When planning a trip in the spring of 2007 to San Francisco, I asked a friend to list places that she never misses when visiting this historic city of bridges, bays, harbors, hills, culturally diverse neighborhoods and magnificent vistas.

Welcome to Nevada City, described locally as “the prettiest and most interesting of California Gold Rush towns.”

As I unpacked yet another box this week, I found a postcard of a duckling about to take a plunge into a pond. The caption reads “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.”—Helen Keller.

In life, exploring new territory can be both an opportunity and a daunting challenge.  For months, Kit and I have been downsizing in preparation for a life-changing move to California where we first met in 1977. 

Journeys often take root in the blink of an eye. You begin the day in one place and end it contemplating a major life change.

In the fall of 1967, I arrived at Pranakorn Teachers College near Bangkok, Thailand — a 21-year-old Peace Corps volunteer assigned to teach English. 

The first purple on spring’s palette always comes from the most delicate of flowers. Weeks before the official arrival of spring, crocuses push their way up through the hard winter ground.

In 2014 when the world was in a different place, I flew with a longtime friend to Istanbul. There is much about gardens that can be learned from a visit to Turkey.

When Dwight D. Eisenhower was President of the United States and I was in the fourth grade, I memorized and could recite the names in full of every US President.

While thinning my library of books and magazines, I recently came upon a November 2008 issue of National Geographic. Like a nocturnal creature of habit momentarily mesmerized by unexpected light, I was instantly drawn into a luminous grid of lights radiating from the cover.

I awake at my usual early hour to find the sky still dark. Sunrise is yet an hour away. The clocks have all been turned ahead to save light in anticipation of spring’s arrival.

One of the simple joys in life is a pot of homemade soup. Winter, spring summer or fall, soup is always a welcome addition to a meal. Cannellini beans, both canned and dried, are a staple in our pantry. While traveling in Italy a few years ago, I experienced the culinary possibilities of cannellini beans prepared by a cook who has lived all of her life on a 12th century Tuscan estate.

Next week, Michelle Obama is launching a kid cooking show called “Waffles + Mochi.” In addition to executive producing the 10-part Netflix series that debuts March 16, she will play the role of the owner of a “whimsical supermarket” that employs two puppets named Waffles and Mochi. 

Early one frigid morning, I came upon a great blue heron lost in dreams of soft water. We had both come to a spot along the western edge of the pond that was the last place to freeze in the night.

These are really, really cold days.  When the term ‘polar vortex’ takes over nightly weather reports, all creatures great and small, winged, hooved and footed find themselves in the unforgiving grip of brutal extreme weather.

This brilliant February morning, the thermometer outside registers ZERO. Snow still as stone covers the ground. I carry a cup of cardamom chai tea to the harvest table. Before long, my thoughts begin to travel from the wintry scene beyond our patio door at Boomerang Creek to other scenes connected across time.

As I daydreamed that day about spring gardens, I suddenly found myself transported to a magnificent English garden. Leafing through a magazine, I’d come upon a drawing of Sisinghurst Castle garden in Kent—the garden created by Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson in the 1930s and now maintained by England’s National Trust.