by Marlene Bumgarner | Dec 29, 2018 | Cooking and Eating, Family, Health, Nature
I love persimmons, and I have planted three persimmon trees. The first one was eaten by deer before it could bear fruit. The second didn’t like where I planted it, and, after two years of minimal growth, quietly died. When I retired and bought a house in Santa Cruz, I...
by Marlene Bumgarner | Nov 21, 2018 | Aging, Community, Cooking and Eating, Family
Thanksgiving is the Great American Holiday. Even more than at Christmas, family members travel thousands of miles to sit around a lavishly prepared table and eat some variation on the meal that the Puritans and the Wampanoag Indians cooked during their three day...
by Marlene Bumgarner | Oct 28, 2018 | Aging, Child development, Community, Family, Grandparenting
Pumpkins Are the Key My oldest granddaughter, the one I’ve been calling Bean all these years, is now a string bean. She’s seven and a half and tall and active, both in her body and in her mind. Several of her favorite things to do at Halloween happen...
by Marlene Bumgarner | Sep 26, 2018 | Aging, Family, Travel
Green Paper and Binder Clips It didn’t start out as a Great Love. I think that may be the case for many late life loves. Dennie and I began as colleagues, teaching at the satellite center of a small community college. Instructors were expected to publicize their own...
by Marlene Bumgarner | Jul 28, 2018 | Child development, Family, Grandparenting
The Passage of Time I’ve always had an uneasy relationship with time. When I was young, there never seemed to be enough of it. Each year when I was required to select one or two electives from a list of about twenty I anguished over my choices. Couldn’t I take three?...