the tools we'd need to make it happen We had mud boots and packets of seeds

And a clear sunny Saturday to begin our garden We planned to meet at the allotment in the mid-morning And start to turn over the soil The day was bright and warming. And stepping out of the car, I could smell the clean scent of freshly tilled earth. We found our plot, sketched out in the soil with stakes and string, shook hands with the neighbors, tucked our hair into bandanas, and got to work. The soil was tilled and soft, but still needed to be evened out.

and we broke up clumps of dirt with hands and hose. We consulted our charts and walked off the sections. Here we'd plant the herbs, basil and oregano, lavender and rosemary, sage and thyme. Here we'd plant runner beans and green beans. Here rows of lettuce. Here are tomato plants. In the back row we'd have a line of sweet corn.

A section of zucchini, a few broccoli plants, cabbage, cucumbers, and a small section of potatoes. We weren't sure about the potatoes. They seemed tricky. But we'd done our reading and had a container of cut seed potatoes ready to go in. Growing anything, I supposed, was a gamble. An act of faith that rain would feel. come, that sun would shine, that the natural processes buried in the cells of our seeds and seedlings

would activate and pollulate. It seemed worth the gamble, meriting the faith to try. So we dug trenches, spaced our seeds and plants, and carefully patted the earth down around them. By the time the sun was high above us. We'd shed our jackets, and our faces were smudged with dirt. I stood to stretch my back and saw my friend, her hands on her hips, looking out at the work we'd done. Ready for a break, I called out. Yes, please, she said, stepping carefully through the rose to wash her hands at the spigot. I'd packed us a basket for lunch, and we'd carried it over. to the picnic table, and opened it up. I had a thermos of Earl Grey tea, still hot and a little sweet. I'd made a mess of sandwiches, thick slices of sourdough, spread with mustard, and a tasty mix I'd made

of mashed garbanzos, soft avocado, diced cucumbers and pickles, tahini, a bit of dill and lemon, and plenty of salt and pepper. layered it onto the bread with sprouts and tomato slices and wrapped them in tea towels. I had a few apples for us and a whole batch of my date bars, topped with a cardamom crumble, tucked in wax paper in an old cookie tin. It was more than we could eat, but I'd planned to use the extra to make some friends. In fact, a few minutes after we spread out the lunch, the family from the next plot over sat down to share our table. They unpacked their own basket, and we chatted about our seeds as we ate.

They had two little boys who ran around in the sun, coming back to the table for a moment or two, to take a bite out of a sandwich or a piece of fruit, and chasing back to play. They'd been planting in the garden for years, and promised to offer advice as the season progressed. They poured us some of their lemonade, and happily took some date bars. We all got back to work. By the time we were done and gathering up our tools, our little plot was a tidy patch of neat rows, careful mounds protecting seeds that would sprout soon,

and evenly spaced plants that would eventually need cages and stakes and strings to hold them up by the end of the summer. We stood and proudly admired what we'd done, We'll have vegetables coming out of our ears in a few months, she said. I guess we'd better learn how to can, I laughed. The next great adventure. The front door and the back door. The air was fresh and the day was sunny.

The temperature had been sneaking up a few degrees at a time for the last week or so. And finally, today, there was a real warmth in the air. I started inside. By drawing aside curtains and opening windows, I stood at the kitchen sink, washing up after tea and oatmeal, and smiling at the feel of the fresh air circling around me. Through the window, I could hear the movements of birds and squirrels,

and beyond them a soft spring wind coming to dry up mud puddles. I could hear a lawnmower in the next block over, being coaxed to life and my neighbor's dog barking through the fence I dried my cup and bowl and put them back on their shelf often I'd have turned on

music or a radio show to follow me through my chores but it was nice to do my work with nothing but the sounds from outside keeping me company I hung the dish towel from its hook beside the sink and moved into the living room

opening more windows as I went. There was a jumble of books and blankets spread over the sofa, and as I folded and tidied, I stopped to read a few lines from one of the books. It was a book about Zen, with a few poems and meditations. The page I opened to just said, Open the front door, and open the back door. Let thoughts move through.

Just don't offer them a cup of things. tea. I smiled down at the words. Has that happened to you? That you read just the right thing at just the right moment, not in that false way, where you have to force a match, but where there is just a flash of serendipitous harmony. It feels like being winked at, but you're not sure by who. I tucked the book under one arm and went to the front door. and drew back the bolt. I opened it wide and let sunshine into the front hall. Through the screen door, I saw the kids in the yard across the street. They were writing their names and drawing butterflies and caterpillars

and pastel chalk across their sidewalks. I went straight to the back door, a sliding glass door that gave out to the back patio, and opened it as wide as it would go. Dried hydrangea blooms from last year, were shifting in the breeze. I felt like I could practically see the grass growing. I read the line in the book again, and dog-eared the page before closing it up

and sliding it back onto its shelf. With a dustcloth in hand, I worked my way around the room, shining up the tops of tables and the faces and picture frames. In the front hall, beside the open door, I stepped into my shoes and took the dust cloth

out to shake over the edge of the front porch. My neighbor's doors were open too and I thought a bit more about the line in the book. I shook the dust cloth and watched the particles catching in the sunlight as they fell. I went back inside

to drop the cloth in the laundry basket and wash my hands. Some people, I thought, have their front door closed. Nothing gets in. They feel unreachable, and some people have their front door open, but the back door is closed.

Everything gets in and nothing gets out, letting things come and go. Thoughts rise up and move on, without pouring them a cup of tea, without clinging or ruminating. It was a tricky skill, and one I guessed we could all use some practice with. I thought of people I knew who had doors closed

and reminded myself that it's always easier to see these things in others, and that likely we were all both types of people many times every day. All we could do was try to open the places that had been shut, to turn on the lights once we'd realized they were spent, to let things come and let them go. With the house in order, I was eager to get out into the yard.

There were hours left on this sunny day, so I rummaged in the garage, until I found my gardening gloves. Started to work my way through the beds. I hadn't cut much back in the autumn as the falling leaves and drying stalks of plants gave shelter to the little creatures that shared the garden, and because I'd read that pruning stimulates growth.

Tell me about it, I thought. And spring was a better time for that, so now there was quite a bit to clear, those dried hydrangea blossoms, and last year's broad, pale, hostile leaves, and twigs and pine needles. I worked my way around the house and into the backyard, where I had a few raised beds I'd built the year before.

The soil inside was dark and fortified with compost. I turned it over with my trowel and pulled out stray leaves and a helicopter seed from the maple overhead. That was already sprouting roots. I'd been growing seedlings for the last month on an upstairs window-sill. And soon, maybe in another week or so, they'd be ready to go into the beds.

I'd spent a few dreary winter days, carefully reading through seed catalogs, and making charts of germination periods and hours of likely sunlight. I crossed my fingers, thinking about the seeds I'd picked. I'd been a bit adventurous. Figuring I'd.

I could buy carrots and tomatoes and beans at the farmer's market, so I'd give my bit of space over to more exotic eats. Up on the sill, several varieties of chilies were sprouting. Perhaps it had been the cold of the winter that made me crave spice. I'd also planted cantaloupe seeds, and watermelon radish, and tiger nuts, and mouse melons, because... Why not?

I thought the planting could be a way for me to practice keeping my doors open and my tea to myself. I'd do my work, then step back and let whatever happened next happen. The tulip farm. Out past the apple orchards and cider mills, where we went to get lost in corn mazes and buy paper bags. and buy paper bags of fresh hot donuts. In the crisp days of autumn was a tulip farm. It was something I'd driven past a hundred times

without realizing what it was. Then today, I'd seen a hand-painted sign of a red tulip on a yellow background with an arrow pointing the way. The sign said they were open to the public, and folks were welcome to come and pick their own. The tulip had reminded me suddenly of a day, a dozen years before. It had been the first day of May,

and I'd opened my front door to find a simple wicker basket hanging from the outside knob. It was overflowing with bright red tulips and foil-wrapped sweets and tiny, delicate stems of lilies of the valley. I remember lifting the basket right up to my face to smell the good, sweet scent of the flowers, then wondering how and why they'd been picked for me.

It had taken me a day to unwind the mystery. I'd carried everything back inside and rooted through my cabinets for a bunch of tiny jars and bud vases. I put each flower in its own container to make them go as far as possible, then spread them out through the house on window sills, and side tables, and a teeny ledge in the hall that seemed to have been built just for this.

I went back to the basket and carefully gathered all the candies and slid them into my jacket pocket, then stepped back out of the front door and off down the street. I don't remember now where I'd been going. Maybe I had a class to take or a shift to work at the deli downtown. But along the way, every now and then, I'd slip a candy from my pocket, unwrap it and drop it into my mouth. There were some wrapped to look like strawberries. And I remembered that my grandmother had always had the same ones

on a shelf in her sitting room. I'd laughed when I'd tasted the familiar flavor, remembering sneaking into that room to peruse the little collection of sweets and cut glass jars. It was the kind of sitting room no one actually sat in. And that meant there were always interesting things

to find in the drawers and cupboards. I used to take a few candies from the jars, pull down a heavy book with pictures of butterflies and birds and animals from all over the world and tuck myself into the space behind the couch to slowly turn the pages. Until the sweets ran out, wherever I'd been off to that day, I must have run into friends.

and soon found out I wasn't the only one to have been visited by the spring fairy overnight. Three or four of us had found baskets, all with flowers and candy, and we'd spent some time on a park bench in the sunshine, trying to guess who our benefactor was. finally we'd spotted another friend coming toward us down the path, and we'd called out, asking if she'd found a surprise on her doorstep. No, she shrugged. I was busy leaving them for all of you.

May Day, she told us, was sometimes celebrated this way, with gifts of spring flowers, and candies or baked goods. Thinking back on that May Day, the kindness of a gift given when no one was looking, and the memories that the sweets had brought back made me turn into the gravel lot at the tulip farm.

Stepping out of my car, I was greeted by the lilting call of the song Sparrow, a bird whose return, along with that of the Red Wing Blackbird, and the orange-breasted house finch, marked the arrival of spring. The sky was a soft, pale blue, with a few feathery clouds, shifting in the breeze. Two lips don't have a strong smell. They aren't like those lilies of the breeze. of the valley, or hyacinth, that smells so powerfully like sweet water and greenery, but still,

there was a light scent in the air, like citrus and honey, and cut grass. I followed a dirt trail toward the fields. Glad I'd worn sturdy shoes instead of flip-flops. And as it turned to pass behind a barn, the tulip fields came into view. I thought I'd been ready for that, but I wasn't. Actual goosebumps stood out on my arms, and I stopped, stock still, to give all my attention to what I was seeing, stretching out for acres in front of me, and broad, flat, even rectangles,

were bright patches in 50 colors or more, like a panoramic picture. I turned my head to see the farthest field to the left and slowly scanned all the way to the right and marveled that tulips could come in so many shades. when I'd had my fill of looking and began to walk again. I spotted a man in dusty overalls

with a broad brimmed hat. He waved me over, and as I got closer, he said, I like watching people's faces as they first see the fields. Have you been here before? I told him I hadn't. and felt lucky to be.

He fitted me out with a pair of gloves, some small garden shears, and a long, deep basket I could carry over one arm. He gave me a folded paper map with the names of the different varieties of flowers and their locations and sent me off to gather as many as I was inclined to cut.

I thought I might just wander and be led by my eyes and instincts. But looking at the card, I found some of the names so intriguing that I decided to aim for some specific plots. Some were classic and shape and color, called things like Christmas Marvel, or ruby red, or Diana. Others were streaked with color in bold lines that looked like brushstrokes. There were Rembrandts and Davenports and Maryland's. Some had double blossoms, or fringed petals, or very thin veins of color, that you could only see when you leaned down close. Into my basket,

went stems of the queen of night, golden apple-dorn, and dreamland. I picked enough for a few May-day baskets, and to fill my own vase at home. Before I walked back to the barn, to pay for my flowers, and turn over my tools. I stopped and sat at a bench. under a tall sycamore tree whose leaves were just budding out so that the branches looked coated in a light green haze. I thought of the baskets I would put together with my tulips of stopping at the candy store across from the movie theater

and filling a bag with sweet pinwheels. and tart lemon drops and strawberry bonbons. I'd sneak out early tomorrow morning and leave them at a few front doors. I thought that their faces and finding them might look something like mine did when I'd first seen the tulip fields. Surprise.

It's spring. Spring cleanup. I'd first heard about it when I noticed a flyer, tacked up on a telephone pole on the corner, a simple invitation to all neighbors on the block, to join in on a day-long cleanup effort. We were asked to bring a stack of lawn bags, some good, strong shears or snippers and a pair of gloves. We'd meet on Saturday morning by the triangle, which is just a bare green space at a fork in the road, and decide where to start. Once word got around,

the things started to get a bit more elaborate. If we were going to clean up, gather litter and wray-gold leaves, wouldn't it be nice to also plant a few flowers? The triangle, for example. What if somebody brought over a rototiller and turned some of that blank green space into a flower bed?

And there were a few homes on our block where folks needed help, cleaning off front porches, hanging out the bird feeders, and taking down storm windows. They were small chores that could be done in a jiffy if there were a few extra hands to share the work, but might just not get done at all without it. Could we organize some teams for that? And now that it looked like we'd have a full day of work, we'd need some food, snacks through the day, and maybe a potluck supper, or a pizza party at the end of it, that we could all share.

Phone calls were made, meetings held over fences, and then a full plan laid out in new flyers, again tacked onto telephone poles and tucked through letter boxes. there were categories of needs, such as flats of flowers, spare tools and snacks and drinks. There was a way to signal if you needed help with something around the house, and a place to indicate if you could offer some of that assistance. You could sign up for various locations and times, and I was glad that all I had to do was tick a few. was stick a few boxes and let those with a passion for organizing do the rest. The day of the cleanup dawned bright and warm, we'd pushed the whole thing back a time or two,

waiting for a full week of temps in the 50s or higher, so that we could give pollinators time to move. out of their winter digs and stems and leaf piles. And now we'd had a week of sunny, warm days. Today would be a bit over 60, with no rain in the forecast. I was up early. It's strange what you get excited about. As you get older, I couldn't wait to get out there to start pulling weeds and gathering rubbish, and meet more of my neighbors. I'd made a couple dozen brownies the night before, as one of the tasks I'd signed up for was snack table.

I'd made some with walnuts, some without, and they were cut into little three-byte squares, and in a big old-fashioned Tupperware, I'd gotten handed down from my mother. Do you remember the old Tupperware containers? I had the big rectangular box, which in my memory had been read. But when I'd gotten it from the back of the cupboard, I realized was actually a classic 70s burnt orange. I'm pretty sure I'd taken a few years' worth of birthday cupcakes to school in this solid piece of Americana. Now it held enough brownies to keep the whole block supplied.

I'd also gotten a mustard yellow iced tea pitcher. The one with the lid that had the button on top to suction it into place. It had certainly held plenty of Kool-Aid in its years, but I figured I'd go with something a little more grown-up and made a water infused with strawberries, basil and lemon. When I heard front doors and front gates opening and swinging shut up and down the street, I gathered my goodies and tools and set them gently in my red flyer wagon

and pulled it down the driveway and toward the triangle we were still meeting there where we would set up the snacks and break into groups as I got closer I saw that we had an excellent turnout It looked like nearly the whole neighborhood was there,

and I got to chit-chat with a few people I knew by sight to learn their names and hand out a few sneaky brownies while we waited to be told where to begin. Finally, we heard a voice calling for quiet, and we hushed up and listened, to one of our organizers. She called out various groups and pointed where to head, and off we went. I left my Tupperware on a long folding table under a canvas canopy and pulled my wagon to where I'd be working. I'd volunteered to rake and clean out an empty lot at the end of the street, and had brought a long rake

a hand trowel and plenty of yard bags. The birds were singing above us as we shook out the bags and got to work. The smell of spring is already so energizing, but when you start to work in the dirt, it gets even better. There was that fresh scent of rain-soaked soil that rose up as we raked through the grass and leaves, we found a few soda cans and paper scraps and other sundry bits of refuse,

which I offered to take back to my place to recycle. I was glad I'd brought my wagon. Soon, the lot looked much less abandoned, much more friendly and clean, and one of our neighbors walked by with a few full bird feeders hanging from his fingers. He'd made them over the winter in his workshop.

And since no one was using this lot for the moment, what did we think about hanging them in the trees? We thought it was a great idea, and we hung them on long wires and made a plan to fill them. through the summer. Across the street, the storm windows were coming down off a beautiful old farmhouse. I knew the man who lived there. He was older and had some trouble getting out. I sometimes brought him groceries when he'd let me know what he needed. And I realized the windows

hadn't come down in a few years if we hadn't asked to help today. They certainly would have stayed put another year. I watched my neighbors carefully sliding the glass panels off their hooks and carrying them around to store in the garage. Someone was sweeping his broad front porch and checking that the chains holding his swing were sturdily attacked. At noon, someone rang a bell from the triangle, and we all took a break, washing our hands at a spigot in someone's yard, and eating sandwiches from paper plates. The air was warm and smelled fresh. With all the dirt we'd turned over, the sun was shining down on us, and we had the rest of the afternoon.

to take care of each other, and the space we shared. Spring was here, the weather vein. It was a windy morning, the last oak leaves that had hung on all through the autumn and winter were finally being pushed off their branches by the coming crop about to bud and flying in soft, swirling paths around the yard, all in our own time, I thought. As I watched from the porch, my mud boots on

and a cardigan buttoned up against the breeze. The weather vein on top of the barn spun as the wind gusted, and its green copper tail turned in the slipstream. We'd found the weather vein in the barn when we'd bought this place. Well, we'd have done, found a lot of things in the barn. And most of them were rusted beyond repair, or just old

clutter that needed to be carted away. But the weather vein, right away, I felt like I'd found a treasure. It stood nearly as tall as I was, with two sets of crossed beams, one to mark the cardinal directions, and one that must have been purely decorative, crossed arrows with ornate tails and heads. Then a beautiful crane made from copper, its wings open in mid-flight, and its long, graceful legs, stretched out to catch the feel of the wind. As it blew, the crane would turn. to show the direction of the gust, all that copper and skillful crafting, just to point at the wind. But it seemed absolutely worth the work and weight,

as we hefted it up onto the peak of the barn, and fastened it securely into place. That was years ago, and still my eyes found it, every morning. While I was walking across the yard or sitting on the porch, it had become a sort of mascot for the farm, and when I was in town and mentioned it, I noticed people's eyes lighting up,

the weather-vane farm. Yes, I know where that is. I smiled as I stepped off the porch and started across the yard, toward the barn. I was glad people could find us easily. It often proved to be important. We hadn't set out to become a sanctuary. We'd just been people with a barn and some land. But it had happened all the same. There were some goats who needed a home. I don't remember now the specifics. It hadn't mattered to me then either. I just thought, well, nobody's living in the

barn. Let's see what we can do. And then we'd heard about a pig that someone was trying to keep in a house without much of a yard. And we called and said she could come here. And then it was like a silent call had gone out to all the animals in the county who needed a safe place to land. And we were reorganizing the barn and seeding the back pasture and setting up a coop for the birds. Thankfully, we'd had plenty of help along the way. Neighbors who lent a hand with the outbuildings and taught us how to care for creatures we'd never kept before. There was a reliable band of volunteers, too,

who gave us breaks when we needed them, and sometimes came out even when we didn't, just to spend time with the animals. We were grateful to them because the whole operation wouldn't have worked without them. But I think they were grateful, too. They could come, spend an hour in the past,

with the goats while they played or stretch out in the grass with the cow napping. Her sweet, spotted head resting in their lap, and I knew from experience how lovely and special that was, when the world didn't make sense. The animals did. They sought play and affection and snacks and a sunny place to lay, and we're happy. Being around them reminded me to find joy in those things too, to be contented when my needs were met,

rather than grasping constantly for more, along with the farm animals we'd given a home to. We had spaced, to say yes to several dogs and cats. And some of them followed me around as I did my morning chores. We tipped out old water from tubs and troughs and filled them with fresh. We fed everyone their breakfast and opened the gates from the barn to the pasture. I had a pocket full of carrots and apples, and some of them went to the goats,

as I walked through their yard, but I saved the rest for the two donkeys at the end of the barn. You're not supposed to have favorites, but they were mine. I couldn't help it. We had two, both a bit older, but still full of silliness and personality when we first started to have animals here at the farm. After we rescued the first goats and pigs, I thought right away that I hoped we might, at some point, add a donkey or two to the family. I'd carried a memory with me since I was young of driving out on sunny days to visit some friends who had a farm a lot like ours. There was a long, sloping hill with a barn at the top, where llamas and alpacas lived, and at the bottom a paddock with a couple sweet, silly donkeys.

And as soon as the car was in park, I'd be out the door and running toward them. When they saw me, they would bray in a chorus of excited honks. And I felt like they knew me. and had missed me. And we're so glad I was back. I'd stand at the edge of their yard and rub their ears and chat to them. And they were so gentle and funny.

