A Communion of Chocolate and Generations

December 29, 2016.Reading time 6 minutes.

By Amanda Cleary Eastep I break the chocolate wafer into pieces while it’s still in its holiday foil wrapper. Caramel oozes from the cracks as I carefully unwrap it and offer it up to my great aunt. “It’s like communion,” I tell her. She chuckles and says it’s sticky. We are visiting her in the […]

Turning Up the Dark

April 19, 2016.Reading time 3 minutes.

By Amanda Cleary Eastep This is about the time of year I start writing about spring and gardening and the anticipation of warmer days. And hope. But just because the earth is stretching and ready to start a new day doesn’t mean we are. As much as I’ve been thinking about what to plant in my flower pots, […]

The Fall: Beauty beyond the reds and golds

October 13, 2014.Reading time 2 minutes.

By Amanda Cleary Eastep You know that perfect fall day. Where the cool lays across your cheeks like a damp cloth, and the setting sun is a bullet of warmth above your right eye. You walk through freshly mown grass, speckled with decimated leaves that fell onto the dregs of summer, too soon to join the […]

Everything turn, turn, turn

August 17, 2013.Reading time 3 minutes.

I used to watch that 45 rpm record spin on the turntable, the green apple label a blur as Mary Hopkin sang “to everything turn, turn, turn…there is season, turn, turn, turn…” And as my garden finally starts to yield fruit at the far end of this cool summer, a change of seasons is obvious in […]