Author Archives: Heather Hacking

I recently picked up my friend Annette for a long-overdue hour of girl-talk. “Do you want to go to lunch or to frozen yogurt?” I asked while riffling through my yellow coupon book. Annette howled. “I knew you were going … Continue reading →

You’d need to like people to have Laura Nichols’ summer job. This week there were cars stopping at her front yard every few minutes. Drivers on Hegan Lane take a quick right onto Bruce Lane when they read the bright … Continue reading →

I’d like to say that all new experiences with my sweetheart are wildly romantic — our first garden tomato, first sunset at the river, earning the top score on a pinball game … But this week we shared an all-too-intimate … Continue reading →

Chicory is my new favorite wild plant. You’d call it a wildflower if it was growing on Table Mountain, but in the garden area it’s a weed. Last year, I became enamored by the light-blue, slightly lavender flowers that are … Continue reading →

Plums and blackberry juice have stained my fingernails. My beau has half a dozen fruit trees and currently the plum is producing. Also, that eyesore of impenetrable blackberry bushes has been my new favorite place in the yard. I can … Continue reading →

How much time can I spend in my bedroom with the doors closed and the air conditioner aimed directly at my chest? Apparently a long time. My house, built in the 1940s, has 1940s insulation. I can pretend like I’m … Continue reading →

The beauty of nature can sometimes vary depending on the location in which it is beheld. If you see a raccoon in your plum tree — usually a day before the fruit is ripe — the coarse fur and shining … Continue reading →

One of my goals is to learn how to be more gracious. I have this terrible trait that when I don’t want to do something, I say so. Some might call this “sticking up for yourself” or “knowing your truth,” … Continue reading →

This week I stood in “death row” of my favorite big-box store. My plan had been to buy a “gopher basket,” — a metal mesh container designed to keep gophers from yanking plants under the ground. The product was not … Continue reading →

Yep. The gopher is back, or at least the kin of last year’s gopher, and perhaps the grand-kin of the gopher before that. My neighborhood must harbor an underground gopher incubation unit, where gophers are produced as prolifically as feral … Continue reading →