Posts under ‘Friends’

The Unicorn has lots of lovable qualities, but among them is this: He is a fantastic giver of gifts. He is not a fan of the gift list—he’d much rather pay attention to the recipient, think hard about something they would love to have but would never buy for themselves, and then give them that. [...]

So, I have come to the point where I can’t tell any more stories without introducing you, Good People of the Internet, to someone new. To be fair, he’s not so new to me (though he makes every day feel new, which is, perhaps, better than his actually being new). But until now (admittedly because [...]

Last night, Fatemeh assigned me the job of side dishes to go with pork chops. Roasted fingerlings, I decided, and roasted green beans tossed with preserved rangpur lime, because in the Bay Area, summer is so damn chilly and foggy that it’s quite normal to be able to roast up some vegetables a la winter. [...]

While we were in the midst of sorting out the HOA problems, I received a cheery email from my coworker, Pilar, who was in the midst of nurturing tomato seedlings on my behalf. They were just about ready for delivery, she said, and she’d bring them in after the weekend. This presented a dilemma. Tell? [...]

[Editor's Note: This post is from Ysa, the step-daughter of one of my co-workers. She's making her first foray into gardening this years, and I invited her to make an appearance here. Please give her a warm welcome!] Hi. I am doing a guest post. I am 7 years old and I have a garden. [...]

Earlier today, at the very beginning of our monthly staff meeting at work, my coworker Pilar leaned over and murmured, “Your tomato seedlings smell.” Anyone listening carefully might have considered that an insult. Me? I considered it awesome.

This world? It’s a small one. I have always known this, because I started traveling the world when I was a kid, and am amazed how often my path crosses and recrosses paths of others who I’ve met along the way. Back in Iowa City, I got to know a fantastic chef named Soleil, who [...]

I have friends all over the place, most of whom I’ve met the old-fashioned way: in person, through some job or school or work or networking connection. But oh, how the Internet has enriched my life and brought me in touch with people who, otherwise, I might never have met. Yeah, I’m pretty much going [...]

“There’s a restaurant downtown I think you’d like,” said my friend Amy when I visited her in Madison, Wis. last week. Oh my friends, how they know me. Amy was, of course, totally right, and that is how we ended up at Harvest, a small, warm space on the square that features the state capitol, [...]

One of the most gratifying things about putting out the word that a patio garden is in the offing has been the offer of seeds from friends near and a little bit far. Seed shopping? Nope. Don’t need to. One of the offers came from a coworker, who told me she had a variety of [...]