And I never forgot how it felt to rub the soft fur on their broad noses. So when a neighbor came to us saying that her donkeys seemed lonely, And could they stay here, where they could play with the others? I was so glad. Of course, I said, we'll get their room ready right away. She had visited them as long as she'd lived.

And now that they didn't get those visits anymore, I made sure to carve out some special time for them alone. I walked through the open door of the barn, smelled the sweet hay that was spread out over the floor. A couple geese and a duck were having a committee meeting in the corner, and I left them to it and kept going, past the pen where the goat slept. I noticed one of the barn cats dozing up high on a hay bale. One white paw hanging lazily over the edge.

At the back of the barn, where the doors opened to the pasture, the donkeys were chewing their breakfast. They could come and go during the day, between the yard and the shelter. And I found them with the sun on their faces, and tails swinging slowly behind them. They heard me coming. and just like those sweet donkeys in my memory

let out a few croaky he-haws. They really do say, he-ha, and it always made me laugh. They nosed into my pockets for the treats they knew I would have brought, and I fed them bit by bit, and told them my plans for the rest of the day. I cradled their heads in my arms,

watching them blink their long lashes. The wind blew fast and fresh, smelling of spring, and I stepped out and shielded my eyes from the sun to watch the weather vane spin and stop on the roof. Chores to do. I caught up a pail and tromped on in my boots. Old houses. On my walk today, I took a turn I hadn't taken before, and found myself strolling past old stone houses, with wide front porches and sidelots devoted to flower gardens.

The sidewalks were a bit cracked and uneven, misplaced by the thick roots of trees that must have been planted, well. over a hundred years ago. Do you play this game? Walking in an old neighborhood and imagining a story about the people who'd lived in the houses, what they'd gotten up to, who they'd written in their diaries about,

and what they'd eaten for breakfast on sunny Saturday mornings. There was a house, set well back from the street, with a neat green lawn, framed by a black iron fence. There were twisty flourishes shaped into the metal

where the posts connected to the crossbeams, some like leaves and some like petals. And I thought about how someone had come up with that design and crafted it and how long it had lasted and that it was still beautiful.

In the side yard of the house was an ancient giant of a tree, an oak who was just beginning to bud, as he had done so many springs before. A bedroom window just beside a long, sideways, jutting branch, was open a few inches, and the curtains inside were shifting a bit with a breeze. I wondered if a few, fearless teenagers had found that branch useful over the years for sneaking out late at night

if they'd scraped their hands on the bark as they caught a hold, climbed down till they could drop to their feet, quiet, and watching to see if a lamp would come on inside the house and when it didn't, smiling excitedly in the darkness, and rushing off to find some adventure. I crossed the street toward a row of peony bushes that wrapped around a corner in front of a house made of dark, aged wood, that seemed to be held together by miles of ivy vines,

winding around every window frame and climbing endlessly over eaves and dormers and gables I stopped to squat down by the peonies and look at their shining dark green leaves and the tightly bundled buds of white and pink petals that were still a ways away from blooming tiny black ants crawled over the buds eating their sweet, waxy nectar.

I laughed to myself, remembering a panicky call to my plant-wise mother when I'd found ants on my peonies in my first garden. What do I do? I'd asked. Nothing, she'd laughed. Nature has it worked out, dear. Sure enough, the flowers had bloomed full, and healthy, a week later or so, and I'd been reminded about the useful lesson of not fixing what wasn't broken, and just generally minding one's own business, rising from my crouch.

I looked back at the house with the ivy. I had a feeling there would be a piano in a house like that. Maybe it was just a touch out of tune, but still have a lovely sound. In its bench were old piano lessons, marked up with notes, dates to have the piece mastered by, and accolades for work well done. I'd had a great, great uncle, who composed a few pieces that had been published in the twenties. I wondered if a few of his old scores were still sitting in piano benches in houses like this. waiting to be played again. On a corner, I looked down,

and noticed a dull glint at the edge of the sidewalk. I stooped down and saw that it was a penny, planted deep into the cement. I suspected it was a way to mark the date, that it had been pressed into the wet concrete. It was turned face up, so that the year showed beside the profile. I rubbed at it for a moment and peered closer.

1920, it said. And it was still here. The street curved ahead of me. And I followed it past more old houses, some a bit worse for wear, whose lawns had taken over the flower beds, or had a broken window, up high in the attic, and loose tiles on the roof, I wove a few more stories about them as I walked.

This one was the one that all the kids dared each other to approach on Halloween night, with its dark, deep-set doorways and dusty cobwebbed window panes. Across the street there was a tall Victorian, painted in several bright shades of yellow and pink, with a small turret on the top floor and window. of stained glass. There were a dozen steps up to the front porch, and each baluster was painted in a complex repeating design. I thought that it must have been the house of a wise old aunt. You'd go for advice, and she'd sit you down, and listen to you, as she poured tea into matching

cups, and after you'd got it all off your chest, she'd quietly sit with you and tilt her head a bit to the side, and you'd realize you already knew just what you needed to do. You'd fly down her front steps, calling your thanks over your shoulder, and rush off to take the job, or confess your love, or pack your bags. There was a serious-looking house, with sharply trimmed shrubs framing the gardens, and dignified urns of flowers on stone pedestals at the front door. But at the edge of the drive, cut into a stone ledge, I found a tiny fairy garden, with a miniature house and succulents, and very small stepping stones,

that reminded me of the kind I found by the lake and skipped into the water. I looked back up at the house and gave it a friendly wave that likely no one saw. These old houses held so many secrets and stories. And when you bumped into the small, beautiful details, that could easily be missed.

It felt like stumbling on a treasure, the twists in the wrought iron fence, the peonies waiting for the ants to finish their meal. The penny turned face up in the sidewalk, carefully painted balusters, and the space set out for fairies to garden. I felt lucky to have seen them, to have not just rushed past.

I'd keep taking new turns on my walks and see what else. else I could stumble upon. Piano lessons. The bright spring sunshine was helping me find the dust that needed clearing out in our house. It always startles me

that first sunny day when you open the front door and pull back the curtains. And suddenly the air is filled with floating, specs. The floorboards crowded with dust bunnies big enough to pass for tumbleweeds. So I'd been working my way through the front room, running my dust cloth over the family photos on the bookshelves, the lamp in the front window, the broad lid of the piano. I noticed it was the least dusty thing.

in the room. And I guess I wasn't surprised at that. My youngest plays it nearly every day. We'd come across the piano a couple of years before at a neighborhood garage sale. I still remember the way my son's eyes had gone wide when he'd seen it. He was a quiet boy. There was a lot of magic inside of him, and sometimes it stayed inside. But when he played, it came out, and I got to enjoy it along with him. The piano had come home the next day, a rather complicated arrangement involving a borrowed truck, several friends, planks of wood salvaged from the garage. and a not inconsiderable amount of effort,

but it had all been worth it. We'd polished up the cabinet and the bench, the bottom of which was about to fall out from all the scores and lesson books it had come with. I'd organized the lot of them into boxes he could work his way through as his lessons progressed. Then I repaired the bench itself. And now it held his first few books and performance pieces.

The piano had been badly in need of a tune-up when it came home. And my son had found the process fascinating. He's often shy around new people. But he'd met a kindred spirit and the woman who'd come with a bag of tools. to attend to the piano. He'd watched as she'd opened up the soundboard and taken her hammer, wrench, and tuning key from her bag.

She'd patiently explained what she was doing as she isolated Middle C, tuned it, and set the pin. Then they'd worked their way through the keys, playing, listening, tightening strings or loosening them. He had an ear for it, could hear when a note was

even just a fraction flat or sharp, and he could name a note just by hearing it. He knew it the same way I could tell an orange crayon from a red, with no hesitation, and a little confusion as to why others struggled to do the same. The tuner came every six months, and he had it marked down on the calendar on the fridge,

and would meet her at the door, and reach for her tools, slinging the strap of her bag over his own little shoulder. He'd played his first recital last year, and the man who owned the piano last could kindly give in it to us in exchange for an invitation to that recital had attended

and sat proudly beside us. He'd taken pictures and then listened to the music with his eyes closed, a soft smile on his face. He'd also come for Thanksgiving and when the tables were full and we were beginning to run out of seats, he'd mentioned that his wife had always pulled up the piano bench

when they needed an extra spot for someone. I looked at my son thinking he might not want anyone else sitting on his bench. He'd leaned in close to my ear and whispered, spurred that he could share the bench if it was with our new friend. The two of them would fit, so we'd move chairs around, and they'd sat side by side eating their sweet potatoes and stuffing during the school year. He just had one lesson a week. There were lots of other things to do, ways to play. And I wanted him to have time to go to the library,

to ride his bike, to play video games with his friends, and days when he had nothing scheduled at all. Now that summer was coming, I'd left it up to him. Did he want to play more piano? Maybe have lessons twice a week? He'd sat quiet for a minute or two, thinking it through, then nodded.

Twice a week sounded good to him. His piano teacher lived in a little cottage in a pretty neighborhood north of town. Ivy grew up the brick beside her front porch, and in the yard was a small carved sign saying piano lessons. She had come to our house a few times, but I think we both liked going to her house instead. It was a very comfortable space. She'd been a musician for years,

and her mantle was covered with pictures of her and her youth, outside theaters and concert venues, pointing up to her own name on the marquee, or crowded around a microphone with others in a recording studio. When we showed up on her front porch, him with his practice books under his arm, me with whatever novel I'd been reading lately, she'd opened the door and stepped back to let us in, and it felt like being allowed into a sanctuary.

Inside the floors were laid with thick rugs, but I guessed were knotted by hand somewhere far away. The air smelled of sandalwood and green tea, and her furniture was beautiful and comfortable. Her front window held creeping pathos and a healthy asparagus fern. Here was a woman who had built a life she loved, who knew how to protect her peace. We were there for him, for him to take lessons from her,

but I often felt I was learning as well, mentally taking notes as I settled onto a sofa out of the way. They'd open the books on the stand, and he'd warm up his fingers, playing through scales and exercises. I loved watching him set the metronome, sliding the swinging arm out from behind its stopper, adjusting the tempo and letting it tick, then watching him tap his toe, which barely reached the ground, to find a rhythm. I'd prop my novel open on my lap, read a few words, listen to his playing, the quiet discussion. The spring recital was going to be at the inn by the lake this year, on their big back porch,

where he'd helped turn pages for his teacher while she played for a wedding the September before. I imagined him playing, the music echoing over the water, the birds stopping to listen along with us, me holding tightly to a bouquet of flowers, to hand to him after. Not everything we try when we are young or when we are grown suits us. I was so glad that we found something that suited him so well. The back stairs. These old houses,

especially the big ones, they have a lot of forgotten features that newer houses just don't come with anymore. Some are easy to see, like the back stairs, a less pretty but more functional set than the grand front staircase in the entryway, or the transom windows that have let light into the inner rooms since before the place was wired for electricity. But some are less obvious, like the dumb waiter. that might be mistaken for a cupboard in the hall, till you open its doors to find a tray of food sent up from the kitchen. And some are actually hidden in the walls, as the call-bell system was,

which we'd only uncovered while mending some plumbing. We freed the chimes and replaced the wires, and now I can step on a button beside my dash, to signal chef down in the kitchen, the guests are arriving, or that the produce delivery truck is trundling down the drive. If I was just a householder living here, I don't imagine I'd have too much call to ring the bells or to load the breakfast dishes into the dumbwaiter. But I am not just a householder. I am lucky. I am an innkeeper. I look after my guests, and I look after this great old house. It wouldn't suit everyone, but it suits me perfectly.

I look forward to the busy summer days when every room is filled and I rise earth. to pour coffee for diners on the porch, in between handing out beach towels and welcoming new guests at the reception desk. In the off-season, when the inn is closed or has just a couple of rooms booked, I enjoy the quiet and rest. I read books. I sit with my cat Sycamore and watch the ducks swimming on the lake, besides the weekend of Valentine's, when we'd opened for a few days. When the whole second floor and most of the third had been full, we were still in rest and relaxation mode, but all of that was about to change. In a week, our regular season would begin. I was glad we weren't booked solid right at the start. May was an excellent month to come to the inn, but

for many, kids were still in school. The weather wasn't quite warm enough to swim and boat, but it just didn't feel like summer vacation yet. It was a chance for us to ease ourselves into our routines, for chef to test out new recipes, for the vegetable garden to begin to grow, and for Sycamore to learn more about being a good host. He'd come to me in the late autumn of last year, so this would be his first summer as an innkeeper, an in-catter, as it were. There was a chore I needed, to take care of before our guests arrived. It had to do with some of those details of old houses I'd mentioned earlier, both the obvious and less obvious sort in the same location. When guests came down the long gravel drive to the inn, they entered the big front doors and stepped into our entryway,

a pretty paneled space with a dramatic sweeping staircase that carried them and their luggage up to our guestrooms. But when they came back down, especially when they came down for breakfast or to head out to the lake, they came down the back stairs, which were less ornate, those still welcome. crafted, on which brought them to the back of the inn, where we served coffee and meals on a screened-in porch overlooking the water. When the house was built, 20 years before the start of the 20th century, these stairs were most likely not used by the wealthy family that lived here, maids, cooks. I imagine even a butler would have used them to carry tea trays and deliver messages,

and probably to hide out and have a few moments to themselves. As someone who serves in this house, I care about these stairs, and the people who had climbed them back then, as well as the ones who did today. So every spring, I spent an afternoon sweeping and dusting, polishing up the wood till it shone and relaying the runner on carpet rails. Sycamore was helping, in a sense.

He was keeping me company. He had one of his tiny stuffed mice in his mouth, and every once in a while, he'd set it down in front of me, sit back on his rear legs and shadow box with it. He'd swing his paws in a mock fight until I caught on, and I'd flick the mouse down the stairs.

It tumbled to the next landing, And he'd chase after it, a midnight black streak with green eyes. Once he caught it, he'd chew on it, bat it around, maybe even lay his head down on it and doze till I made my way with my polishing rag and broom down to where he was. And we'd go again. In the corner of each step was the other old house feature, the less obvious one. It was a small brass triangle that fitted right into the space where the bottom of the riser

met the wall. It was called a dust corner, and like you might have guessed, it kept dust out. of the corner of the stair. If you've ever tried to work a broom into that space, you know how tricky it is to clean out. Well, the housekeepers of the past must have pointed that out to a clever inventor at some point. Because if you look closely, a lot of old houses have these. Since they were brass, they could be polished up to look absolutely brand new. And when we renovated the inn many years ago, that's what I did. I'd replaced the missing ones and polished the old ones till they were indistinguishable. And they had been very pretty. But there was something about

them that just didn't feel like they fit with the back stairs. A bid of patina. A less perfect shine seemed fitting for these stairs, where things were allowed to not be perfect. So I dusted and swept and warmed the wood railings with oil, but left the honest age as I went, as I made. As I made made my way to the bottom of the stairs, the end of my chore in sight. I heard chef out on the porch. I stuck my head through the doorway and saw them setting down a platter of sandwiches on a table, along with some glasses and napkins. Go wash your hands and come eat, they called. and I gratefully pushed into the butler's pantry and turned on the sink. I heard the tinkle of Sycamore's bell as he went out to see what else chef had made.

I pulled up my chair and looked out at the sun shimmering on the lake. I was so grateful for this old house and the ones who came to share it with me. First Mo of the Year. I stood outside the garage, my fingers reaching for the handle, but looking over my shoulder into the backyard and beyond, past the tree line that marked the yard next door, at all the green growth and flowers that had shot up and blossomed in the last week or so. We'd slept with the windows cracked last night. And this morning I had opened more, airing out the house.

The staleness of long cold months washed away in minutes. I wanted to get outside as soon as I could. I'm looking out from the kitchen window. I could see a day's worth of chores waiting for me. The weather had been warming for weeks now, and I'd been holding off on any mowing or cutting back, waiting for all the little critters and pollinators to wake up and have a few meals first. It seemed like today might finally be the day for it. I turned back to the garage and gripped the handle.

it took a swift turn, a little bend in my knees, and a strong push up on the door to send it gliding into place. I'd thought about getting an opener put on, but there was something about opening it by hand that I actually liked. It was a very specific movement, one that was very very specific movement, one that was very very, buried deep in my muscle memory from when I would hoist open the garage door for my grandpa so he could get his tractor out, the rattling clatter of the old door moving on its track. The gust of scent from inside. Tools and dust and wood shavings. The way my wrist knew how far to turn, my knees, how much to bend. And then inside the garage, the neat pegboards, hung with tools.

And the shiny tractor backed into place and waiting for its next job. My own garage was not quite as neat as his had been. But still, there was a sort of order to the chaos. I stepped in and propped my hands on my hips, looking around at the tools and stacks of pots. First things first, I thought, and reached for a pair of garden gloves. My thumb went right through a hole in the fabric, and I laughed, recognizing the pair as one I'd bought years, ago. When I tilled my first garden, they were cream with red dots, that if you looked close enough were distinguishable as ladybugs. I took them off and tucked them into my back pocket,

thinking that I could probably fix them up with a needle and thread and a jiffy. I found a second pair. This one, without any terribly large holes, and put them on. I wheeled my mower out onto the sidewalk and shook out a lawn bag beside it. From down the block, I heard the stuttering start of someone else's mower and cupped my hand over my eyes to shield out the sun and peer through the yards, A few gardens over, my neighbor was mowing the first path through his grass, and within a second, the scent of it hit me. So green and lively, I took a few deep breaths with my eyes closed. Spring was really here, summer just behind, in my own yard.

I started to trace back and forth, walking slowly with my eyes on the ground. I picked up sticks and pine cones, relocated rocks, and gathered a few scraps of trash that the wind had blown in. When the grass was clear, I started my own mower and pushed it down the length of the yard. It reminded me suddenly of my dad's green tennis shoes by the back door when I was a kid. They hadn't started off as green, but after a day behind the mower, they'd begun to color with chlorophyll, and he'd given up on trying to keep them white. They'd just become his mowing shoes. I looked down at my own pair and smiled.

It was something so small and simple, a shared experience of being a grown-up with chores. But it made me really happy this whole day did. I made slow, even rows with the mower. I'd raised the blade up a bit, so I was giving the grass, only a subtle haircut. My mind got quiet as I mowed. The steadiness of my feet, pacing along behind the wheels, the warm sun on the back of my neck. The slow, careful turn at the end of a row, lining up the wheels and starting again. Was it so different from walking a labyrinth?

didn't feel that different. I'd had a teacher once who'd recommended a walking meditation. They'd suggested the best place for it was a grocery store. Just get a cart and walk the aisles as slowly as you can. Notice each step.

That was me now. When the backyard was done, I shut down the mower and began to wheel it down the driveway, to start in the front. Just as a quiet thirst appeared in my throat, I noticed a tall glass of water set out for me on the step of the side door. Ah, it seemed like the perfect time for a break. I sat down on the step. Unlifted the cool glass to my lips. There were a few slices of cucumber floating among the ice cubes, and it tasted so refreshing and delicious.

While I sipped, I looked across the driveway at the house next door. They had two little boys, well, not so little anymore. They were growing fast. In my mind, the youngest, was still riding in the stroller, his big brother toddling beside as their dads took them for a walk. But I knew he must now be several years into elementary school, the oldest probably in middle school, their dog, a sweet golden retriever named Clover.

was stretched out on her side, on the back patio in the sun. And even from where I sat, I could see the slow rise and fall of her ribs as she breathed. My glass of water finished. I set it down on the step, pushed back up onto my feet. I reached for the handlebar of the mower. In the front yard, I repeated the step of petroleum. the grass for fallen branches and found one of Clover's frisbees among the Pacassandra. I carried it to her fence and whistled for her. She lifted her head to look at me.

One ear flipped inside out and her lips stuck on her teeth. I showed her the frisbee and she jumped to her feet, ready for me to throw it. I sent her to her. out toward the back edge of her yard, and she went tearing after it. She didn't catch it mid-air. She wasn't that kind of dog, but she did dig it out from where it landed near a lilac bush and carried it back to her patio, with her tail happily wagging along the way. Across the street, another neighbor was fix. her mailbox. The flag had broken off over the winter. A new one, shiny and red, sat waiting on the grass as she worked away with the screwdriver, just like the muscle memory of pushing open the garage door, of tugging at the pole cord of the mower, of green tennis shoes, of sleeping

in the sun on a warm patio. I knew the feeling of wrestling with a slightly rusted screw. I restarted the mower and began to pace through the front lawn. Comforted by the moments my neighbors and I all had in common. The lilac thief. There are only a few days of the spring. When you can step out of the door, and smell them on every passing breeze,

so bright and sweet that there's nothing to do but plant your feet and take slow, deep breaths, to try to store their scent deep inside you for another year, the lilacs. I remember as a child, pressing my face into their soft blooms, dew coming away on my cheeks,

and wondering how something could smell, like that, and look like that, and grow so abundantly, and be allowed. It seemed too good, too perfectly aligned with what was pleasing, to just occur naturally. But I guess there is a catch with lilacs. They only bloom once a year, and they don't last long. In fact, they're best enjoyed on the tree. when you cut them and bring them inside, they soon wilt and dry up,

and their sweet smell fades. Still, I couldn't help myself. I would try to be surrounded by them for as long as possible each spring, and that meant taking matters into my own hands, and possibly some very gentle trespassing. You see, I am a liable. I lack thief. I don't strike at random. My crimes aren't ham-fisted or even much noticed.

