Life Style & Travel

UNITED STATES—It all comes to a head for Agnes and her roommate. I said, Agnes, you came to share my apartment, and you've taken it over. My own apartment isn't mine and I wait on you hand and foot. Everybody around here has to pull their own weight. How can I be a nurse for other people if I...

UNITED STATES—It is silly for us to think that we know more about gardening that the plants who live out in the garden full time. We can help them along by giving them a bit more of what they need to survive, such as water and fertilizer. We can prune them to help them concentrate their resources into bloom...

UNITED STATES—Agnes had the idea that we could share the apartment. We could get cable TV and it wouldn't be so lonely, and she could bring her furniture. She had nice furniture, fruitwood. It reminded me of Rancho Grande where we liked to go on margarita Fridays. "It will be fun," Agnes said. It was fun for a while, and then...

UNITED STATES—There is likely no other fruit that gets wasted quite like pumpkins. Almost all get hollowed and carved into jack-o -'lanterns, illuminated from within for Halloween, and then discarded or added to compost within the next few days after Halloween. If they stay too long in the yard or on the porch, they mold or get partly eaten...

UNITED STATES—I did an astonishing amount of scanning and reading that morning in Atwater Village going through that Orson box. There Orson's screenplays from the last decade of his life had been carefully guarded by a woman who had a typing service when the Selectric was king. If "The Big Brass Ring" was arch and the adjective brilliant attached to...

UNITED STATES—We all know what autumn is for. Planting, of course. Yes, it is a recurring theme; but there are so many different things to plant. Dormant bulbs need to get into the ground before cool and rainy winter weather. Deciduous plants that should be planted while dormant prefer an early start if planted as soon as they defoliate...

UNITED STATES—Astonishing news: 33 years after calling it quits on Earth, Orson Welles is back, strong as ever, with his last motion picture being redeemed from legendary limbo by Netflix, the oft-described, seldom seen “The Other Side of the Wind.” This brings to mind a morning spent in Atwater Village opening a box of Orson’s final screenplays. Liz Derby was...

UNITED STATES—Autumn is for planting. Cliche? Yes, but true. Autumn is when most plants are beginning dormancy, and are therefore not so bothered by the discomforts associated with transplant. The weather is cooler and wetter, so that even if they are bothered, such discomforts are not as discomforting as they would be in summer. Once in the ground, plants...

UNITED STATES—"Well, I was going around the corner and he was sitting on the sidewalk, nursing a beer. And he said do you have any change?" "And then what happened?" "I told him I didn't have any. I said I didn't have any, but I could go get some at my apartment." "That was very nice of you. There are not many...

UNITED STATES—Gardening is not always fun. After diligently tending to warm season vegetables through spring and summer, it eventually becomes necessary to pull them up to relinquish space for cool season vegetables that grow through autumn and winter. It likely would be less unpleasant to wait for them to succumb to frost, but by that time, it would be...