I admit it: I spend far too much time thinking about zombies. Here’s what happened: I was working on building a row of garden boxes near the property line fence, when I was stopped by a sudden mental image, one that I confess was a little bit unsettling in its clarity and detail. I imagined […]
Author: Evelyn J. Willburn
Spidaerobics
I have a truce with spider-kind, as follows: I do not kill them, and they do not send their minions after me in the night. This is not a zero-sum game. My sister Laura is a treasure trove of spider lore and material. Most recently, she discovered a large lady spider residing in Benny, the […]
The magic and mystery of the acorn squash
I have often wondered, who was the first person to chase down, kill and eat a Dungeness crab or a shrimp? Exactly how hungry was this person? For different reasons, I have speculated about the journey that the acorn squash has taken over the millennia, from the vine to the belly, and whoever tried it […]
Buck up
When my father was in his long decline, he suffered from that bitterest of cocktails, depression with anxiety for a chaser. As part of a strategy to keep his spirits up, the family plastered his walls with posters like this: And this: These ideas definitely provided him with a distraction and helped him see that […]
Assault on Salmonberry Hill
I have decided to win this one. Many years ago, my husband and I identified the best spot in our yard for a garden, and began feeding it compost, thereby building up a raised area of rich soil that gets as much sun as one can reasonably expect in this part of the world. And […]
In which I am terrified by a possum
Some years ago, my father went in for open heart surgery. It was bitter cold that winter, and my sisters were up to their eyeballs, so I went down there to stay at the house and keep the fire going while he was away and recovering. For that week or so I was the only […]
To absent brothers
In December of 1966, when I was six years old, my mother gave birth to a stillborn boy. When she got home from the hospital, she sat down with her three daughters and said, “He was such a beautiful little boy. I’m sorry I couldn’t bring him home.” My parents buried Baby Jervey in what […]
Oh, mighty wolf, what have we done?
I ask you, have you ever seen a more perfect example of feline beauty? This is my nephew’s cat Bebo. He is a rescue cat with no papers, and I think he knows that he is beautiful. In not-unrelated news, I recently discovered this meme, and have been laughing about it ever since: Ah, the […]
Fine motor control
My two hands have served me loyally for a great many years, but now they are making noises about a partial retirement. Since I am not a good listener, the signs have been growing ever less subtle: carpal tunnel syndrome, arthritis, and this nasty tearing pain in my right primate muscle every time I knit […]
The journey is the destination
Recently, while digging through my pattern box in search of a new sewing project, I found the directions for a two-patch quilt that my Aunt Kathy had written up in her inimitable style and sent to me in the early 1980’s. In her words, it “is very simple and easy, and only requires one- and-one-half […]