I'm a subtle thief. I plan when and where, and make my getaway before anyone is the wiser. When I walk my neighborhood, I might casually reach up for a stray blossom creeping through the slats of a fence, and just as casually tuck it into the flag of a mailbox for someone to find. later, but I knew better than to pull a real heist so close to home. For that, I packed a kit into my car, wicker basket, garden gloves, twine, and a small set of pruning shears. I dressed inconspicuously and drove out into the countryside. There was an old farmhouse, long abandoned on a dirt road that I knew well. I'd case the joint years ago and found the house reliably empty and the yard reliably full of lilac trees. I parked my car on the edge of the road to give myself a bit of plausible

deniability. After all, perhaps I'd just had a spot of car trouble and was letting an overheated engine cool down and had stopped to smell the roses, as it were. I chuckled to myself. as I took my kit from the back seat, master criminal that I was, and made my way down the long and dusty drive that led to the old house. I stood with the sun on my face for a few moments and let my imagination spin a story

about who might have lived here. I thought of kids running through the vegetable patch, a pack of family dogs racing with them, sparklers on the 4th of July, a kitchen with rows of freshly canned pickles laid out on cotton towels, a tree planted to mark a special day a hundred years ago that grew to the one I looked at now. It had a large wraparound porch, and though the stairs had a few missing boards, and the paint was chipped and faded. I could tell it had been a beloved place in its time.

I followed my nose to the large row of lilacs and put on my gloves and opened my shears. The blossoms were so full and heavy that their stems struggled to stay upright. And I set my basket down and started to relieve them of their burden. I took time to notice each small bloom, drank deep the smell,

and patiently waited for bees to shift from one flower to another. I filled my basket, till it nearly overflowed, and still the bushes seemed as full as they had when I started. I kicked my way back down the drive, and with a surreptitious look up and down the road, I smuggled my goods back into the car and made my getaway. All that stealing had made me thirsty, and I was craving a cold brew coffee from a little cafe near my house. I decided to bring my basket with me, and found a seat at a tiny table outside. I ordered my iced coffee with a bit of

coconut milk and sat my basket on the seat beside me. I picked through the stems, making small bouquets, and tying them up with twine. Some were for me, and some I'd leave on the doorsteps of friends. Did you steal those lilacs? asked a voice from behind me. I turned to see an older man, with gray hair and bright eyes, looking at me over his cup of coffee. What, lilacs? I asked, innocently. He winked at me, and touched his finger to the side of his nose. Takes one to no one, he said. I laughed out loud and passed him over a bundle of flowers.

He pressed them to his face and took a deep breath in and let it out in a contented sigh. We chatted for a few minutes about some of our favorite spots. He told me about a place by the highway, when I told him about a tree behind the library. He lifted the bouquet to thank me, and I carried my basket out to divvy up the rest of my plunder, among friends and strangers.

On my way back home, opening the cottage, it is perhaps a distinction that not everyone will agree with, but as far as I am concerned, cabins are in the woods and cottages are by the water. A cabin might live in a shady glade, tall pines or ancient oaks standing close by with branches curling overhead.

It might have dark-paneled walls and a wood-burning stove for warming feet and thick socks. It might be the best place to be on a foggy autumn morning. or at the first snow of the year, with a cup in hand and eyes on the slowly blanketing landscape. But a cottage sits on the edge of a river, or by a broad lake. Its walls are painted a faded shade of yellow or white.

It has weeping willows for neighbors. They're buds, the first to go green in the early spring. It is the best place to be, on the cusp of warm months with a glass of iced tea in the afternoon and eyes always on the moving water. And so, we were on our way to open the cottage. The car was packed with a few days' worth of clothes,

good for cleaning and walking in, paper grocery sacks of provisions, a couple of dogs, and our giddy selves. The drive was familiar. Roots we'd been taking for years. Here's the shop we sometimes stop at for ice drinks and sweet corn in the late summer. Here's the little town with one stoplight,

and the old depot, overgrown with ivy and wisteria. Turn on the state road, circle past the house with shrubs cut to look like animals and train cars, and keep going, just a bit longer, till the air starts to smell different. Finally, lean forward in your seat, squint a bit, and catch sight of the front porch and familiar trees of the cottage. It was an old place, built at the beginning of the last century,

with white clabbard siding and a front full of windows. We pulled up, dogs dancing in our laps. They knew where we were, and were as excited as we were. When we opened the doors, they jumped down and started a determined sniffing investigation of every blade of grass. They were checking the guest book, as it were. Seeing who exactly had passed through since we'd closed up in the fall, we let them sniff and did our own bit of inventory, checking for loose screens in the windows. We noticed a few branches that had fallen on the roof during a storm,

and the buds of lilacs on the bush. We stepped up onto the front porch, and the dogs rushed to follow us in. Their whole body's wagging now, and noses pressed up against the crack under the door. I found the key on my ring, the one with a tiny red heart, dobed on and nail polish. and wiggled it into the lock. I pushed the door open.

And the dog shot through the place, running from room to room. And we started to pull back curtains, roll up blinds, and open windows. Under the closed-up, musty smell, I could already detect the scent that was so deeply tied into this place.

It was like old wood, warmed in the sun, like old books, and the cases they've lived in for years. And with it, the smell of fresh water, and hundreds of breakfasts cooked late on Saturday mornings. It was simply the best smell in the world. Once the car was unpacked,

and the dogs had worn themselves out with sniffing and found spots to lay in the sun of the front porch. We rolled up our sleeves and started to work our way through the little house. We put fresh sheets on the bed and swept the floors. We stocked up the kitchen cupboards and filled the fridge. We put clean towels in the bathroom and wiped the dust from the surfaces. We frowned at the fuse box and water heater and flip switches until we'd figured it out.

We should write down how we did that. So we have it for next year, I said. Mm-hmm. We both knew we wouldn't. It was part of the tradition. We strung the clothes line up in the backyard. Knowing soon, it would hold exclusively beach towels and swimsuits. We waved at neighbors, called out hellos, and how are yous?

There was more to do, but we'd done all we wanted for the day. So we stood shoulder to shoulder in the kitchen, and fixed some sandwiches, carried them out to the water. We walked to the edge of the dock. and sat down with our legs dangling over, toes a few inches away from the still, chilly, flowing river. We'd been saving this moment. And we both knew it. Is it this way for everyone?

That water calls you like home? That you get antsy and edgy when you're too long away from it, and that as soon as you're back, you feel yourself. restored. Is it because I grew up here? Because I'd slept on the front porch swing a hundred times as a kid and jumped off this dock in every year of my life since I could walk. Or does water pull everyone the same if I'd grown up in a desert? Walked dunes of dry sand and celebrated the

days of my life in the rare shade of poems. What I feel called by the arid heat? Beside me, an arm was raised, and a finger pointed down the length of the river at a long dash of steel in the distance. Ship? Ship, I said back. We'd see a hundred before the summer was over, but it never stopped being exciting. Some we knew well, having seen them for years and having looked them up in the ship's book, we knew how long they were, what they carried, and could see just by looking at them if they were full,

or empty of cargo. This one looked brand new, fresh paint and sleek lines. I looked forward to hearing the ship's horns in the night, to seeing their lighted boughs and sterns slipping through the black water. There was no sleep like cottage sleep, and no waking like cottage mornings. We heard the paws of the dogs behind us, and they crept down the dock to sit beside us. A furry head came to rest on my thigh, and I slipped my hand over her shaggy ear and stroked the spot between her eyes. We were all quiet together, just looking out at the slow-moving ship. The wake building at her bow on the water birds overhead. I was sure that cabins held their own joys. But this was a cottage. And it was the best place to be for the summer. Daydreamer. I'd been sleeping with the

windows open for a week or so. A few nights had been cool, but I just added a thick quilt to the bed and happily dozed with the night air circling over me. On those mornings, I'd been a bit quicker than usual to get my cup of coffee and climb back into the still warm bed, sipping from my cup as the light turned pink outside and feeling myself warming and waking and wondering what the day would be like. It is one of the best moments of the day. The first moment, as every possibility lies open to you,

and nothing has yet been decided. Daydreaming, I've realized, as I've gotten older, is underrated. So I spent that first moment of the day, just letting my mind float on possibilities. Like an upturned leaf, floating on the current of a stream, I leaned back against the pillows,

and smelled the good, toasted scent of my coffee. It was a dark roast and reminded me of the smell of cacao beans. I thought of a meal I'd eaten a few years before that had ended with a cup of sweet chai and a square of bitter dark chocolate. The sweet and the bitter had gone so well together. I'd nibbled tiny bites. and taken small sips, to make it last as long as I could. It was, I thought, just like the cool night air and the warm quilt. Opposites, but friends, the difference between them, pulling out the best parts of each other. I heard the rumble of an engine, and looked down through the window,

beside my bed to spy a school bus climbing up the street. It stopped at the house next door, and I heard the pneumatic hiss of the side door opening, and my neighbor, hurrying his little one out to climb the steps. She had a poster board, rolled up into a tube and fastened with paper clips at either end under one arm. And a lunchbox, dangling from the other hand. I smiled, watching her make her way up the stairs, remembering that she had told me proudly a few days before, that she had been working on her science fair project.

I thought back to my own science fair days and remembered walking up and down the aisles of tables set up in the gym. Excited to see how a lemon could be a battery, how a dozen tiny plants might have grown differently because they'd been fed their sunlight in east-facing windows or west. And of course, the showstopper, an ambitious parent-child team-built paper-maché volcano, hand-painted with tiny pots of poster paint,

and erupting with baking soda and vinegar. I wondered what her little mind was curious about. What bit of the natural world had she explored when I vowed to ask her when she got off the bus this afternoon? I went back to daydreaming as I watched the bus stop at the corner and pick up another small scientist, carrying a giant cardboard display carefully over their head. I thought about that bus full of children

and what they dreamed of doing when they got older. They'd be all different sorts of people. Some would travel to faraway places, and others might live their whole lives in our little neighborhood. Some would make art or become athletes, discover, invent, teach, be parents themselves. Or maybe, when I smiled thinking of it, drive a school bus,

and someday be there to help a student up the steps with a science fair project in the same. their arms. It made me think of a night many years before. When I'd been in a city I didn't know well, and I'd thought I'd just missed the last bus home. A man my grandfather's age had seen me running to catch it, and when I finally stopped at a corner, to think what to do next, he came to ask if I was all right. He leaned on his cane as he listened to my story. Last bus, my friends, having caught the one going the other way, too far to walk and not sure how to get home. There would be another bus, he promised. You'll get home just fine, he said. He waited with me, asking me about school

on my summer plans, distracting me from my worries, and sure enough, a quarter of an hour later, a number four bus pulled up to the stop. I thanked him for helping me, and he watched me go up the steps and settle in a seat.

The window was pulled down a few inches, and as the door closed, and the driver prepared to pull away. He called out to watch for my stop, and be careful. I still thought about him all these years later, that he'd cared for a stranger enough to sit with me and wait, that he'd taken a bit of his own time,

to make sure I got home safely. I certainly hoped he had too. I still hadn't moved from my warm quilt. But my mind had been back in time, thousands of miles away, and cast a bit into the future as well. Where would that drifting leaf float off to next? I saw the mail carrier walking up to a mailbox, a few houses away,

and even from my nest up high in my bedroom, I spotted a square, bright, red envelope, as it was pulled from the mail pouch and tucked into the box. What, I wondered, was in that envelope, a birthday card? An invitation to a fancy party, a love letter, confessing someone's deepest desires and hopes, the leaf went tumbling down,

a waterfall, rushing past a hundred possibilities. That's the promise of a letter sealed tightly in an envelope, isn't it? The same as the promise of the first moment of a new day. I could take you anywhere. I decided the letter in that red envelope was from a long, lost cousin, informing the recipient of a family fortune, now up for grabs. If only they would come for a weekend, a great-uncle's house in the country, I imagined a long dining-room table with an inch of dust on the dishes, and a secret passageway that went from the false panel in the wall. library, to a door hidden by a tapestry in the hall upstairs. I conjured up a groundskeeper

with a secret, and an initial carved into the base of a stone statue at the center of a hedge maze. I took the last sip of my coffee, laughing at myself. And the story I'd started in my mind, not laughing in jest or derision, but in delight. This is the secret we forget as we get older, but we can go anywhere in our minds, and that daydreaming can be its own adventure and escape. When we can't travel, when we can't go back or forward in time, we can dream. and a dream doesn't have to be real to feel true, housewarming. This morning, a cool spring morning.

I found a square red envelope in my mailbox, along with it, were flyers and bills, and a catalog or summer community ed programs, with a picture on its paper cover of children planting seeds and raised boxes beside the library. Though I was eager to flip through the pages of the catalog and see what classes and camps were scheduled for the next few months.

That red envelope called to me and I sat right down on my front step to open it. The flap had been stuck down just at the tip so I could slide a finger under it to pop it open. It reminded me of the way my grandmother had always sent cards. I don't think she'd ever sealed an envelope in her life. She just tucked the flap in and assumed no one would try to open it until it got to its intended recipient, even when she sent a card with birthday money inside. She must have had a lot of faith in people, and I liked that. I also laughed, guessing that she'd sent in her gas and electric bills in the same way. I imagined an office worker at a desk with a pile of mail and a letter opener in her hand,

until she came to my grandmother's envelope, which, just by pulling it open, would send the check fluttering down onto the pile. The chill of the front step under me brought me back to the intriguing piece of the piece of mail I held in my hands. I slid out a thick, creamy white card from the red envelope and saw that it had been addressed and fancy looping calligraphy an invitation to a housewarming party next Saturday afternoon. It was from an old friend who'd bought his very first home, and I was so glad he was celebrating. It gave the details, the time and place, promised appetizers and cocktails on his new deck, and with a cheeky flourish in the last line informed me that gifts would be graciously expected.

I laughed sitting on the step and drummed my fingers on the card, thinking about what gift to give. I stood up and brushed myself off and carried my bundle of mail into the house. I thought about what made my own house warm and inviting. What made it feel like a home? I stepped over to the window seat of the big bay window that looked out over the street and reached a hand out to touch the leaves of my Monstera delacioso, sometimes called the Swiss cheese plant. Because its shiny green leaves were spotted with holes. I could certainly gift a plant, even one of my own, as the entire window seat was taken up with them. I had spiky aloe vera, with long plump leaves. It could be useful. It could be useful at the beginning of the summer for the inevitable sunburns.

I had tall snake plants with variegated leaves. The stripes reminding me of green and yellow zebra, I had a pot of pothos, and I'd been slowly weaving its climbing vines up the edge of my bookshelf, hoping I might come home one day and find my living room transformed into a thick, leafy forest. As I thought it over,

I took a small pair of snippers from a drawer and clipped out a few dead leaves. I wiped a bit of dust from my fiddle fig and chattered away to the plants. I'd always heard that you should talk to your own. houseplants, but I did it more for a bit of conversation than as a therapeutic device. After all, we were housemates. We needed to catch up now and then. I noticed a new stock of growth in my coconut palm. Its soft, just-born leaf was folded back and forth on itself like a paper

fan, and I congratulated her, saying, I couldn't wait to see it open up. I stepped into the kitchen to fill my mister and thought that my friend might not be ready for plant parenthood, that though he was putting down roots with this new house, he loved to travel, and might be away for weeks at a time, and any plant I gifted would likely spend most of its time, thirsty on a window ledge with no one to talk to. After I misted my violets and turned my zizi plant to keep it from leaning, I stood in front of the painting above my hall table,

maybe a painting as a gift. Every home needs art on the walls. And there was a boutique downtown that sold pieces by local painters and photographers. I quickly discarded the idea. Art is too personal, even knowing that he would be likelier to enjoy something abstract rather than, say, a landscape, or a piece of photorealism.

I still wouldn't know if it would be something he'd enjoy looking at every day. A book? A tea kettle? A vase? Hmm. None of it seemed quite right. I settled onto the sofa, leaning back into the cushions to have a good thing. I remembered going to a housewarming party with my mother was a little girl. Or perhaps it had been a wedding shower.

I couldn't remember whose party it had been, or what gift we had brought. But what I did remember was something that doesn't much exist anymore. We'd been shopping at a department store, a fancy one. with a section of fine china on crystal glasses. I remembered standing at the sales desk, trying very hard to keep my hands in my pockets so as not to break anything.

And hearing my mother ask to have her purchase gift wrapped, the clerk told her it would be sent directly to the gift wrapping department on the first floor. and we could go down and pick out the paper and ribbons. It was something that only happened two or three times in those years that we'd be buying a fancy gift and having it wrapped at the store. So I'd been excited and eager as she led me by the hand down the escalator to the gift-wrapped department.

Inside, it looked like a candy shop, with its bright colors, shiny rainbow of ribbons and sample gifts beautifully wrapped on shelves. I loved the rolls of paper, hanging on every bit of wall, and the way, after my mother had pointed to one, A gift wrapper pulled down a length of it

and dragged it against a serrated metal blade built right into the roll and the perfectly cut piece of paper would be laid out on the clerk's desk and watched completely engrossed as the clerk folded the paper lining the pattern up perfectly where it came together. There was something so satisfying in the way the paper was creased,

a finger running along the fold to press it into a neat line. Then the ribbons pulled from the spools in long strands and clipped in a flash with sharp, silver scissors and wound beautifully around the gift. They were tied in a bow, and their edges curled along the blade of the scissors. There were tiny cards and matching envelopes on a display on the desk. And my mother let me choose one to go with the gift, and slipped it under the ribbon so it wouldn't get lost. I think if you'd asked me right then what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have said a gift wrapper. Actually, it still sounded like a good choice. I had a few more days

to think through my gift giving options, but I was sure. Whatever I gave, It would be wrapped with as much love and care as I could muster. How Swarming Part 2. I was downtown, walking past the shop windows, looking for a gift. It was a warm, sunny day. The trees that had held timid, baby leaves, just a week or two before were now, fully dressed for summer. And most of the shops had their front doors propped open.

To let the fresh air in, I stopped at the window of the stationary shop. When looked in at the shelves of journals and planners, I cupped my hand over my brow to block the sun, and leaned closer to the glass. my nose almost touching it. To spy the calendars tacked up across the back wall, I was searching for a housewarming gift, something that felt special.

That would help make a new house feel like a real home. I didn't think a calendar was the right thing for that at all, but the shop was so inviting. that I found myself stepping inside. A few moments later, there was a display of pencils and pens on a table by the door. The pencils were a shiny, dark gray

and flattened on one end where a rectangular pink eraser was fitted into place by a coppery bit of metal. I'd learned somewhere, though I don't know. now remember where, that that piece of metal was called a feral, I like rarely used words for very specific things.

So I had filed it away in my mind, and whispered it aloud in the shop to myself. As I turned the pencil in my fingers, screwed into the wall beside the table, was an old-fashioned crank-turn pencil sharpener, the kind that had been beside the light switches in every classroom of my elementary school. And now that I thought about it,

was in the basement of every house I'd ever lived in. I remembered moving once when I was 12 or 13 and rushing down into the basement. To see if there was a pencil sharpener attached to one of the walls. I'd pulled the strings hanging from bare bulbs as I went along the length of the room, but couldn't find one.

It had bothered me because I thought it was something every house had to have. It seemed to upset the order of things. I'd turned back toward the stairs, and that's when I'd spotted it, hiding on the other side of the steps, beside a doorway to the laundry room, firmly bolted into the plaster, and still half full of shavings. That could have been 50 years old. I'd turned the handle and wondered whose pencil had left. been sharpened there. Had they thumped down the stairs with a big idea blossoming in their mind

and hurriedly sharpened their trusty yellow number two pencil before the thought could flutter away like a butterfly from an eager hand. In the shop, above the sharpener on the wall, was a small hand-printed sign that said in pretty genteel copper plate. You sharpened it, you bought it. It made me laugh out loud, as clearly I was not the only customer who felt the pole to slide one of those shiny new pencils into the slot on the side of the little device and turn the handle

till I had a perfect point remembering that I was here for a gift for someone else, not for me. I called on all my discipline and set the pencil back with its neighbors. I picked up a few heavy,

serious-looking ballpoint pens. liking the way they felt in my hand, and even writing a few lines on a pad of paper set out for the purpose. The bit of metal that attaches your eraser to your pencil, I wrote in smooth, connected letters, is called a feral. In the end, I knew a pen wasn't the right, gift either, and laying them back in their velvet-lined cases. I strolled through the other aisles.

