by Marlene Bumgarner | Mar 1, 2019 | Back to the Land, Community, Cooking and Eating, Family, Nature
PART ONE — MOVING TO THE LAND Introduction It was November 1973 and my my mother-in-law wasn’t speaking to me. Again. My husband, John, I and our 11-month-old daughter Doña Ana were living in a basement room in his parents’ home at Lick Observatory on Mount...
by Marlene Bumgarner | Feb 12, 2019 | Aging, Back to the Land, Community, Cooking and Eating, Family, Grandparenting, Nature
A Conversation With My Granddaughter “Grandma, why are your gloves way up there where you can’t reach them?” I was stretching high over my workbench for the long-handled pruning shears when my eight-year old granddaughter piped up. I dropped down on my heels and...
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 | Apr 26, 2018 | Cooking and Eating, Family, Health, Nature
Spring Planting Last year I missed planting season in Santa Cruz. I was in San Diego taking care of my new granddaughter. This year I started thinking about my spring garden before Christmas and purchased two metal horse watering troughs from a feed store. ...
by Marlene Bumgarner | Feb 6, 2018 | Aging, Australia, Child development, Cooking and Eating, Family, Grandparenting, Travel
The Grandparent Connection This post will be more along the line of the essays my regular readers are accustomed to: a discussion of a children’s book. It might also help to answer the obvious question: Why has the author of a grandparenting and family blog...