We saw the aurora, at midnight on Saturday morning. I hadn’t heard anything about the solar storms until auroras were already happening all over the Ohio valley Friday night. My friends were posting photos of a bright purple aurora, over the farmland just north of here. It was visible in Hopedale and in Richmond and all over the Valley, but I couldn’t see it. I kept ducking out of my to look at the sky, but all I saw was... Read more
All I wanted was a shovel. I hadn’t been able to finish my gardening last night, because I broke the shovel. I had a few seedlings still to go in and some seed still to be planted, but I didn’t have a shovel to finish turning over the grass with. There were only two days left before it was predicted to be drenching rain for a week. And it was the middle of the month, that excruciating marathon where... Read more
I dreamed she was still alive. My stalking neighbor went into hospice in January of 2023. Early this morning I dreamed I heard her letting out the German Shepherd on its chain, as she’d done hundreds of times in the years she lived next door. She liked to do it as I came out, to menace me. In the dream, I told myself “that’s impossible, she’s dead and the dog was rehomed,” but I ran to the window. There... Read more
Hi gang, This isn’t a real post, this is just my monthly blogkeeping post to keep all my fans on the same page. It’s a pretty short one this month because I haven’t been in Where Peter Is or the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in the past few weeks, because I was very busy working on my Lives of the Saints Project, but that has been sent to the editor now! So, I will hopefully be back at WPI and... Read more
A reading from the Holy Gospel according to John: Jesus said to his disciples: “As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.“I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy might be complete. This is my commandment: love one another as... Read more
This evening, I went to the community garden for the last time. Everything in the garden was exactly where it had been left last year. Nothing had moved. A stack of bagged compost still stood by the front gate, covered in plastic, untouched. The black gardener’s cloth was all ripped up in a pile except where I’d weighed it down with bricks. The tools somebody brought were left on the ground, rusted. Rotted wreckage of last year’s plants stuck... Read more
I went down to Tiltonsville, to see the ancient burial mound. I’d been looking for more things to see around the Ohio river valley, now that Adrienne is so happy in school and I’m not a homeschooling mother anymore. I’ve decided to homeschool myself, to take myself on field trips and teach myself things. I was excited when I found out there was a burial mound of the prehistoric Adena people very close by Steubenville, about twenty minutes away.... Read more
April had been a bit of a sprint, but May has started out better. I did finish those taxes that were worrying me so much, and got a tiny bit bigger rebate than I thought, and it didn’t quite cover rent our rent that’s due the fifteenth but we managed. I finished my student loan paperwork, the day before that April 30th deadline, even though I promised myself I wouldn’t wait til the last minute, because I realized I’d forgotten... Read more
I woke up to the sound of the lawnmower. The sound of a lawnmower used to make me panic. The stalking neighbor who terrorized us got up to mow the lawn once or twice a week at eight o’clock in the morning. She would stim back and forth across the same spot over and over again for hours, and then she’d rake up every last blade of grass while cursing under her breath about what pigs her neighbors were. She... Read more
I got to see the trilliums one more time. I went on a hike on Saturday Evening, to admire the ephemerals again. I’ve been admiring them everywhere I’ve gone for weeks. Ephemeral wildflowers are the type that don’t last all year long. They have tiny lives, for a few weeks in the spring and sometimes a few weeks in autumn, because that’s when the sun hits the forest floor. I keep getting out of my car to take pictures,... Read more
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