There was a shelf of desk accessories, tiny boxes of fancy paper clips, organizers and paperweights, some were smooth pieces of marble or stone, and then a few oddly, oddly, familiar, rigid domes of thick glass in sea green and sky blue. The tag called them hemming gray insulators, and I realized my grandfather had had a row of them on his bookshelf when I was a child. At one point in their history, they had sat high atop telephone poles with live wires carried through their glass bodies, just like their name stated, they insulated, so that the phone conversations passing through those wires

weren't absorbed into the poles, and thus into the ground. I picked up the blue one and turned it this way and that, wondering, who, Whose was the first call to run through this pretty piece of glass? And what if it had been the person who'd sharpened their pencil in the basement? All those years ago, I set the insulator down, thinking I should pick up a journal to write this evolving story in,

since it couldn't seem to leave me alone. In the next aisle, in fact, were rows of blank books to be filled in with everything from dates to remember, dentist appointments, sketches of squirrels in the park and poems about true love and heartbreak. I ran my fingers along the spines.

and stopped at one whose saddle-stitch binding wasn't hidden by a cover. You could see the folded edges of the sheets of paper that made it up, with deep red thread holding the bundles into place, and without a second thought, I pulled it down from the shelf and tucked it into the crook of my elbow. I stepped back over to the display of pencils and found the one I'd set down a few minutes before. If I was getting a journal, I'd need something to write with, wouldn't I? I slid the blunt end of the pencil into the sharpener and began to turn the handle.

There was that first catch, and I remembered the feeling. of grinding down a new pencil from my bag in school, the resistance rattling through the handle, and needing to plant my feet and square my shoulders to push the lever around. I checked it after a few turns, nearly there, slid it back in for a few more, when I drew it out again.

It was a perfect point, and I blew the graphite dust from it, and turned to carry it with my journal toward the register. On the way, I remembered one more time that I was in the shop to buy a gift for a friend, a friend with a new house. My eyes fell on a rack of thick writing paper with matching envelopes, and I stepped over to them. They came in about 20 shades, some blank, and some with decorative borders. I didn't think he was much of a letter writer, though the stationary sets were beautiful. they weren't quite right.

Beside them was a table of stamps and stamp pads and tiny bottles of ink. The clerk came over to ask if I needed help. And with a sudden idea, a lighting in my mind, I took the red envelope from my purse and pointed to the address in the top left corner. Can you make a stamp with this name and address? I asked her. Of course, she said.

And she showed me some options from the table. There were some very practical ones, made with plastic casing, and they stamped just fine, but didn't feel very nice in my hand. She showed me one that reminded me of the stamp the school librarian had used to mark the due date in our books. It was wooden with dials to adjust the days and times

and was rolled onto the page. The letters and numbers pressed from bottom to top to evenly spread the ink. Behind it, I spotted a heavy contraption made of metal. With a wooden plunger on top, you pressed it down, and the stamp rotated away from its ink pad and pressed words or an image into the paper. It was incredibly satisfying to press.

Like an irresistible, big red button, the clerk and I picked out a font and lay out for my friend. And she went back to her desk to put it all together. While she worked, I selected some thank you notes on thick white cardstock and chuckled to myself as I set them with my journal and pencil next to the register to pay. He'd been cheeky in the invitation, saying that gifts were graciously expected. So I'd be cheeky right back and give him a gift to set him up for his thank-you note writing. The clerk showed me how to position the stamp, and we tried it out on a spare bit of paper,

pressing the plunger down and leaving a neat print, announcing the name and new home of my old friend. Someday, someone might find this stamp in a box, in an attic, and re-ink the pad, and press it onto a sheet of paper and wonder about him. and what letters he'd sent out, and the story would continue. The lilac grower. One day, you're young, driving through the countryside, surreptitiously swiping stems of lilacs from overgrown shrubs on abandoned farms without a care in the world.

And the next day... You're a bit older. You've bought one of those abandoned farms yourself, and you're growing enough lilacs for the whole county, still without a care in the world. It's true. It's all true. I have been a lilac devotee since I was a teenager,

first swept up in the romance of how beautiful and sweetly scented, and short-lived these flowers are, and each spring, I found myself venturing out, discreetly, but determinedly, to scavenge enough stems to fill a few vases along the way, I'd not only found some very good spots to snip where no one would miss them. I'd met a few other lilac thieves, and we'd shared our intel and love for the flowers. Then one May day I'd been out on a caper at an old farmhouse. that had been long ago abandoned.

I just returned to my car on the dirt road beside the driveway and was about to tuck a full basket of lilacs and my pruning shears into the trunk. When another car pulled up beside me, the jig was up. I'd been caught, not red-handed, but sort of, Green-thumbed, I thought. A woman with silver hair, bundled up in a scarf, and a sparkle in her eyes, stepped out of her car and crossed her arms over her chest, tilting her head to one side in a question.

I tucked the basket and the shears childishly behind my back and said, engine got overheated. We stared at each other for a beat. Then both broke out in laughter. She walked over to admire the flowers and lifted a branch of the lilacs to her face and took a deep breath of the scent. There's nothing like them, is there?

I agreed, but there wasn't. And we got to talking. It turned out that she had grown up in this old farmhouse, and she invited me to walk through the yard with her. I apologized for thieving their lilacs, which she waved away, saying she was glad someone was getting some enjoyment from them.

She hadn't seen the old place in decades, and we stopped here and there as she got caught up in memories and told me stories about her family. She pointed to a window high up on one side. That had been her room. In the backyard, we found remnants of a clothesline. The post still still. standing, but the cotton cord long ago dissolved by rain and weather. And she told me about hanging sheets out in the sun. Their vegetable garden, while overgrown, and no longer fitting within its old borders, had in some places replanted itself. There were tomato plants and a pumpkin vine growing, and we both imagined the deer and squirrels

who must feast here each summer. The house had passed to her, but she lived far away now, I'd only driven back to see it one more time before arranging for it to be put up for sale. Unless, she said, turning to me, you might know of someone who'd be interested. Her eyes sparkled again, and I found myself dumbstruck by a thought I hadn't entertained. by a thought I hadn't entertained before. I'd been coming to this old house for years,

admiring the wide front porch and tall trees. In some ways, I already thought of myself. As a caretaker, I seemed to be the only one whoever walked the property and I'd always harbored a fear that one day it would be sold and torn down. Just then, I didn't know how I would do it, but I was sure I would make this place my home. after that day there had been many more conversations

between the two of us some were history lessons passing on the stories of the house and the people who lived there we both cared about such things and some were negotiations the house needed a good deal of work

and in the end we were able to agree on a price, and a few weeks later, it was mine. When the day came, I stood in the front yard with the keys in my hand, smiling up at the house, I no longer parked on the road, but proudly drove right up the cracked drive, The lilacs had faded by then. High summer was upon us, and the tall trees made a shady canopy. But kept the house cool.

I'd walked from room to room, overwhelmed at the feeling of having so much to myself, so much to make into whatever I wanted. The next few years had brought lots of hard work. The roof was repaired. A new kitchen fitted in on the rotten boards torn out on the front porch to be replaced with sweet-smelling new ones. I spent one long summer painting everything inside and out, finding paint in my hair.

and on every piece of clothing I owned, till I finally finished. The gardens had been edged and cleared and replanted. The clothesline was rehung, and I added a patio beside it, where I could sit and watch the hummingbirds in the morning. Along with all of this, I added something I'd envisaged

that first day when I'd been caught with my full basket and that was more lilacs after all they had brought me here to my home and I wanted to share them I planted a long row

of lilac trees and bushes different colors and varieties all along the road and within a few years they had grown to be thick and hardy, and to produce a sea of flowers each spring along the line of lilacs. A neighbor had helped me build,

a small stand, like the kind you might buy corn or tomatoes at in the summer, and I stocked it with old baskets and cloth sacks. and cloth sacks, a few pairs of shears and gardening gloves. Across the front, I'd added a sign that I'd painted by hand, kneeling on an old sheet spread out in the grass. It said, free lilacs. Gentle trespassers will not be prosecuted.

and on the warm days of spring when the lilacs were blooming. Folks came. The word had gotten out. I'd spot a row of cars, parked along the street, but might step out with a cup of coffee in hand to chat with those who had come to gather some beauty.

From a place that had once been a secret. Sugar snow. I'd noticed it first. In the evening, I'd been locking up the flower shop, and when I turned toward the street and slipped my keys back into my pocket,

I suddenly realized that the air was warm and sweet, that there was still a sliver of daylight glowing in the evening sky and a feeling familiar, but it had been a while since I'd felt it, a feeling of spring the next morning. Before I'd even opened my eyes, I could hear the slow drip of melting icicles on the roof. and birds. So many birds. I smiled, still wrapped in my blankets. Winter can be very quiet, with the eaves wrapped in snow, working like the soft pedal of a piano, blotting out the sounds from the street. And so many neighbors, whether human or avian, opted to stay tucked in.

against the cold. Now, it sounded like we were about to have a lively day. It had gone on like that for a week or more. Bright days, fresh air that smelled of soaked earth and the mounds of snow that we'd shoveled away from the sidewalks, shrinking bit by bit. Would it last? We asked each other, as we stood in line at the coffee shop or passed on the sidewalk. We'd all been fooled before. We determined to enjoy it while it was here. No matter the expiration date, I bought a few baskets, of pansies, bright purple and yellow, and set them cautiously on my front stoop. I remembered my mother telling me they were hardy and a safe bet in the early spring. For years, I'd spelled that word H-E-A-R-T-Y, thinking

that the root of it was tied to a strong heart. Then, when I'd started at the flower shop, I'd seen it printed on packages of Astelby and realized that the root wasn't heart, but hard. I wasn't sure it was that different, though. Brave open hearts are often that way, because they have been broken open.

They've been through hard things and continue to beat. Sure enough, a few days after I'd set out my pansies, I woke up to three inches of fluffy snow, laying thick on the ground. I dusted off my flowers and pulled them inside to warm up on my kitchen window-sail.

I still had a pair of boots and a coat by the door. A combination of laziness and superstition had kept me from putting them away, and I pulled them all on and stepped back outside. The clouds that had dropped the snow I had moved on

and the sky was a bright, enthusiastic blue. I started to walk through the neighborhood, feeling the snow, so soft and full of old raindrops, disappearing into nothing underfoot. It was a lovely combination of sensations.

The sun warm on my face, the quiet of the snow. In the air, still sweet and smelling of spring, I turned a corner and watched as a couple of dogs were let out of a side door to run in their yard. They leapt through the snow, flipped over and rolled joyfully in it. I'd heard someone say once that play is a sign of safety, that once our basic needs are met,

and we feel protected from harm. That's when we can play. We can be creative and open and silly. I watched the dogs skidding through the soft snow. One found a ball. and squeaked it in his teeth, and they both went running along the fence into their backyard. I put my hands in my pockets. I kept walking, thinking about the places in my life where I felt like I could play.

There were a lot of them, I realized, and the places where I didn't play. Well, that was useful to think about, too. Sometimes there are things we can do about that, and sometimes it's just time to move on. At some point, I realized I'd been walking toward a tiny park hidden down a dirt road on the edge of my neighborhood. I'd walked by it a few times before I'd ever seen the sign, inviting passage. by to enjoy the spot. From dawn till dusk, there was a patch of open space, now covered by a smooth expanse of unbroken snow,

a few tall trees, and a path that led through a grove of maples that eventually comes out at a dead end, a few blocks over. Here the snow had a thin crust of ice, like the crackly caramelized top of a crumbruly. It was oddly satisfying to hear its faint snap with each step. The air was warming in the sun, and I had a feeling this snow could easily be gone by sunset.

My left footprints all the way up to the edge of the woods where the thicket of trees had protected the gravel path from snow. A few feet in, I noticed a chest height on the nearest tree. A galvanized bucket suspended from a hook in the bark. I rushed over to it with the excitement of a child.

I had seen this before, and the memory was sweet in every sense. For many years in my childhood, my siblings and I had spent our week of spring break at our aunt's old white farmhouse, a few hours north of home. Some years, the winter would drag her feet through that week, and we'd spend our days baking muffins and cookies in auntie's warm kitchen or bundled up on sofas, watching funny old movies and playing board games, and sometimes we'd arrive for a week of fine, warm weather,

and we'd play croquet in mud boots in the yard and hunt for treasures in the hayloft of the big red barn. And once or twice, we'd been there for a sugar snow. It was a time just like now, when, After a bit of warm weather, a sudden cold snap fell. Making the sap run quick from the trees, we'd all gone out together to see how the metal spouts. Spiles, she'd called them,

were screwed into drilled holes in the bark. We'd hung buckets from hooks to collect the sap, and some days had to empty them every few hours. In the barn, she had an old wood-burning stove, and it was one kid's job to bring firewood, another's to stir the pot of sap on top, and another's to pet the barn kitties when they came out to warm themselves by the fire. auntie watched over, laughing at our goofy stories and songs as we worked.

With a big batch of sap, it might take us all day to cook it down into syrup. But once we'd done it, we'd pour it carefully into jugs and go stickily into the farmhouse. we'd make plates and plates of pancakes and eat them for dinner with the fresh syrup and slices of banana and chewy pieces of pecan if we could find clean patches of snow she'd help us pour the hot syrup into it making shapes, stars and hearts

and our initials to eat like candy. I laughed, walking through the woods, thinking of my poor, saintly aunt, to have a household full of rowdy children, stuffed full of sugar for a whole week. But all I remembered was laughing and eating and playing, passing by the tapped trees. I guessed someone would be out soon to collect the sap.

I hoped they might have a little helper with them, and they might feel as safe as I had with Auntie and play as hard as they liked, pillow forts and tree houses. When I was a kid, playing with my friends, it seemed like our constant ambition to build a fort, to make a clubhouse, somehow to create a space for ourselves that could only be permeated by grown-ups when snacks were handed through a flap in the blue. blankets. The best version of this dream we could imagine was a treehouse. And I remember sketching out plans with the stub of a pencil in a spiral-bound notebook with most of the pages ripped out. As long as you're dreaming, you may as well dream big. So our treehouse

would have retractable stairs to keep out siblings who might try to take over the place, as well as maybe bears? We were kids. It made sense at the time. We'd have a fridge stocked with drinks and snacks. Where would we plug it in? Maybe a knot in the tree. Maybe we could figure out how to turn sap into electricity.

Yeah, I'd make a note to invent that later. We'd have binoculars for spotting friends in their trees a few yards away, a slide, or better yet, a zip line to carry us back down, and we'd hold our meetings up there. About what? You know, nine-year-old stuff. Very important. You wouldn't understand. We never achieved our ambition of a tree house. The logistics quickly overwhelmed us, and when our friends, who claimed to have a cousin in the country, who had one, we looked at them with a good deal of skepticism. Maybe tree houses were only in movies or adventure stories. Still, we kept attention.

to make forts whenever we could. A school canceled on one sunny snow day. We met up at the end of the block where there was an empty lot, full of knee-high snow. It was late winter, and the deep chill was giving over to slightly less frigid temps. So the snow packed together nicely. And we had a genius idea to shovel it into milk crates,

the plastic kind with faded writing on the sides. All garages have them, though they aren't acquired in any way that I know. They just appear in a corner or on a shelf and get filled with battered softballs or swim goggles. We found when they were packed with the heavy snow, they turned out perfect blocks to build with. We shoveled a flat space and started to lay them.

first a foundation and then rising walls. When the walls got to their third or fourth layer of blocks, we realized we'd forgotten to leave a space for a door and had fun kicking one out. Also, a ceiling stymied us, and as we started to make plans, to swipe tarps from our sheds and basement. We got hungry and all trudged to the nearest of our houses

to be fed soup and sandwiches, while our snow pants dripped dry by the back door. Overnight, the snow turned to rain, and by morning our ice palace was a lake with a few small square icebergs floating in it. I'm sure we hadn't just given up. We'd changed tactics again. After all, what's better on a rainy day than a blanket for it? I'm sure we'd regrouped in someone's.

basement or living room and stacked couch cushions and bed pillows into a frame and draped blankets and coverlets over the whole thing. We'd probably had enough room to set out a board game and huddle around it to roll the dice and mark down. on the tiny pads of paper. If we thought it had been Professor Plum in the conservatory with the lead pipe or Mrs. Peacock in the billiard room with the candlestick.

Years later, when I was a teenager in the last year of high school, I'd been on a hike through the woods and the back acres of my grandparents' farm and found a tree with flat

wooden rungs nailed into the trunk like a ladder. I'd looked up and seen a little house a platform balancing on a broad branch with a few walls of mismatched

lumber together and a small square window cut out. The wood was bleached by the sun, and when I reached up to test the strength of one of the rungs, it came apart in my hand, so treehouses were real. Someone had made this one and played here. I couldn't climb up to see it myself. I bet there was in a corner under a pile of dried old leaves, a toy or a book or a box of treasures. Even now, I'm still looking for those little places to tuck into. Maybe less a clubhouse and more a nest. Today was a day like the one that had turned our ice house into slush.

Rain coming down over the crunchy drifts of snow that were slowly shrinking. Water ran off the roof, drumming in the gutters, and rushing in rivulets down the sidewalk and into the storm drains. I'd wanted to get out for a walk. It would be a chilly, muddy mess. And so I'd reframed my thoughts a bit. If I couldn't go out, could I make staying in? Even more tempting. Was I too old to make a pillow for it? It turned out I was not. I chuckled to myself as I took the cushions off the couch

and spread a tartan blanket over the living room rug. It took a few tries, and I had fun along the way. But soon I had a little structure with cushions as walls. I got creative and wedged a broom between two chairs. So it stood upright. Through the hole at the end of the broomstick, I threaded a strand of dental floss, which is sturdy stuff, by the way.

When you need to hang something heavy, get thee to the medicine cabinet. And I stretched it from the broom to a nail that usually held a painting behind the couch. Then I crossed my fingers, flung a top sheet over the floss. It made a draping cover. the tent to my little nest. I took the comforter from my bed and crawled inside with it,

added more pillows, and laid back, and looked up at the tented ceiling. I let out a slow sigh. I felt a little giddy, so glad now to not be going out. I could stay in here all after noon. First, snacks. I wriggled back out and padded to the kitchen, where the rain was thrumming against the window over the sink. The snow was shrinking fast. At this rate, we'd wake up tomorrow to bear lawns on clear roofs. My neighbor still had a few reindeer, until a little reindeer. light up snowman in his yard. And I had a feeling this weekend would be the one that saw a lot of us, taking down our decorations and twinkle lights. I made myself a tray of treats, apple slices, sprinkled with cinnamon, a glass of grapefruit soda, and a bowl of those little

peanut butter-filled pretzels. I slid my tray into my hideaway, along with my book. I could watch movies, listen to music, read and nap, or just watch the light change through the walls of my fort. We would come out of hibernation soon, but not quite. yet. Sticks and stones. I followed the train tracks out of town from the depot, past the corner shop in my boots, as the ground was still spongy and wet with spring rain. I'd been taking this walk for ages. Decades. It was one of my favorite. trails, even though it wasn't quite a trail, just a worn path through the grass, with the train tracks on one side and thick woods on the other, how this little patch of wilderness had escaped

turning into a neighborhood. I didn't know, but I was so glad it had. It was solitary, and except for the train that came through a few times a day, very quiet. It had been cool when I'd left the house. But now, even in the shade of the trees, at the edge of the path, I was getting warm. I slipped my sweater off and tied it around my waist. I edged around muddy spots and walked carefully where the ground was soft. I spotted a thin fallen branch hanging where it had caught in the crook of a tree. On its way down after a winter storm and left.

the path for a few minutes to tug it free. It was sturdy, about as big around as a baseball bat, and the perfect height for a walking stick. I stripped off the tiny branchlets from its length and found a spot near a crook at shoulder height, where my hand fit just right. with the lines of the bark. I'd learned to love a good walk from my grandfather, who, like me, was most at ease in the quiet. Thinking back, lots of those treks, which had seemed like epic safaris at the time,

had only been around the long edge of the garden, and into the apple trees at the back of the lot. But he'd always kept an eye out for a walking stick for me as we went. And we'd found one nearly every time. He was a patient man. I never rushed my short legs to keep up. He fit his pace to mine instead. We'd pick up horse-check.

dust and shiny rocks and look for birds' nests in the trees. When we cleaned out his house a few years ago, in the garage, in an old barrel in the corner, we'd found a few dozen short, thin sticks. My cousin had guessed it was just kindling. He'd collected for the fireplace. but I recognized them. They were all my walking sticks from our adventures.

He'd saved them one by one and kept them all these years. It was the only thing I asked for from all the things we packed and sorted. And now, that little barrel sat by my own back door. I was too big, for those little sticks, maybe one day.

