Sifting through the rich compost soil is something gardeners know well: letting it pour and slide through our fingers, feeling its warmth, its richness, its readiness to be used for planting, its smell of worthiness. Writing is a lot like this. We all have things […]

My Dad was the first to convince me that we don’t call it “dirt,” we call it soil. It’s beautiful and rich and it’s from the earth. It’s valuable, a gift. It’s something we respect. Dirt is dirt. Soil is soil. This is soil. This […]

I was sixteen, going on twelve and twenty. I was loved by family and friends, and also had my share of teen angst: alone and lost in my own spirit, the way a bird thinks it’s ready to fly long before its wings have reached […]

Mary Oliver, a well-loved poet, talks about paying attention and noticing what’s in front of you, of being fully aware, of staying in the present moment and writing poems about where you feel awe and wonder at the world. Her poem “The Swan” helped me […]

Sometimes you cannot guess how your evening will go, especially when you live in a community house. For our Monday family meal, we made pizzas together for dinner, then afterwards planted parsley, chives, and sweet basil into small pots to grow from seed on our […]