I'd have someone little to take on walks and point out nests and spider webs too. So I kept them. Back on the path, I strolled on, liking the sound that the stick made. When it crunched into the gravelly earth, I found that walking with the stick, stick also helped me slow down a bit. Sometimes rushing just became second nature, and I would find

myself hurrying through things needlessly and missing a lot of the best parts. When I added the stick into my stride. It took me off autopilot, and I enjoyed a true walking pace. I'd read years before a study on rushing and kindness that found when people felt under pressure to hurry, they were less likely to help someone in need that had stuck with me. And I suspected that lots of harsh words and inconsiderate acts were rooted in feeling that there wasn't time to stop and consider a different way. My walks were a way to regulate my own inner metronome. I always came away from them, reset to a better tempo. I started to feel a rumbling in the ground,

and I watched a few kernels of wheat. The last cargo train had dropped, bouncing, vibrating on the tracks, A train was coming. I always tucked into the woods when one came by. I don't know why. I was on public land, and no one would object to me walking here. Maybe it was because I didn't want my solitude. Interrupted. I liked not being seen. So I turned toward the tree. trees and walked a dozen feet in. The train came closer, and I liked the rushing sound of it, and the way the wind blew over my legs. In the woods, bright colors caught my eye, and I noticed a blue and green scarf wound around a low-hanging branch. Often, when I walked in the winter. If I found a glove, lost on the trail, I'd prop it up somewhere, its owner might spy it. And I guessed that was what was happening here. A lost scarf, keeping a branch warm. But as I got

closer, I saw that there were also dried flowers. Hydrangeus tucked into a a big open knot and looking down a score of shiny smooth rocks it may have started with a lost scarf but was becoming a place where gifts to the forest itself were left i noticed a bunch of lilacs still fresh and sweet down together with a string propped by the roots and the two halves of a bright blue robin shell, gently cupped in the earth. The sound of the train was fading in the distance, and I felt I wanted to add something to the offerings.

I knew where some of those pretty stones had come from and cut a bit deeper into the woods. There was a stream not even wide enough to be called a creek that ran like a crooked line through the land, and I walked till I heard the tinkling sound of it. My walking stick and I left prints in the silt of the banks, till I found a spot to squat down and hunt for rocks. I usually resist the urge when I go to the beach or some other stone-rich place

to pick up the smoothest, prettiest ones and put them in my pocket. What would I do with them when I got home? But here, I thought I might just take one. and I let my fingers trail through the water. It was so clear that I could see the rainbow of pebbles underneath. And I plucked a few up and let the moving stream rinse them in my palms. They were shades of earthy red and green, and even as pretty as they were, they didn't feel like the right ones.

I dipped my hand back into the water and felt my finger slip into something that might have been a ring. When I drew it out, I saw that it was a stone with a hole in it. It was about the size of my palm and a light gray that grew paler as it dried. I'd heard about stones like these. but I'd never found one before. It felt like reaching into the grass and coming away with a four-leaf clover. I rinsed my hands in the creek

and pushed up on my walking stick and headed back to the tree. On a low branch, I threaded the stone over a clump of budding leaves and stepped back to admire. I took a deep breath of the forest air and let it out and went with my stick back to the trail. Fiddlehead ferns. I'd taken up foraging when I'd moved into the country a few years back.

I'd be out on a walk and spot something that looked familiar. A leaf, a mushroom. a nut in a shiny shell, a berry on a vine, know that I just didn't know enough to identify it, certainly to know if I could snack on it. Luckily, I'd spotted a flyer at the library for the community education classes, scheduled for that spring, among them a week-long course in foraging.

It promised plenty of fresh air, forest bathing, a beginner's handbook to identifying, to identifying edible plants and fun. I signed up immediately, and it had delivered on everything it promised. It had felt like a week of grown-up summer camp. We'd met each day at a different location and set out on a hike. Along the way, our guide would encourage us to notice

as much about the environment as we could, the sounds of the woods, of wind, up in the leafy branches, of animals and insects, going about their business, of moving water, and the sound of our own footsteps on the trail, We stopped frequently to gather around clumps of leafy plants or to look down at a bunch of berries in the guide's hand. We learned which conditions worked best for which foods,

how to identify plants and how much to take so as not to harm them. We'd gathered berries, several different kinds, as well as leeks, nettle, dandeline greens, and cat-tail roots. We'd found golden chanterelles, wild asparagus, and on a very exciting day, a paw-paw tree, absolutely overflowing with fruit. We ate lots as we went, whatever could be eaten raw,

and that we had an appetite for. The rest we carted back to the kitchen at the high school, which we were borrowing for the week. We'd cook our greens, saute our asparagus or sunchokes, and share them all, sitting at a long table in the cafeteria. My field guide was well-thumbed, unmarked now. I kept notes as I continued to forage through the summer and fall, where I found things. how ripe they had been.

The date. The weather. How much I had taken. It was still early in the season, but I was fairly sure, not too soon, for a favorite of mine. Fiddlehead ferns.

In the city, I'm sure they felt like a delicacy. They had been for me before I'd come here, but in our woods, they were abundant, a staple, in fact, and so, so delicious. So I went my boots, my foraging apron with its deep pockets for collecting, and my woolly cardigan to keep the breezy chill from my skin. The mid-morning sun felt good on my face as I trekked toward the edge of the forest. Ferns like the shady spots near water, places where the soil is dark and damp. So I took in the light while I could.

I drew deep breaths and felt a natural soft smile spread across my face. Even when I don't think it will work, that being outside walking briskly in the cool air will lift my mood. It still does. Nearly every time I find myself three minutes into a walk, smiling and humming,

thinking about how glad I am to be outside, alive and awake for another day. in the world. I stopped just inside the woods to let my eyes adjust to the dim light. I looked down at the roots growing through the path, the green fuzz of moss on bark, the may apples sprouting. In the near distance, I heard crunching leaves and saw a scurry of squirrels chasing each other through the trees. I started down the trail in no hurry, just taking in this spring moment. Before I knew it, the trees would all be butted out. Then, seemingly moments later, in full leaf.

Clichet that time moved faster as you age, felt true enough. And the only way I could find to slow it down was to pay close attention to the moment I was in. There was a creek which sometimes dried up completely

in the summer, but was now a few feet across of slow-moving water, and the sound it made, the soft liquid ripple and burble, signaled that ferns were likely close by. I found them in clumps, tightly furled, about five or six inches high. I'd learned to check first that these were the sort for eating, so I felt their stalks, noticing that they had a deep V-shaped groove along the inside a bit. like a rib of celery, and that they were smooth rather than fuzzy. Some of the heads had a papery covering, which came away easily in my hands.

All of these characteristics confirmed that I had found my quarry. I didn't even need my foraging knife to free them. I just felt along the stem and snapped them where they easily gave, like you would with the stalk of asparagus. From each clump of six or seven fronds, I only took one or two any more, and the plant might struggle through the season. it was something we'd talked a lot about in our week of classes, that nature is sending you signals, if you'll venture to speak her language. You can communicate that there are things intended to be taken.

Seed pods intended to be broken open, nuts meant to be carried away. So help yourself, but don't be greedy. Some plants were just trying to teach you about respecting boundaries. Poison Oak, for example. Wasn't she just saying, this isn't for you? Please don't touch me. Not everything in the forest was for me,

realizing that there was a way to be here, to receive and give, and feel a part of it all, that that way involved intention and attention made every trip out, a sort of meditation, every trip, not only lifted my spirits, It nourished them. It took more than an hour or so, wandering along the creek in the shadiest corners of the wood to fill the pockets of my apron with the tender bound-up shoots. I stopped on a log and added notes to my field guide.

April 1st. Found several cups of fiddle. heads near creek. Light breeze, warm, water flowing, no ice left. Then I started back, thinking of the dish I could make with what I'd found. Furns have a flavor like asparagus, mixed with green peas, and they are delicious. When briefs, boiled and then sauteed in olive oil. I might mix mine with some pasta and lemon, top them with toasted pine nuts and fresh black pepper. I was looking forward to a summer of learning and walking, tasting, and making many more entries in my book. In the bakery. I'm

I stood inside the front window of the shop and looked up and down the street for a few moments. Morning light was cutting through the lines of the buildings, and a few of the storefront windows were lit up. The neon sign in the diner on the corner flickered and glowed steadily on. I knew they'd be down in a few minutes for their order of bagels, pastries, and loaves of fresh sliced bread that they'd soon be toasted. for the day's first customers. I dusted off my flowery fingers on my apron

and flipped our sign from closed to open. Unlocked the heavy oak door and stepped back behind the counter. Our cases were full of just-baked muffins, rolls, and loaves. Our coffee was brewed, and I had a hot cup, poured for myself, tucked behind the register. We were ready. Saturday mornings were my favorite at the bakery.

During the week, customers rushed in and out, eager to get their breakfast and their coffee and get to work. We had hectic rushes and stagnant slow times. But on the weekends, all of us, bakers and customers alike, were more relaxed. People lingered over coffee, turned the pages of newspapers slowly, and took their time to really enjoy the jelly donuts and wedges of coffee cake that we loved to make each day. Bell over the door rang,

and I looked up to see the familiar face of a waitress from the diner. Her spring coat pulled over her apron, hands ready to receive the tray of goods we had wrapped up. up and ready. In a hurry, I asked her. No. It's Saturday, she said with a wave of her hand. We've only got a couple regulars who pour their own coffee anyway. Try this then. I passed her over a slice of still-warm biscotti in a wax paper wrap. I'm trying new recipes. And I need an opinion I can trust. She took it gratefully, and I poured her a quick cup of coffee to go with it. It's orange and pistachio. And you might want to dunk it, I said, sliding the cup across the counter.

I don't trust people who don't dunk, she observed. This is why I'm asking your opinion, I said, tapping my finger to my nose. She held the slice up. close to her nose, and smelled. She looked at it all over, and I saw her taking in the ratio of pistachio pieces to ribbons of orange zest. Sometimes, when I hand someone a sample and ask them for feedback,

they gobble it down in two bites and say, it's great, and move on, which is not very helpful. This woman knew what she was about. She had a bite without dunking first, chewed slowly, then thoughtfully dipped it in her coffee and took a second bite. She looked up at me, ran her tongue over her teeth, nodding slowly. I think the orange should be a bit stronger, but the bake is right on.

It's crispy and a pleasure to dine. dunk. But if you want to eat it as it is, it's not going to break your teeth like some Biscotti will. I'd say it's a winner. Pleased down to my clogs, as any baker is, when something she makes is properly appreciated. I slid the coffee thermos back onto its warmer, and went to fetch the order she'd come in for. I handed it over to her. She thanked me for the treat, and we said, see you tomorrow, and she headed back to her customers. For the next few hours, we had a steady stream of patrons. Some were regulars, whose orders we knew by heart, and some were new faces, who stood staring at the cases, biting their lips, and asking for recommendations.

We brewed pots and pots of coffee, packed dozens of donuts into paper, boxes tied with string, handed over plate after plate of muffins and scones, and toasted bagels. We handed out soft, salty pretzels, wrapped in wax paper. We sliced loaves and wrapped them up for afternoon sandwiches. We put pies into boxes and piped names onto birthday cakes. We wiped crumbs from the counter and the tables and started to deliver the sad news. that this or that had sold out for the day. As the day moved on, and the bell rang less and less,

I pulled out a few of my favorite cookbooks from the shelf in the office, and poured a fresh cup of coffee. I set up at the counter where the spring sun was shining, and flipped through the pages of a book that was older than I was, with pages stained and creased and filled with handwritten notes. It was a gift from the baker who'd first opened the shop, who I'd bought it from when he retired, a kind man with a quiet voice and flour in his eyebrows.

I remembered coming in for my daily bread, and one day taking a bite of something and saying to him that I could always tell his bakes for many others that he seemed to have a sort of signature flavor. He'd smiled and leaned his elbows on the counter and turning his head side to side to make sure his secret wouldn't be heard by anyone else. He whispered,

Graham Flower. We'd been friends from that day. and I came to work for him soon after. Looking through his book of recipes, made my stomach crumble, and I stepped behind the counter, and took a baguette from the shelf. I sliced off a good long bit and slid it open. I had a bottle of olive oil, green and fruity,

the kind that catches you in the back of the throat, and I drizzled it all over the bread, In the fridge, I found some artichoke hearts, and a jar of capers, and in the pantry, a container of soft, sun-dried tomatoes. I layered them all over the oiled bread, cracked black pepper on top, and took my plate back to the sunny spot at the counter. My bread was delicious. And I proudly enjoyed every bite as I flipped through more biscotti recipes. I took the pen from my pocket and added a note, more orange flavor, maybe add marmalade. My next plan was for hazelnut and chocolate biscotti.

And something for spring. Strawberry and rhubarb? I carried my cup back to the window where I'd stood. that morning before flipping the sign. I looked up and down the street. Saturdays were my favorite. Spring at the allotment. When I'd first seen the flyer,

snow was still on the ground. I had been coming out of my neighborhood market, a bag of groceries in my arms, and seen it pinned to a bulletin board, community garden. Plots available. It was decorated with some, someone's hand-drawn flowers and baskets of vegetables.

I stood for a bit, booted, mittened, zipped into my heavy coat, and wrapped in scarves and hat, and dreamed about green things and blue skies. I'd reached out with my clumsy mitten and pulled off a scrap from the flyer with a phone number and fumbled it into my pocket. A few days later, when a friend was sitting at my kitchen table for a cup of coffee, I'd pulled it out, and we'd made a plan. We, each of us, had a few hand-me-down garden tools,

and just a little bit of experience. But we also had a deep yen for becoming successful gardeners. and we figured our zeal would fill in the gaps of our knowledge. We divvied up the work. She'd go to the library and get us a few books on what was best to grow in this part of the world, and I'd have a long talk with my green-thumbed grandfather and borrow his almanac and seed catalogs.

We'd both root around for gloves and rakes. spades and shears and loppers. Soon we had a stack of books, with torn out magazine articles folded into the pages, charts of what was going where and when, and a dusty basket of the tools we'd need to make it happen. We had mud boots, and packets of seeds, and a clear sunny Saturday to begin our garden.

We planned to meet at the allotment in the mid-term, morning and start to turn over the soil. The day was bright and warming. And stepping out of the car, I could smell the clean scent, a freshly tilled earth. We found our plot. Sketched out in the soil with stakes and string, shook hands with the neighbors, tucked our hair into bandanas, and got to work. The soil was tilled. and soft, but still needed to be evened out, and we broke up clumps of dirt with hands and hose. We consulted our charts and walked off the sections. Here we'd plant the herbs, basil and oregano, lavender and rosemary, sage, and thyme.

Here we'd plant runner beans and green beans. here are rows of lettuce, here are tomato plants. In the back row we'd have a line of sweet corn, a section of zucchini, a few broccoli plants, cabbage, cucumbers, and a small section of potatoes. We weren't sure about the potatoes. They seemed tricky, but we'd done our reading and had a container of cut seed potatoes.

ready to go in. Growing anything, I supposed, was a gamble, an act of faith. That rain would come, that sun would shine, that the natural processes buried in the cells of our seeds and seedlings, would activate and pollulate. It seemed worth the gamble, meriting the faith to try, so we dug trenches, spaced our seeds and plants, and carefully patted the earth down around them. By the time the sun was high above us, we'd shed our jackets, and our faces were smudged with dirt.

I stood to stretch my back, and saw my friend, her hands on her hips, looking out at the work we'd done. Ready for a break, I called out. Yes, please, she said, stepping carefully through the rose to wash her hands at the spigot. I'd packed us a basket for lunch, and we carried it over to a picnic table, and opened it up. I had a thermos of Earl Grey tea, still hot, and a little sweet.

I'd made a mess of sandwiches, thick slices of sourdough. Spread with spicy mustard, and a tasty mix I'd made. of mashed garbanzos, soft avocado, diced cucumbers and pickles, tahini, a bit of dill and lemon, and plenty of salt and pepper. I'd layered it on the bread with sprouts and tomato slices and wrapped them in tea towels. I had a few apples for us and a whole batch of my date bars, topped with cardamom crumble, tucked in wax paper in an old cookie tin. It was more than we could eat. But I'd planned to use the extra, to make some friends.

In fact, a few minutes after we spread out lunch. The family from the next plot over sat down to share our table. They unpacked their own basket. And we chatted. about our seeds as we ate. They had two little boys who ran around in the sun, coming back to the table for a moment or two, to take a bite out of a sandwich or a piece of fruit,

then chasing back to play. They'd been planting in the garden for years and promised to offer advice as the season progressed. They poured us some of their lemonade, and happily took some date bars. And then we all got back to work. By the time we were done and gathering up our tools, our little plot was a tidy patch of neat rows,

careful mounds, protecting seeds that would sprout soon, and evenly spaced plants, that would eventually need cages and stakes, and strings to hold them up, By the end of the summer, we stood and proudly admired what we'd done. We'll have vegetables coming out of our ears in a few months, she said. I guess we'd better learn how to can, I laughed. The next great adventure.

The front door and the back door. The air was fresh, and the day was sunny. The temperature had been sneaking up a few degrees at a time. for the last week or so. And finally, today, there was a real warmth in the air. I started inside by drawing aside curtains and opening windows.

I stood at the kitchen sink, washing up after tea and oatmeal, and smiling at the feel of the fresh air circling around me. Through the window, I could hear the movement of body, birds and squirrels, and beyond them a soft spring wind coming to dry up mud puddles. I could hear a lawnmower in the next block over being coaxed to life, and my neighbor's dog barking through the fence. I dried my cup and bowl and put them back on their shelf.

often I'd have turned on music or a radio show to follow me through my chores. But it was so nice to do my work with nothing but the sounds from outside, keeping me company. I hung the dish towel from its hook beside the sink and moved into the living room, opening more windows as I went. there was a jumble of books and blankets spread over the sofa, and as I folded and tidied, I stopped to read a few lines from one of the books. It was a book about Zen, with a few poems and meditations. The page I opened to just said, open the front door, and open the back door.

Let thoughts move through. Just don't offer them a cup of tea. I smiled down at the words. Has that happened to you? That you read just the right thing at just the right moment? Not in that false way, where you have to force a match, but where there is just a flash of serendipitous harmony.

It feels like being winked at, but you're not sure by who. I tucked the book. under one arm and went to the front door and drew back the bolt. I opened it wide and let sunshine into the front hall. Through the screen door, I saw the kids in the yard across the street. They were writing their names and drawing butterflies and caterpillars and pastel chalk cross their sidewalks. I went straight to the back door, a sliding glass door, that gave out to the back patio, and opened it as wide as it would go, dried hydrangea blooms from last year, were shifting in the breeze. I felt like I could practically see the grass growing. I read the line

in the book again, and dog-eared the page, before closing it up. and sliding it back onto its shelf. With a dust cloth in hand, I worked my way around the room, shining up the tops of tables, and the faces in picture frames. In the front hall, beside the open door,

I stepped into my shoes and took the dust cloth out to shake over the edge of the front porch. my neighbor's doors were open too. And I thought a bit more about the line in the book. I shook the dust cloth and watched the particles catching in the sunlight as they fell. I went back inside to drop the cloth in the laundry basket

and wash my hands. Some people, I thought, have their front door closed. Nothing gets in. They feel unreachable, and some people have their front door open, but the back door is closed. Everything gets in, and nothing gets out. Letting things come and go, thoughts rise up and move on, without pouring them a cup of tea, without clinging or ruminating.

It was a tricky skill, and one, I guess, we could all use some practice with. I thought of people I knew who had doors closed and reminded myself that it's always easier to see these things in others. And that likely we were all both types of people many times every day. All we could do was to open up the places that had been shut, to turn on the lights once we'd realized they were spent to let things come, and let them go, with the house in order.

I was eager to get out into the yard. There were hours left on this sunny day, so I rummaged in the garage, until I found my gardening gloves, and started to work my way through the beds. I hadn't cut much back in the autumn. as the falling leaves and drying stalks of plants gave shelter to the little creatures that shared the garden, and because I'd read that pruning stimulates growth.

Tell me about it, I'd thought. And spring was a better time for that. So now there was quite a bit to clear those dried hydrangea blossoms. and last year's broad, pale, hasta leaves and twigs and pine needles. I worked my way around the house and into the backyard, where I had a few raised beds I'd built the year before. The soil inside was dark and fortified with compost. I turned it over with my trowel and pulled out stray leaves.

and a helicopter seed from the maple overhead. That was already sprouting roots. I'd been growing seedlings for the last month, on an upstairs window sill, and soon, maybe in another week or so, they'd be ready to go into the beds. I'd spent a few dreary winter days, carefully reading through seed catalogs,

and making charts of germination periods and hours of likely sunlight. I crossed my fingers, thinking about the seeds I'd picked out. I'd been a bit adventurous, figuring I could buy carrots and tomatoes and beans at the farmer's market. So I'd give my bit of space over to more exotic eats. Up on the sill, several varieties of chilies were sprouting.

Perhaps it had been the cold of the winter that made me crave spice. I'd also planted cantaloupe seeds and watermelon radish, and tiger nuts, and mouse melons. Because, why not? I thought the planting could be a way for me to practice. Keeping my doors open and my tea to myself, I'd do my work. Then step back and let whatever happened next happen. The tulip farm passed the apple orchards and cider mills, where we went to get lost in corn mazes and buy bags full of fresh hot donuts.

In the crisp days of autumn was a tulip farm. It was something I'd driven past a hundred times without realizing what it was. Then, today, I'd seen a hand-painted sign of a red tulip on a yellow background with an arrow pointing the way. The sign said, They were open to the public, and folks were welcome to come.

And pick their own, the tulip had reminded me suddenly. Of a day a dozen years before, it had been the first day of May, and I'd opened my front door to find a simple wicker basket, hanging from the outside knob. It was overflowing with bright red tulips and foil-wrapped sweets and tiny delicate stems of lilies of the valley. I remember lifting the basket

right up to my face to smell the good, sweet scent of the flowers, then wondering how and why they'd been picked for me. It had taken me a day to unwind the mystery. I'd carried everything back inside and rooted through my cabinets for a bunch of tiny jars and bud faces. I put each flower in its own container. to make them go as far as possible,

then spread them out through the house, on windowsills and side tables, and a teeny ledge in the hall that seemed to have been built. Just for this, I went back to the basket and carefully gathered all the candies, and slid them into my own,

my jacket pocket, then stepped back out of the front door, and off down the street. I don't remember now where I'd been going. Maybe I had a class to take or a shift to work at the deli downtown, but along the way, every now and then, I'd slip a candy from my pocket, unwrap it, and drop it into my mouth. There were some wrapped to look like strawberries, and I'd remembered that my grandmother had always had the same ones on a shelf in her sitting room. I'd laughed when I'd tasted the familiar flavor,

remembering sneaking into that room to peruse the little collection of sweets and cut glass jars. It was the kind of sitting room. No one actually sat in. And that meant there were always interesting things to find in the drawers and cupboards. I used to take a few. few candies from the jars pull down a heavy book with pictures of butterflies and birds and animals from all over the world and tuck myself into the space behind the couch to slowly turn the pages until the sweets ran out wherever I'd been off to that day I must have run into friends and soon found out I wasn't the only one to have been visited by the spring fairy overnight.

Three or four of us had found baskets, all with flowers and candy. And we'd spent some time on a park bench in the sunshine, trying to guess who our benefactor was. Finally, we'd spotted another friend coming toward us, and we'd called out, asking if she'd found a surprise on her doorstep. No, she shrugged.

I was busy leaving them for all of you. May Day, she told us. was sometimes celebrated this way with gifts of spring flowers and candies or baked goods. Thinking back on that May Day, the kindness of a gift given when no one was looking, and the memories that the sweets had brought back had made me turn into the gravel lot with the tulip farm. Stepping out of my car, I was greeted by the lilting call of the song sparrow, a bird whose return, along with that of the red-wing blackbird and the orange-breasted housefinch. Marked the arrival of spring, the sky was a soft, pale blue, with a few feathery cloud.

shifting in the breeze. Tulips don't have a strong smell. They aren't like those lilies of the valley or hyacinth that smell so powerfully like sweet water and greenery, but still there was a light scent in the air. like citrus and honey cut grass. I followed a dirt trail toward the fields, glad I'd worn sturdy shoes instead of flip-flops.

And as it turned to pass behind a barn, the tulip fields came into view. I thought I'd been ready for that. I wasn't. actual goose bumps, stood out on my arms, and I stopped, stuck still, to give all my attention to what I was seeing, stretching out for acres in front of me, in broad, flat, even rectangles, were bright patches in 50 colors or more like a panoramic picture. I turned my head to see the farthest field to the left, then slowly scanned all the way to the right

and marveled that tulips could come in so many shades. I'd had my fill of looking and began to walk again. I spotted a man in dusty overalls with a broad, brimmed hat. He waved me over, and as I got closer, he said, I like watching people's faces as they first see the fields. Have you been here before? I told him that I hadn't and felt lucky to be. He fitted me out

with a pair of gloves, some small garden shears, and a long, deep basket. I could carry over one arm. He gave me a folded, paper map with the names of the different varieties of flowers and their locations. And sent me off to gather as many as I was inclined to cut. I thought I might just wander and be led by my eyes and instincts.

But looking at the map, I found some of the names so intriguing. that I decided to aim for some specific spots. Some tulips were classic in shape and color. Called things like Christmas Marvel or Ruby Red or Diana. Others were streaked with color in bold lines that looked like brushstrokes. There were Rembrandts. and Davenports and Maryland's. Some had double blossoms, or fringed petals,

or very thin veins of color, that you could only see when you leaned down close. Into my basket went stems of the queen of night, golden Appledorn, and dreamland. I picked enough for a few May Day baskets and to fill my own vase at home. Before I walked back to the barn to pay for my flowers and turn over my tools.

I stopped and sat on a bench under a tall sycamore tree whose leaves were just budding out so that the branches looked coated in a light green haze. I thought of the baskets I would put together with my tulips of stopping at the candy store across from the movie theater and filling a bag with sweet pinwheels and tart lemon drops and strawberry bonbons. I'd sneak out early tomorrow morning and leave them at a few front doors.

I thought that their faces in finding them might look something like mine did when I'd first seen the tulip fields. Surprise. It's spring. Spring cleanup. I'd first heard about it. When I noticed a flyer, tacked up on a telephone pole on the corner. A simple invitation to all neighbors on the block to join in on a day-long cleanup effort.

We were asked to bring a stack of lawn bags, some good strong shears or snippers, and a pair of gloves. we'd meet on Saturday morning by the triangle, which is just a bare green space, at a fork in the road, and decide where to start. Once word got around, things started to get a bit more elaborate. If we were going to clean up, gather litter, and rake old leaves, Wouldn't it be nice to also plant a few flowers? The triangle, for example.

What if somebody brought over a rototiller and turned some of that blank green space into a flower bed? There were a few homes on our block where folks needed help, cleaning off front porches, hanging out the bird feeders, and taking down storm windows. They were small chores that could be done in a jiffy. If there were a few extra hands to share the work, might just not get done at all without it.

Could we organize some teams for that? Now that it looked like we'd have a full day of work, we'd need some food, snacks through the day, and maybe a potluck supper or peop. pizza party at the end of it that we could all share. Phone calls were made. Meetings held over fences, and then a full plan laid out. In new flyers, again tacked onto telephone poles and tucked through letter boxes.

There were categories of needs, such as flats of flowers, spare to. tools and snacks and drinks. There was a way to signal if you needed help with something around the house and a place to indicate if you could offer some assistance. You could sign up for various locations and times. And I was glad that all I had to do was take a few boxes and let those with a passion for organizing. Do the rest.

The day of the cleanup dawned bright and warm. We'd pushed the whole thing back a time or two, waiting for a full week of temps in the 50s or higher so that we would give pollinators time to move out of their winter digs in stems and leaf piles. and now we'd had a week of sunny, warm days. Today would be a bit over 60. With no rain in the forecast, I was up early.

It's strange, what you get excited about as you get older. I couldn't wait to get out there to start pulling weeds and gathering rubbish. and to meet more of my neighbors. I'd made a couple dozen brownies the night before, as one of the tasks I'd signed up for was snack table. I'd made some with walnuts, some without, and they were cut into little three-byte squares, and in a big, old-fashioned Tupperware, I'd gotten handed down.

from my mother. Do you remember those old Tupperware containers? I had the big rectangular box, which, in my memory, had been read. But when I'd gotten it down from the back of the cupboard, I realized was actually a classic 70s burnt orange. I'm pretty sure I'd taken a few years' worth of birthday cupcakes to school and this solid piece of Americana. But now it held enough brownies to keep the whole block supplied. I'd also gotten a mustard yellow, ice tea pitcher, the one with the lid that had the button on top to suction it into place.

It had certainly held plenty of Kool-Aid in its years, but I figured I'd go with something a little more grown-up and made a water infused with strawberries, basil and lemon. when I heard the front doors and front gates opening and swinging shut up and down the street. I gathered my goodies and tools and set them gently in my red flyer wagon and pulled it down the driveway and toward the triangle. We were still meeting there where we would set up the snacks and break into groups. As I got closer, I saw that we had an excellent turnout.

It looked like nearly the whole neighborhood was there, and I got to chit-chat with a few people I knew by sight, learn their names, and hand out a few sneaky brownies while we waited to be told how to begin. finally we heard a voice calling for quiet, and we hushed up, and listened to one of our organizers. She called out various groups and pointed where to head, and off we went. I left my Tupperwares on the long folding table under a canvas canopy, and pulled my wagon to where I'd be working.

I'd volunteered to rake and clean out an empty lot at the end of the street, and had brought a long rake, a hand-trowel, and plenty of yard bags. The birds were singing above us. As we shook out the bags and got to work, the smell of spring is already so energizing. but when you start to work in the dirt, it gets even better. There was that fresh scent of rain-soaked soil that rose up as we raked through the grass and leaves. We found a few soda cans and paper scraps,

and other sundry bits of refuse, which I offered to take back to my place to resusc. cycle. I was glad I'd brought my wagon. Soon, the lot looked much less abandoned, much more friendly and clean, and one of our neighbors walked by with a few full bird feeders hanging from his fingers. He'd made them over the winter in his workshop, and since no one was using, this lot for the moment, what did we think about hanging them in the trees?

We thought it was a great idea. And we hung them on long wires and made a plan to fill them through the summer, across the street. The storm windows were coming down off a beautiful old farmhouse. I knew the man who lived there. He was old.

and had trouble getting out. I sometimes brought him a few groceries when he let me know what he needed. And I realized the windows hadn't come down in a few years. If we hadn't asked to help today, they certainly would have stayed put another year.

I watched my neighbors carefully sliding the glass panels off their hooks and carrying them around to store in the garage. Someone was sweeping his broad front porch and checking that the chains holding his swing were sturdily attached. Someone rang a bell from the triangle, and we all took a break, washing our hands at a spigot in someone one's yard and eating sandwiches from paper plates. The air was warm and smelled fresh. With all the dirt we'd turned over, the sun was shining down on us, and we had the rest of the afternoon to take care of each other. And the space we shared. Spring was here, the weather vein.

It was a windy morning, the last oak leaves that had hung on all through the autumn and winter were finally being pushed off their branches by the coming crop about to bud and flying and soft, swirling paths around the yard. In our own time, I thought. As I watched from the porch, my mud boots on, and a cardigan buttoned up against the breeze. The weather vein on top of the barn spun as the wind gusted, and its green copper tail turned in the slipstream. we'd found the weather vein in the barn. When we'd bought this place, we'd found a lot of things in the barn. And most of them were rusted beyond repair, or just old clutter,

that needed to be carted away. But the weather vein, right away, I felt like I'd found a treasure. It stood nearly as tall as I was. was, with two sets of crossed beams, one to mark the cardinal directions, and one that must have been purely decorative, crossed arrows with ornate tails and heads, a beautiful crane made from copper, its wings open in mid-flight, and its long, graceful legs stretched out to cap. the feel of the wind. As it blew, the crane would turn to show the direction of the gust.

All that copper and skillful crafting, just to point at the wind, it seemed absolutely worth the work and wait as we hefted it up onto the peak of the barn. and fastened it securely into place. That was years ago, and still, my eyes found it every morning. While I was walking across the yard or sitting on the porch, it had become a sort of mascot for the farm. And when I was in town and mentioned it,

I noticed people's eyes lighting up, Oh, the Weathervane Farm. Yes, I know where that is. I smiled as I stepped off the porch and started across the yard toward the barn. I was glad people could find us easily. It often proved to be important. We hadn't set out to become a sanctuary.

We'd just been people with the barn and some land, but it had happened all the same. There were some goats who needed a home. We don't remember now the specifics. It hadn't mattered to me then either. I just thought, well, nobody's living in the barn. Let's see what we can do. We'd heard about a pig that someone was trying to keep in a house without much of a yard. And we called and said she could come here.

And then it was like a silent call had gone out to all the animals in the county who needed a safe place to land. and we were reorganizing the barn and seeding the back pasture and setting up a coop for the birds. Thankfully, we'd had plenty of help along the way, neighbors who lent a hand with the outbuildings and taught us how to care for creatures we'd never kept before. there was a reliable band of volunteers, too, who gave us breaks when we needed them, and sometimes came out even when we didn't,

just to spend time with the animals. We were grateful to them, because the whole operation wouldn't have worked without them. But I think they were great. grateful to. They could come spend an hour in the pasture with the goats while they played or stretch out in the grass with the cow napping, her sweet, spotted head, resting in their lap. And I knew from experience. How lovely and special that was. Didn't make much sense. The animals did. they sought play and affection and snacks on a sunny place to lay and we're happy being around that

reminded me to find the joy in those things too to be contented when my needs were met rather than grasping constantly for more. Along with the farm animals, we'd given a home to. We had space to say yes to several dogs and cats. And some of them followed me around as I did my morning chores. We tipped out old water from tubs and troughs and filled them with fresh. We fed everyone their breakfast and opened the gates from the barn to the pasture. A pocket full of carrots and apples, and some of them went to the goats as I walked through their yard.

But I saved the rest for the two donkeys at the end of the barn. You're not supposed to have favorites. They were mine. I couldn't help it. We had two, both a bit older, but still full of silliness and personality. When we first started to have animals here at the farm, after we rescued the first goats and pigs, I thought right away that I hoped we might. at some point, add a donkey or two to the family. I'd carried a memory with me since I was young of driving out on sunny days to visit some friends who had a farm a lot like ours.

There was a long, sloping hill with a barn at the top, where llamas and alpacas lived, and at the bottom, a paddock with a couple sweet, silly donkeys, and as soon as the car was in park, I'd be out the door and running toward them. When they saw me, they would bray in a chorus of excited honks, and I felt like they knew me and had missed me and were so glad I was back. I'd stand at the edge of their yard

and rub their ears and chat to them. And they were so gentle and funny and I never forgot how it felt to rub the soft fur on their broad noses. So when a neighbor came to us saying that her donkeys seemed lonely. Could they stay here?

Or they could play with the others. I was so glad. Of course, I said. We'll get their room ready right away. She had visited them as long as she lived, that they didn't get those visits anymore. I made sure to carve out some special time for them alone. I walked through the open door of the barn and smelled the sweet hay that was

spread out over the floor. A couple geese and a duck were having a committee meeting in the corner, and I left them to it, kept going, past the pen where the goat slept. and noticed one of the barn cats, dozing up high on a hay bale, one white paw hanging lazily over the edge. At the back of the barn, where the doors opened to the pasture, the donkeys were chewing their breakfast. They could come and go during the day, between the yard and the shelter. And I found them with the sun on their faces, and tails swinging slowly behind them. They heard me coming.

And just like those sweet donkeys in my memory, let out a few croaky he-haws. They really do say, he-ha-ha. And it always made me laugh. They nosed into my pocket. for the treats they knew I would have brought, and I fed them bit by bit, and told them my plans for the rest of the day.

I cradled their heads in my arms, watching them blink, their long lashes. The wind blew fast and fresh, smelling of spring, and I stepped out and shielded my eyes, eyes from the sun to watch the weather veins spin and stop on the roof, chores to do. I caught up a pail and tromped on in my boots. Old houses on my walk today.

I took a turn I hadn't taken before and found myself strolling past old stone houses. with wide front porches and sidelots devoted to flower gardens. The sidewalks were a bit cracked and uneven, misplaced by the thick roots of trees. That must have been planted well over a hundred years ago. Do you play this game? Walking in an old neighborhood and imagining a story about the people who'd lived in the houses, what they'd gotten up to,

who they'd written in their diaries about, and what they'd eaten for breakfast. On sunny Saturday mornings, there was a house, set well back from the street, with a neat, green lawn, framed by a black iron fence. There were twisty flourishes,

shaped in the metal. where the posts connected to crossbeams, some like leaves, and some like petals. And I thought about how someone had come up with this design and crafted it, and how long it had lasted, and that it was still beautiful.

In the side yard of the house was an ancient giant of a tree, an oak who was just beginning to bud, as he had done so many springs before, a bedroom window, just beside a long, sideways jutting branch, was open a few inches, and the curtains inside were shifting a bit with the breeze. I wondered if a few fearless teenagers had found

that branch useful over the years for sneaking out late at night if they'd scraped their hands on the bark as they caught a hold climbed down till they could drop to their feet quiet and watching to see if a lamp would come on in the house and when it didn't, smiling excitedly in the darkness and rushing off to find some adventure. I crossed the street toward a row of peony bushes that wrapped around a corner in front of a house made of dark-aged wood that seemed to be held together by miles of ivy vines. winding around every window frame, and climbing endlessly over eaves and dormers and gables. I stopped to squat down by the peonies

and look at their shining dark green leaves and the tightly bundled buds of white and pink petals that were still a ways away from blooming, tiny black ants, crawled over the buds, eating away their sweet, waxy nectar. I laughed to myself, remembering a panicky call to my plant-wise mother when I'd found ants on my peonies in my first garden. What do I do? I'd asked.

Nothing, she'd laughed. Nature has it worked out, dear. Sure enough. The flowers had bloomed, full, and healthy, a week or so later, and I'd been reminded about the useful lesson of not fixing what wasn't broken, and just generally minding one's own business. Rising from my crouch, I looked back at the house with the ivy. I had a feeling there would be a piano in a house like that.

Maybe it was just a touch out of tune, but still had a lovely sound. In its bench were old piano lessons, marked up with notes, dates to have the piece mastered by, and accolades for work well done. I'd had a great, great uncle who composed a few pieces that had been published. in the 20s, and I wondered if a few of his old scores were still sitting in piano benches, in houses like this, waiting to be played again. On a corner, I looked down and noticed a dull glint at the edge of the sidewalk. I stooped down and saw that it was a penny, planted deep into the cement. I suspected it was a way to mark the date that it had been pressed into the

wet concrete. It was turned face up so that the year showed beside the profile. I rubbed at it for a moment and peered closer. 1920, it said, and it was still here. The street curved ahead of me, and I followed it past more old houses, some a bit worse for wear, whose lawns had taken over the flower beds or had a broken window up high in the attic and loose tiles on the roof, wove a few more stories about them as I walked. This one was the one that all the kids dared each other to approach on Halloween night, with its dark, deep-set door. and dusty cobwebbed window panes. Across the street there was a tall Victorian,

painted in several bright shades of yellow and pink, with a small turret on the top floor, and windows of stained glass. There were a dozen steps up to the front porch, and each baluster was painted. In a complex, repeating design, I thought that it must have been the house of a wise old aunt. You'd go for advice, and she'd sit you down and listen to you.

As she poured tea into matching cups, and after you'd got it all off your chest, she'd quietly sit with you and tilt her head a bit to the side, and you'd realize, you already knew just what you needed to do. You'd fly down her front steps, calling your thanks over your shoulder and rush off to take the job,

or confess your love, or pack your bags. There was a serious looking house with sharply trimmed shrubs, framing the gardens, and dignified urns of flowers. on stone pedestals at the front door, but at the edge of the drive cut into a stone ledge and a tiny fairy garden with a miniature house and succulence

and very small stepping stones that reminded me of the kind I found by the lake and skipped into the water. I looked back up at the house and gave it a friendly wave that likely no one saw. These old houses held so many secrets and stories when you bumped into the small, beautiful details. That could easily be missed.

It felt like stumbling on a treasure, the twists in the wrought iron fence, the peonies, waiting for the ants, to finish their meal. The penny turned face up in the sidewalk, carefully painted balusters, and the space set out for fairies to garden. I felt lucky to have seen them.

To have not just rushed past, I'd keep taking new turns on my walks and see what else I could stumble upon. Piano lessons. The bright spring sunshine was helping me find the dust that needed clearing out in our house. It always startles me. That first sunny day, when you open the front door and pull back the curtains, and suddenly the air is filled with floating specks.

the floorboards crowded with dust bunnies, big enough to pass for tumbleweeds. So I'd been working my way through the front room, running my dust cloth over the family photos on the bookshelves, the lamp in the front window, and the broad lid of the piano. As I did, I noticed it was the least dusty thing in the room. And I guess I wasn't surprised at that. My youngest plays it nearly every day. We'd come across the piano a couple of years before at a neighborhood garage sale.

I still remember the way my son's eyes had gone wide when he'd seen it. He was a quiet boy. There was a lot of magic inside him. And sometimes it stayed inside, but when he played, it came out. And I got to enjoy it along with him. The piano had come home the next day, a rather complicated arrangement. involving a borrowed truck, several friends, planks of wood salvaged from the garage, and a not inconsiderable amount of effort. But it had all been worth it. We polished up the cabinet and bench, the bottom of which was about to fall out from all the scores and lesson books it had come with. I'd organized a lot of them into boxes he could work his way into

as his lessons progressed. Then I repaired the bench itself. Now, it held his first few books and performance pieces. The piano had been badly in need of a tune-up when it came home, and my son had found the process fascinating. He's often shy around new people, but he'd met a kindred spirit in the woman who'd come with a bag of tools to attend to the piano. He'd watched as she'd opened up the soundboard and taken her hammer, wrench, and tuning key from her bag. She'd patiently explained what she was doing as she isolated Middle Sea,

tuned it, and set the pin. Then they'd worked their way through the keys, playing, listening, tightening strings, or loosening them. He had an ear for it, could hear when a note was even just a fraction flat or sharp, and he could name a note just by hearing it. He knew it in the same way I could tell an orange crayon from red, with no hesitation and a little confusion as to why others struggled to do the same. The tuner came every six months, and he had it marked down on the calendar, on the fridge, and would meet her at the door and reach for her tools. the strap of her bag.

Over his own little shoulder, he'd played his first recital last year, and the man who'd owned the piano last, who'd kindly given it to us, in exchange for an invitation to that recital, had attended and sat proudly beside us. He'd taken pictures, and then listen to the music with his eyes closed and a soft smile on his face.

He'd also come for Thanksgiving. And when the tables were full and we were beginning to run out of seats, he'd mentioned that his wife had always pulled up the piano bench when they needed an extra spot for someone. I'd looked at my son, thinking he might not want anyone else sitting on his bench. He'd leaned in close to my ear and whispered that he could share the bench if it was with our new friend. The two of them would fit, so we'd move chairs around, and they'd sat side by side, eating their sweet potatoes and stuffing. During the school year, he'd had just one lesson a week.

There were lots of other things to do, ways to play, and I wanted him to have time to go to the library, to write. his bike, to play video games with his friends, and days when he had nothing scheduled at all. Now that summer was coming, I'd left it up to him. Did he want to play more piano? Maybe have lessons twice a week? He'd sat quiet for a minute or two, thinking it through. then nodded. Twice a week sounded good to him. His piano teacher lived in a little cottage, in a pretty neighborhood north of town. Ivy grew up the brick beside her front porch, and in the yard was a small carved sign saying piano lessons. She had come to a her house a few times. But I think we both liked going to her house instead. It was a very

comfortable space. She'd been a musician for years, and her mantle was covered with pictures of her in her youth, outside theaters and concert venues, pointing up to her own name on the marquee, or crowded around a microphone with others in recording studios. When we showed up on her front porch, him with his practice books under his arm, me with whatever novel I'd been reading lately, she'd opened the door and stepped back to let us in. and it felt like being allowed into a sanctuary. Inside the flowers were laid with thick rugs

that I guessed were knotted by hand somewhere far away. The air smelled of sandalwood and green tea, and her furniture was beautiful and comfortable. Her front window held creeping pathos and a healthy asparagus fern. Here was a woman who had built a life she loved, who knew how to protect her peace. We were there for him,

for him to take lessons from her. But I often felt like I was learning as well, mentally taking notes as I settled onto a sofa out of the way. The recital was going to be at the inn by the lake this year, on their big back porch, where he'd helped turn pages for his teacher, while she'd played for a wedding the September before. I imagined him playing the music echoing over the water,

the birds stopping to listen along with us. me holding tightly to a bouquet of flowers to hand to him after. Not everything we try when we are young, or when we are grown, suits us. I was so glad we'd found something that suited him so well. The back stairs, these old houses, especially the big ones, They have a lot of forgotten features that newer houses just don't come with anymore. Some are easy to see, like the back stairs, a less pretty but more functional set than the grand front staircase in the entryway, or the tranceom windows. that have let light into the inner rooms since before the place was wired for electricity.

But some are less obvious, like the dumb waiter, that might be mistaken for a cupboard in the hall till you open its doors, to find a tray of food sent up from the kitchens. and some are actually hidden in the walls, as the call bell system was, which we only uncovered while mending some plumbing. We freed the chimes and replaced the wires. And now I can step on a button beside my desk

to signal chef down in the kitchen. the guests are arriving, or that the produce delivery truck is trundling down the drive. If I was just a householder living here, I don't imagine I'd have too much call to ring the bells or to load breakfast dishes into the dumb waiter, but I am not just just. a householder. I am lucky. I am an innkeeper. I look after my guests, and I look after this great old house. It wouldn't suit everyone, but it suits me perfectly. I look forward to the busy summer days when every room is filled, and I rise early to pour coffee for diners on the porch, in between handing out beach towels and welcoming new guests at the reception desk.

In the off-season, when the inn is closed, or has just a couple of rooms booked, I enjoy the quiet and rest. I read books. I sit with my cat sycamore and watch the ducks swimming on the lake. Besides the weekend of Valentine's, when we'd opened for a few days, and when the whole second floor and most of the third had been full, we were still in rest and relaxation mode, but all of that was about to change. In a week, our regular season would begin. I was glad we weren't booked solid right at the start. May was... an excellent month to come to the inn. But for many, kids were still in school.

The weather wasn't quite warm enough to swim and boat, and it just didn't feel like summer vacation yet. It was a chance for us to ease ourselves into our routines, for chef to test out new recipes, for the vegetable garden to begin to grow and for Sycamore to learn more about being a good host. He'd come to me in the late autumn of last year,

so this would be his first summer as an innkeeper, an in-catter, as it were. And there was a chore I needed to take. take care of before our guests arrived. It had to do with some of those details of old houses I'd mentioned earlier, both the obvious and less obvious sort, though in the same location. When guests came down the long gravel drive to the inn, they entered the big front doors and stepped into our entryway, a pretty paneled space with a dramatic sweeping staircase that carried them

and their luggage up to our guestrooms. But when they came back down, especially when they came down for breakfast, or to head out to the lake, they came down the back stairs, which were less ornate, though still well-crafted, and which brought them to the back of the inn, where we served coffee and meals

on a screened-in porch overlooking the water. When the house was built, 20 years before the start of the 20th century, these stairs were most likely not, used by the wealthy family that lived here, maids, cooks. I imagine even a butler would have used them to carry tea trays and deliver messages and probably to hide out and have a few moments to themselves. As someone who serves in this house, I care about these stairs and the people who climbed them back then, as well as the ones who did today. So every spring, I spent an afternoon sweeping and dusting,

polishing up the wood till it shone and relaying the runner and carpet rails. Sycamore was helping, in a sense. He was keeping me company. He had one of his tiny stuffed mice in his mouth, and every once in a while he'd set it down in front of me, sit back on his rear legs and shadow box with it. He'd swing his paws in a mock fight until I caught on, and I'd flick the mouse down the stairs. It tumbled to the next landing, and he'd chase after it, a midnight black streak with green eyes.

Once he caught it, he'd chew on it. batted around, maybe even lay his head down on it and doze till I made my way with my polishing rag and broom down to where he was. And we'd go again. In the corner of each step was the other old house feature, the less obvious one. It was a small brass triangle that fitted right into the space where the bottom of the riser met the wall. It was called a dust corner. And like you might have guessed, It kept dust out of the corner of the stair. If you've ever tried to work a broom into that space, you know how tricky it is to clean out.

Well, the housekeepers of the past must have pointed that out to a clever inventor at some point. Because if you look closely, a lot of old houses have these. since they were brass, they could be polished up to look absolutely brand new. And when we renovated the inn many years ago, that's what I did. I'd replaced the missing ones and polished the old ones till they were indistinguishable. And they had been very pretty. But there was something about them that just didn't feel like they fit with the back stairs. A bit of patina, a less perfect shine seemed fitting for these stairs, where things were allowed to not be perfect. So I dusted and swept

and warmed the wood railings with oil, but left the honest age. as I went. As I made my way to the bottom of the stairs, the end of my chore in sight, I heard chef out on the porch. I stuck my head through the doorway and saw them setting down a platter of sandwiches on a table, along with some glasses and napkins. Go wash your hands and come eat, they called. And I gratefully pushed into the butler's pantry and turned on the sink. I heard the tinkle of Sycamore's bell as he went out to see what else chef had made. I pulled up my chair and looked out at the sun shimmering on the lake. I was so glad for this old house. and the ones who came to share it with me.

First Mo of the year, I stood outside the garage, my fingers reaching for the handle, but looking over my shoulder into the backyard and beyond, past the tree line that marked the yard next door at all the green growth and flowers that had shot up and blossomed in the last week or so. We'd slept with the windows cracked last night, and this morning I had opened more, airing out the house, the staleness of long, cold months, washed away in minutes. I wanted to get outside as soon as I could.

And looking out from the kitchen window, I could see a day's worth of chores waiting for me. The weather had been warming for weeks now, and I'd been holding off on any mowing or cutting back. waiting for all the little critters and pollinators to wake up and have a few meals first. It seemed like today might finally be the day for it. I turned back to the garage and gripped the handle. It took a swift turn, a little bed.

bend in my knees and a strong push up on the door to send it gliding into place. I thought about getting an opener put on it, but there was something about opening it by hand that I actually liked. It was a very specific movement, one that was buried deep in my muscle memory, from when I would hoist open the garage door for my grandpa so he could get his tractor out, the rattley clatter of the old door, moving on its track. The gust of scent from inside. Tools and dust and wood shavings. The way my wrists knew how far to turn. My knees, how much to bend. And then inside the garage, neat pegboards, hung with tools, and the shiny tractor backed into place and waiting for its next job. My own garage was not quite as

neat as his had been. But still there was a sort of order to the chaos. I stepped in and propped my hands on my hips, looking around at the tools and stacks of pots. First things first, I thought, and reached for a pair of garden gloves. My thumb went right through a hole in the fabric, and I laughed, recognizing the pair as one I'd bought years before when I tilled my first garden. They were cream with red dots that if you looked close enough were distinguishable as ladybugs. I took them off and tucked them into my back pocket. thinking that I could probably fix them up with a needle and thread in a jiffy. I found a second pair, this one without any terribly large holes, and put them on.

I wheeled my mower out onto the sidewalk and shook out a lawn bag beside it. From down the block, I heard the stutter. start of someone else's mower, and cupped my hand over my eyes to shield out the sun, and peer through the yards. A few gardens over, my neighbor was mowing the first path through his grass, and within a second the scent of it hit me, so green and lively. I took a few deep, I took a few deep breaths with my eyes closed. Spring was really here. Summer, just behind. In my own yard, I started to trace back and forth, walking slowly with my eyes on the ground. I picked up sticks and pine cones, relocated rocks, and gathered a few scraps of trash.

that the wind had blown in. When the grass was clear, I started my own mower and pushed it down the length of the yard. It reminded me suddenly of my dad's green tennis shoes by the back door when I was a kid. They hadn't started off as green.

But after a day behind the mower, They'd begun to color with chlorophyll, and he'd given up trying to keep the might. They'd just become his mowing shoes. I looked down at my own pair and smiled. It was something so small and simple, a shared experience of being a grown-up with chores, but it made me really happy. This whole day did. I made slow, even rows with the mower.

I'd raised the blade up a bit, so I was giving the grass. Only a subtle haircut. My mind got quiet as I mowed, the steadiness of my feet pacing along behind the wheels, the warm sun on the back of my neck, the slow, careful turn at the end of a row, lining up the wheels and starting again. Was it so different from walking a labyrinth? I didn't feel that different.

I'd had a teacher once who'd recommended a walking meditation. They'd suggested the best place for it. was a grocery store. Just get a cart and walk the aisles. As slowly as you can, notice each step. That was me now. When the backyard was done, I shut down the mower and began to wheel it down the driveway to start in the front. Just as a quiet thirst appeared in my throat, I noticed a tall glass of water set out for me on the step of the side door. It seemed the perfect time for a break. I sat down on the step and lifted the cool glass to my lips. There were a few slices of cucumber, number, floating among the ice cubes, and it tasted so refreshing and delicious.

While I sipped, I looked across the driveway at the house next door. They had two little boys. Well, not so little anymore. They were growing fast. In my mind, the youngest was still, riding in the stroller, his big brother toddling beside, as their dads took them for a walk. But I knew he must now be several years into elementary school, the oldest probably in middle school. Their dog, a sweet golden retriever named Clover, was stretched out on her side, on their back patio in the sun,

and even from where I sat, I could see the slow rise and fall of her ribs as she breathed. My glass of water finished. I set it down on the step and pushed back up onto my feet. I reached for the handlebar of the mower. In the front yard, I repeated the step of patrolling the grass for fallen branches. and found one of Clover's frisbees among the Pacassandra. I carried it to her fence and whistled for her. She lifted her head to look at me. One ear flipped inside out, and her lips stuck on her teeth. I showed her the frisbee, and she jumped to her feet, ready for me to throw it. I sent it out toward the back edge of her.

her yard, and she went tearing after it. She didn't catch it mid-air. She wasn't that kind of dog, but she did dig it out from where it landed near a lilac bush and carried it back to her patio, with her tail happily wagging along the way. Across the street, another neighbor was fixing her mailbox, The flag had broken off over the winter. A new one, shiny and red, sat waiting on the grass as she worked away with the screwdriver, just like the muscle memory of pushing open the garage door, of tugging at the pull cord of the mower, of green tennis shoes, of sleeping in the sun on a warm patio.

I knew that feeling of wrestling with a slightly rusted screw. I restarted the mower and began to pace through the front lawn, comforted by the moments my neighbors and I had in common, the lilac thief. There are only a few days of the spring when you can step out of the door

and smell them on every passing breeze, so bright and sweet that there's nothing to do, but plant your feet and take slow, deep breaths, to try to store their scent deep inside for another year. the lilacs. I remember as a child, pressing my face into their soft blooms, due coming away on my cheeks, hearing how something could smell like that, and look like that,

and grow so abundantly, and be allowed. It seemed too good, too perfectly aligned with what was pleasing to just occur naturally. I guess there is a catch with lilacs. They only bloom once a year, and they don't last long. In fact, they're best enjoyed on the tree. When you cut them down and bring them inside, they soon wilt and dry up,

and their sweet smell fades. Still, I couldn't help my own. I would try to be surrounded by them for as long as possible each spring. And that meant taking matters into my own hands, and possibly some very gentle trespassing. You see, I am a lilac thief. I don't strike at random. My crimes aren't ham-fisted or even much noticed. I'm a subtle thief.

I plan when and where, and make my getaway before anyone is the wiser. When I walk my neighborhood, I might casually reach up for a stray blossom, creeping through the slats of a fence, and just as casually, tuck it into the flag of a mailbox for someone to find later. But I know better,

than to pull a real heist so close. to home. For that, I packed a kit into my car, wicker basket, garden gloves, and a small set of pruning shears. I dressed inconspicuously and drove out into the countryside. There was an old farmhouse, long abandoned, on a dirt road that I knew well. I'd case the joint years ago, and found the house reliably empty and the yard reliably full of lilac trees. I parked my car on the edge of the road to give myself a bit of plausible deniability, after all. Perhaps I just had a spot of car trouble and was letting an overheated engine cool down, and had stopped to smell the roses,

as it were. I chuckled to myself as I took my kit from the backseat, master criminal that I was, and made my way down the long and dusty drive that led to the house. I stood with the sun on my face for a few moments and let my imagination spin a story about who might have lived here. I thought of kids running through the vegetable patch,

A pack of family dogs racing with them. Sparklers on the 4th of July. A kitchen with rows of freshly canned pickles laid out on cotton towels. A tree planted to mark a special day a hundred years ago. That grew to the one I looked at now. The house had a large wraparound porch. And although the stairs had a few missing boards, and the paint was chipped and faded.

I could tell. It had been a beloved place in its time. I followed my nose to the large row of lilacs, and put my gloves on and opened my shears. The blossoms were so full and heavy that their stems struggled to stay upright. I set my basket down and started to relieve them of their burden.

I took time to notice each small bloom, drink deep the smell, unpatiently waited for bees, to shift from one flower to another. I filled my basket till it nearly overflowed, and still the bushes seemed as full as they had when I started. I kicked my way back down the drive, and with a surreptitious look, up and down the road, I smuggled my goods back into the bus, car and made my getaway. All that stealing had made me thirsty. And I was craving a cold brew coffee from a little cafe near my house. I decided to bring my basket with me and found a seat

at a tiny table outside. I ordered my iced coffee with a bit of coconut milk and set my basket on the seat beside me. I picked through the stems, making small bouquets, and tying them up with the twine. Some were for me, and some I leave on the doorsteps of friends. Did you steal those lilacs? Asked a voice from behind me. I turned to see an older man with gray hair and bright eyes, looking at me over his cup of coffee. What lilacs? I asked, innocently. He winked at me and touched his finger to the side of his nose. Takes one to know one, he said. I laughed out loud. Passed him over a bundle of flowers. He pressed them to his face and took a deep breath in and let it out in a contented sigh. We chatted for a few minutes. about some of our favorite spots.

He told me about a place by the highway. I told him about the tree behind the library. He lifted the bouquet to thank me, and I carried my basket out to divvy up the rest of my plunder among friends and strangers on my way back home. Opening the cottage.

It is perhaps a distinction that not everyone will agree with. But as far as I am concerned, cabins are in the woods, and cottages are by the water. A cabin might live in a shady glade, tall pines or ancient oaks standing close by, with branches curling overhead.

It might have dark-panelled walls and a wood-burning stove for warming feet in thick socks. It might be the best place to be on a foggy autumn morning, or at the first snow of the year, with a cup in hand, and eyes on the slowly blanketing landscape. But a cottage sits on the edge of a river, or by a broad lake, its walls are painted a faded shade of yellow or white. It has weeping willows for neighbors.

There are buds the first to go green in the early spring. It is the best place to be on the cusp of warm months, with a glass of iced tea in the afternoon, and eyes always on the moving water. And so, we were on our way to open the cottage. A car was packed with a few days' worth of clothes, good for cleaning and walking in, paper grocery sacks of provisions.

A couple of dogs. and our giddy selves. The drive was familiar, roots we'd been taking for years. Here's the shop we sometimes stop at for iced drinks and sweet corn in the late summer. Here's the little town with one stoplight. And the old depot, overgrown with ivy and wisteria,

turn on the state road. Circle past the house with shrubs, cut to look like animals, and train cars, and keep going just a bit longer, till the air starts to smell different. Finally, lean forward in your seat, squint a bit, and catch sight of the front porch and familiar trees of the cottage.

It was an old place built at the beginning of the last century, with white, clabbard siding, and a front full of windows. We pulled up, dogs dancing in our laps. They knew where we were, and were as excited as we were. When we opened the doors, they jumped down and started a determined sniffing investigation

of every blade of grass. They were checking the guessbook, as it were, seeing who exactly had passed through, since we closed up in the fall. We let them sniff and did our own bit of inventory, checking for loose screens in the windows. We noticed a few branches that had fallen on the roof during a storm, and the buds of lilac on the bush. We stepped up onto the front porch, and the dogs rush to follow us in. Their whole body's wagging now, and noses are. They're whole bodies wagging now, and noses pressed up against the crack under the door.

I found the key on my ring, the one with a tiny red heart, daubed on in nail polish, and wiggled it into the lock. I pushed the door open, and the dog shot through the place, running from room to room, and we started to pull back curtains,

roll up blinds, and open windows, under the closed-up musty smell. I could already detect the scent that was so deeply tied into this place. It was like old wood, warmed in the sun, like old books, and the cases they've lived in for years, and with it was the smell of fresh water, and hundreds of breakfasts cooked late on Saturday mornings.

It was simply the best smell in the world. Once the car was unpacked, and the dogs had worn themselves out, with sniffing and found spots to lay in the sun of the front porch. We rolled up our sleeves and started to work our way through the little house. We put fresh sheets on the bed and swept the floors. We stocked up the kitchen cupboards and filled the fridge. We put clean towels in the bathroom and wiped the dust from the surfaces.

We frowned at the fused box and water heater. and flip switches until we'd figured it out. We should write down how we did that. So we have it for next year, I said. Mm-hmm. We both knew we wouldn't. It was part of the tradition. We strung the clothesline up in the backyard.

Knowing soon it would hold exclusively beach towels and swimsuits. We waved at neighbors, called out hellos and how are yous. There was more to do. But we'd done all we wanted for the day, so we stood shoulder to shoulder in the kitchen and fixed some sandwiches,

carried them out to the water. We walked to the edge of the dock and sat down with our legs, dangling over, toes a few inches from the still chilly. flowing river. We'd been saving this moment. And we both knew it. Is it this way for everyone, that water calls you like home, that you get antsy and edgy when you're too long away from it, and that as soon as you're back, you feel yourself restored? Is it because I grew up here? Because I'd slept on the front porch swing a hundred times as a kid.

and jumped off this dock in every year of my life, since I could walk. Or does water pull everyone the same? If I'd grown up in a desert, walked dunes of dry sand, and celebrated the days of my life in the rare shade of palms. Would I feel called by the arid heat? Beside me, an arm was raised, when a finger pointed down the length of the river, at a long dash of steel in the distance.

Ship. Ship, I said back. We'd see a hundred before the summer was over. But it never stopped being exciting. Some we knew well, having seen them for years. Having looked them up in the ship's book, we knew how long they were, what they carried, and could see just by looking at them, if they were full or empty of cargo.

This one looked brand new, fresh paint, and sleek lines. I looked forward to hearing the ship's horns in the night, to seeing their lighted boughs and sterns, slipping through the black water. There was no sleep like cottage sleep and no waking like cottage mornings. We heard the paws of the dogs behind us, and they crept down the dock to sit beside us. A furry head came to rest on my thigh, and I slipped my hand over her shaggy ear and stroked the spot between her eyes. We were all quiet together, just looking out at the same. the slow-moving ship, the wake building at her bow, and the water birds overhead. I was sure that

cabins held their own joys, but this was a cottage, and it was the best place to be for the summer. Daydreamer. I'd been sleeping with the windows open for a week or so. A few nights had been cool, but I'd just added a thick quilt to the bed and happily dozed with the night air circling over me. On those mornings, I'd been a bit quicker than usual to get my cup of coffee

and climb back into the still warm bed, sipping from my cup. As the light turned pink outside and feeling myself warming and waking and wondering what the day would be, it is one of the best moments of the day, the first moment. As every possibility lies open to you and nothing has yet been decided, day dreaming, I've realized, as I've gotten older, is underrated. So I spent that first moment of the day, just letting my mind float on possibilities, like an upturned leaf. Floating on the current of a stream, I leaned back against the pillows and smelled the good, toasted, scent of my coffee. It was a dark roast and reminded me of the smell of cacao beans. I thought of a meal

I'd eaten a few years before that had ended with a cup of sweet chai and a square of bitter dark chocolate. The sweet and the bitter had gone so well to the sweet. together. I'd nibbled tiny bites and taken small sips to make it last as long as I could. It was, I thought, just like the cool night air and the warm quilt opposites. But friends, the difference between them pulling out the best parts of each other. I heard the rumble of an engine and looked down through the window beside my bed to spy a school bus. Climbing up the street, it stopped at the house next door. And I heard the pneumatic hiss of the side door opening.

and my neighbor hurrying his little one out to climb the steps, she had a poster board rolled up into a tube and fastened with paper clips at either end under one arm and a lunchbox dangling from the other hand. I smiled, watching her make her way up the stairs. remembering that she had told me proudly a few days before, that she had been working on her science fair project. I thought back to my own science fair days

and remembered walking up and down the aisles of tables, set up in the gym, excited to see how a lot of. lemon could be a battery. A dozen tiny plants might have grown differently because they'd been fed their sunlight in east-facing windows or west. And of course, the showstopper, an ambitious parent-child team-built paper-machet volcano, hand painted with tiny pots of poster paint and erupting with baking soda and vinegar. I wondered what her little mind was curious about.

What bit of the natural world had she explored and vowed to ask her when she got off the bus this afternoon? I went back to daydreaming as I watched the bus stop at the corner and pick up another small scientist, carrying a giant cardboard display carefully over their head. I thought about that bus full of children, and what they dreamed of doing when they got older. They'd be all different sorts of people. Some would travel to faraway places,

and others might live their whole lives in our little neighborhood. Some would make art, or become athletes, discover, invent, teach, be parents themselves, or maybe, and I smiled thinking of it, drive a school bus, and someday be there to help a student up the steps with a science fair project in their arms. It made me think of a night many years before. When I'd been in a city, I didn't know well.

And I'd thought, I'd just missed the last bus home. A man my grandfather's age had seen me running to catch it. And when I finally stopped at a corner to think what to do next, he came to ask if I was all right. He leaned on his cane as he listened to my story. Last bus. My friends, having caught the one going the other way, too far to walk and not sure how to get home, there would be another bus, he promised.

You'll get home just fine, he said. He waited with me, asking me about school. And my summer plans. distracting me from my worries. And sure enough, a quarter of an hour later, a number four bus pulled up to the stop. I thanked him for helping me. And he watched me go up the steps and settle in a seat.

The window was pulled down a few inches, and as the door closed, and the driver prepared to pull away, he called out to watch for my stop, and be careful. I still thought about him all these years later, that he'd cared for a stranger, enough to sit with me and wait, that he'd taken a bit of his own, time to make sure I got home safely. I certainly hoped he had to. I still hadn't moved from my warm quilt, but my mind had been back in time, thousands of miles away and cast a bit into the future as well. Where would that drifting leaf float off to next? I saw the mail carrier. walking up to a mailbox a few houses away, and even from my nest up high in my bedroom.

I spotted a square, bright red envelope, as it was pulled from the mail pouch and tucked into the box. What, I wondered, was in that envelope, a birthday card, an invitation. to a fancy party, a love letter, confessing someone's deepest desires and hopes. The leaf went tumbling down a waterfall, rushing past a hundred possibilities. It's the promise of a letter, sealed tightly in an envelope, isn't it?

It's the same as the promise of the first moment. of a new day. It could take you anywhere. I decided the letter in that red envelope was from a long, lost cousin, informing the recipient of a family fortune, now up for grabs. If only they would come for a weekend

at great-uncle's house in the country. I imagined a long dining room table with an inch of dust on the dishes and a secret passageway that went from the false panel in the library to a door hidden by a tapestry in the hall upstairs. I conjured up a groundskeeper with a secret.

and an initial carved into the base of a stone statue in the center of a hedge maze. I took the last sip of my coffee, laughing at myself, and the story I'd started in my mind. Not laughing in jest or derision, but in delight. this is the secret we forget as we get older, that we can go anywhere in our minds, and that daydreaming can be its own adventure and escape. When we can't travel, when we can't go back or forward in time,

we can dream. And a dream doesn't have to be real to feel true. housewarming. This morning, a cool spring morning, I found a square red envelope in my mailbox. Along with it were flyers and bills and a catalog for summer community ed programs, with a picture on its paper cover of children planting seeds in raised boxes beside the library, though I was eager to flip through the pages of the catalog and see what classes and camps were scheduled for the next few months.

That red envelope called to me. and I sat right down on my front step to open it. The flap had been stuck down just at the tip so I could slide a finger under it to pop it open. It reminded me of the way my grandmother had always sent cards. I don't think she'd ever sealed an envelope, in her life. She just tucked the flap in and assumed no one would try to open it until it got to its intended recipient. Even when she sent a card with birthday money inside, she must have had a lot of faith

in people. And I liked that. I also laughed, guessing that. Guessing that, she'd sent in her gas and electric bills in the same way. I imagined an office worker at a desk with a pile of mail and a letter opener in her hand until she came to my grandmother's envelope, which, just by pulling it open, would send the check fluttering down onto the pile. The chill of the front step under me brought me back to the intriguing piece of mail I held in my hands.

I slid out a thick, creamy white card from the red envelope and saw that it had been addressed and fancy looping calligraphy, an invitation to a housewarming party. Next Saturday afternoon, it was from an old friend who'd bought his very first home. And I was so glad he was celebrating. It gave the details. The time and place

promised appetizers and cocktails on his new deck and with a cheeky flourish in the last line informed me that gifts would be graciously expected. I laughed sitting on the step and drummed my fingers on the card.

Thinking about what gift to give, I stood up and brushed myself off and carried my bundle of mail into the house. I thought about what made my own house warm and inviting. What made it feel like a home?

I stepped over to the window seat of the big bay window that looked out over the street and reached a handout to touch the leaves of my Monsterra Delicioso. sometimes called the Swiss cheese plant because its shiny green leaves were spotted with holes. I could certainly gift a plant, even one of my own as the entire window seat

was taken up with them. I had spiky aloe vera. with long, plump leaves. It could be useful. At the beginning of the summer, for the inevitable sunburns, I had tall snake plants with variegated leaves,

the stripes reminding me of a green and yellow zebra had a pot of pothos. And I'd been slowly weel its climbing vines up the edge of my bookshelf, hoping I might come home one day and find my living room, transformed into a thick, leafy forest. As I thought it over, I took a small pair of snippers from a drawer, and clipped out a few dead leaves. I wiped a bit of dust from my fiddle fig

and chattered away to the plants. I'd always heard that you should talk to your houseplants, but I did it more for a bit of conversation than as a therapeutic device, after all. We were housemates. We needed to catch up now and then. I noticed a new stock of growth in my coconut palm. It's soft, just-born leaf,

was folded back and forth on itself, like a paper fan, and I congratulated her, saying, I couldn't wait to see it open up. I stepped into the kitchen to fill my mister and thought that my friend might not be ready for plant parenthood. Though he was putting down roots with this new house, he loved to travel and might be away for weeks at a time. time, and any plant I gifted would likely spend most of its time, thirsty, on a window ledge,

with no one to talk to. After I misted my violets and turned my zizi plant to keep it from leaning, I stood in front of the painting above my hall table, maybe a painting, a painting as a painting as a gift? Every home needs art on the walls. And there was a boutique downtown that sold pieces by local painters and photographers. I quickly discarded the idea. Art is too personal, even knowing that he would be likelyer to enjoy something abstract. rather than, say, a landscape or a piece of photorealism. I still wouldn't know if it would be something he'd enjoy looking at every day. A book? A tea kettle? A vase?

Hmm. None of it seemed quite right. I settled on to the sofa. leaning back into the cushions to have a good think. I remembered going to a housewarming party with my mother, was a little girl, or perhaps it had been a wedding shower. I couldn't remember whose party it had been, or what gift we had brought. But what I did remember was something that doesn't much,

exist anymore. We'd been shopping at a department store, a fancy one, with a section of fine china and crystal glasses. I remembered standing at the sales desk, trying very hard to keep my hands in my pockets, so as not to break anything. And hearing my mother, ask to have her purchase gift wrapped. The clerk told her it would be sent directly to the gift wrapping department on the first floor, and we could go down and pick out the paper and ribbons. It was something that only happened two or three times in those years that we'd be buying a fancy gift and having it wrapped at the store. So I'd been excited and eager as she led me by the hand, down the escalator to the gift-wrapped apartment. Inside, it looked like a candy shop with its bright colors,

shiny rainbow of ribbons and sample gifts, beautifully wrapped on shelves. I loved the rolls of paper, hanging on every bit of wall and the way after my mother had pointed to one, a gift wrapper pulled down a length of it and dragged it against a serrated metal blade, built right into the roll,

and the perfectly cut piece of paper would be laid out on the clerk's desk. I watched, completely engrossed, as the clerk folded the paper, lining the pattern up perfectly, Where it came together, there was something so satisfying. In the way the paper was creased, a finger running along the fold to press it into a neat line.

Then the ribbons pulled from their spools in long strands and clipped in a flash with sharp silver scissors, and wound beautifully around the gift. They were tied in a bow, and their edges curled along the blade of the scissors. There were tiny cards and matching envelopes on a display on the desk, and my mother let me choose,

one to go with a gift and slipped it under the ribbon so it wouldn't get lost. I think if you'd asked me right then what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have said a gift wrapper. Actually, it still sounded like a good choice. I had a few more days to think through. To think through my gift-giving options, but I was sure. Whatever I gave, it would be wrapped with as much love and care as I could muster, housewarming. Part two, I was downtown, walking past the shop windows, Looking for a gift, it was a warm, sunny day. The trees that had held timid baby leaves just a week or two before

were now fully dressed for summer and most of the shops had their front doors propped open to let the fresh air in. I stopped at the window of the stationary shop and looked in at the shelves of journals and planners. I cupped my hand over my brow to block the sun and leaned closer to the glass, my nose almost touching it,

to spy the calendars, tacked up across the back wall. I was searching for a housewarming gift. something that felt special that would help make a new house feel like a real home. I didn't think a calendar was the right thing for that at all. But the shop was so inviting that I found myself stepping inside. A few moments later, there was a display. of pencils and pens on a table by the door. The pencils were a shiny, dark gray and flattened on one end,

where a rectangular pink eraser was fitted into place by a coppery bit of metal. I'd learned somewhere, though I don't now remember where, that the The piece of metal was called a feral. I like rarely used words for very specific things. So had filed it away in my mind and whispered it aloud in the shop to myself. As I turned the pencil in my fingers, screwed into the wall beside the table

was an old-fashioned crank-turn pencil sharpener, the kind that had been beside the light switches in every classroom of my elementary school. And now that I thought about it was in the basement of every house I'd ever lived in. I remembered moving once when I was 12 or 13 and rushing down into the basement to see if there was a pencil sharpener. Attached to one of the walls, I'd pulled the strings hanging from bare bulbs

as I went along the length of the room, but couldn't find one. It had bothered me because I thought it was something every house had to have. It seemed to upset the order of things. I'd turned back toward the stairs, and that's when I'd spotted it,

hiding on the other side of the steps beside a doorway to the laundry room, firmly bolted into the plaster and still half full of shavings. That could have been 50 years old, I'd turned the handle and wondered whose pencil, whose pencil had last been sharpened there. Had they thumped down the stairs with a big idea blossoming in their mind and hurriedly sharpened their trusty yellow number two pencil before the thought could flutter away

like a butterfly from an eager hand. in the shop, above the sharpener on the wall, was a small hand-painted sign that said, in pretty, genteel copper plate, you sharpened it, you bought it. It made me laugh out loud, as clearly I was not the only customer who felt the pull to slide one of those shiny new pencils into the slot on the side of the little device and turn the handle until I had a perfect point remembering that I was here for a give,

for someone else, not for me. I called on all my discipline and set the pencil back with its neighbors. I picked up a few heavy, serious-looking ballpoint pens, liking the way they felt in my hand, and even writing a few lines. on a pad of paper, set out for the purpose. The bit of metal that attaches your eraser to your pencil, I wrote in smooth, connected letters.

It's called a feral. In the end, I knew a pen wasn't the right gift either. and laying them back in their velvet-lined cases. I strolled through the other aisles. There was a shelf of desk accessories, tiny boxes of fancy paper clips, organizers and paperweights. Some were smooth pieces of marble or stone,

And then a few oddly familiar ridged domes of thick glass in sea green and sky blue. The tag called them Heming Grey insulators. And I realized my grandfather had had a row of them on his bookshelf when I was a child at one point in their history. They had sat high atop telephone poles, with live wires carried through their glass bodies, just like their name stated. They insulated so that the phone conversations

passing through those wires weren't absorbed into the pole. holes, and thus into the ground. I picked up the blue one and turned it this way and that, wondering whose was the first call to run through this pretty piece of glass. What if it had been the person who'd sharpened their pencil in the basement all the those years before, I set the insulator down, thinking I should pick up a journal to write this evolving story in, since it couldn't seem to leave me alone. In the next aisle, in fact, were rows of

blank books to be filled with everything from dates to remember. Dentist appoints sketches of squirrels in the park and poems about true love and heartbreak. I ran my fingers along the spines and stopped at one whose saddle stitch binding wasn't hidden by a cover. You could see the folded edges of the sheets of paper that made it up. with deep red thread holding the bundles into place. And without a second thought, I pulled it down from the shelf and tucked it into the crook of my elbow.

I stepped back over to the display of pencils and found the one I'd set down a few minutes before if I was getting a journal, I'd need something to write with, wouldn't I? I slid the blunt end of the pencil into the sharpener and began to turn the handle. There was that first catch, and I remembered the feeling of grinding down a brand,

new pencil from my bag in school, the resistance rattling through the handle, and needing to plant my feet and square my shoulders to push the lever around. I checked it after a few turns, nearly there, slid it back in for a few more. When I drew it out again, it was a perfect point, and I blew the graphite dust from it and turned to carry it with my journal toward the register. On the way, I remembered one more time that I was in the shop to buy a gift for a friend, a friend with a new house. My eyes fell on a rack of thick writing paper with matching envelopes, and I stepped over to them. They came in about 20 shades, some blank, and some with decorative borders. I didn't think he was much of a letter writer, though the stationary sets were beautiful.

They weren't quite right. Beside them was a table of stamps and stamp pads and tiny bottles of ink. The clerk came over to ask if I needed help. And with a sudden idea, a lighting in my mind, I took the red envelope from my purse and pointed to the address in the same. top left corner. Can you make a stamp with this name and address? I asked her. Of course, she said, and she showed me some options from the table. There were some very practical ones made with plastic casing, and they stamped just fine. But, to

didn't feel very nice in my hand. She showed me one that reminded me of the stamp the school librarian had used to mark the due date in our books. It was wooden with dials to adjust days and times and was rolled onto the page, the letters and numbers. pressed from bottom to top to evenly spread the ink. Behind it, I spotted a heavy contraption made of metal with a wooden plunger on top. You pressed it down and the stamp rotated away from its ink pad and pressed words or an image into the paper. It was incredibly satisfied.

to press, like an irresistible big red button. The clerk and I picked out a font and a layout for my friend, and she went back to her desk to put it all together. While she worked, I selected some thank you notes on thick white cardstock, and chuckled to myself as I set them with my journal and pencil next to the register to pay. He'd been cheeky in the invitation, saying the gifts were graciously expected, so I'd be cheeky write back

and give him a gift to set him up for his thank-you note writing. The clerk showed me how to position the stamp and we tried it out on a spare bit of paper, pressing the plunger down, and leaving a neat print, announcing the name, a new home of my old friend.

Someday, someone might find this stamp in a box in an attic, and re-ink the pad, and press it. it onto a sheet of paper and wonder about him and what letters he'd sent and the story would continue. The lilac grower. One day, you're young, driving through the countryside, surreptitiously swiping stems of lilacs from overgrown shrubs on abandoned farms. Without a care in the world.

The next day, you're a bit older. You've bought one of those abandoned farms yourself, and you're growing enough lilacs for the whole county. Still, without a care in the world. It's true. It's all true. I have been a lilac devotee since I was a teenager. First swept up into the romance of how beautiful and sweetly scented and short-lived these flowers are.

And each spring I found myself venturing out discreetly, but determinedly to scavenge enough stems, to fill a few vases. Along the way, I'd found not only some very good spots to snip away where no one would miss them. I'd also met other lilac thieves, and we'd shared our intel

and love for the flowers. Then, one Mayday, I'd been out on a caper at an old farmhouse that had long ago been abandoned. I'd just returned to my car on the dirt road beside the driveway and was about to tuck a full basket of lilacs. and my pruning shears into the trunk.

When another car pulled up beside me, the jig was up. I'd been caught. I'm not red-handed, but sort of green-thumbed, I thought. A woman with silver hair bundled up in a scarf. When a sparkle in her eyes stepped out of her car, and crossed her arms over her chest, tilting her head to one side and a question. I tucked the basket and shears

childishly behind my back and said, my engine got overheated. We stared at each other for a beat. Then both broke out in laughter. She walked over. to admire the flowers, and lifted a branch of the lilacs to her face and took a deep breath of the scent. There's nothing like them, is there? I agreed that there wasn't. And we got to talking. It turned out that she had grown up in this old farmhouse, and she invited me to walk through the yard with her.

I apologized for thieving their lilacs, which she waved away, saying she was glad someone was getting some enjoyment from them. She hadn't seen the old place in decades, and we stopped here and there. As she got caught up in memories and told me stories about her family. She pointed to a window. high up on one side. That had been her room.

In the yard, we found the remnants of a clothesline, the post still standing, but the cotton cord long ago dissolved by rain and weather, and she told me about hanging sheets out in the sun, their vegetable garden, while overgrown, and no longer fitting within its old borders, had, in some places, replanted itself. Her tomato plants and a pumpkin vine growing.

And we both imagined the deer and squirrels who must feast here each summer. The house had passed to her, but she lived far away now, had only driven back to see it one more time before arranging for it to be put up for sale, unless, she said, turning to me. You might know if someone would be interested. Her eyes sparkled again, and I found myself dumbstruck by a thought. I hadn't entertained before. I'd been coming to this old house for years, admiring the wide front porch and tall trees.

In some ways, I already thought of myself, as its caretaker. I seemed to be the only one, whoever walked the property. And I'd always harbored, of fear that one day it would be sold and torn down. Just then, I didn't know how I would do it, but I was sure. This would be my home. After that day, there had been many more conversations between the two of us.

Some were history lessons, passing on the stories of the house and the people who'd lived there. We both cared about such things, and some were negotiations. The house needed a good deal of work, and in the end we were able to agree on a price, and a few weeks later,

it was mine. When the day came, I stood in the front yard with the keys in my hand, smiling up at the house. I no longer parked on the road, but proudly drove right up the cracked drive. The lilacs had faded by then. High summer was upon us, and the tall trees made a shady canopy. that kept the house cool. I'd walked from room to room,

overwhelmed at the feeling of having so much to myself, so much to make into whatever I wanted. The next few years had brought lots of hard work. The roof was repaired. A new kitchen fitted in,

and the rotten boards torn out from the front porch to be replaced with sweet-smelling new ones. I spent one long summer painting everything inside and out, finding paint in my hair and on every piece of clothing I owned till I'd finally finished. The gardens had. been edged and cleared and replanted. The clothesline was re-hung, and I added a patio beside it,

or I could sit and watch the hummingbirds in the morning. Along with all of this, I added something I'd envisaged that first day when I'd first been caught with my full basket. And that was more lilacs. After all, they had brought me here to my home, and I wanted to share them. I planted a long row of lilac trees and bushes, different colors and varieties all along the road. And within a few years,

they had grown to be thick and hardy, and to produce a sea of flowers each spring, along the line of lilacs. A neighbor had helped me build, a small stand, like the kind you might buy corn or tomatoes at in the summer, and I stocked it with old baskets, and cloth sat.

A few pairs of shears and gardening gloves across the front. I'd added a sign that I'd painted by hand, kneeling on an old sheet, spread out in the grass. It said, free lilacs. Gentle trespassers will not be prosecuted. and on the warm days of spring, when the lilacs were blooming, folks came. The word had gotten out.

I'd spot a row of cars parked along the street and might step out with a cup of coffee in hand to chat with those who had come to gather some beauty from a place that had once been a secret. Sweet dreams.