Jessie Raymond: This weather really ticks me off

I’ve enjoyed the spells of pleasant, warm weather we’ve been having lately. But you know who’s enjoyed them more? The ticks.

Mark, bless his heart, can’t even diagram a sentence. (I know, how embarrassing.) So it’s not easy to admit that, in spite of all my acquired knowledge, he’s the smart one.

I need to accept reality: I am never going to own a fancy coffeemaker. We all have our struggles.

Since the advent of pease porridge cold, people have been mixing their legumes with whatever they had on hand and eating the resulting dish for — if the nursery rhyme is accurate — up to nine days.

I’m not ashamed to admit that Hallmark movies have become the background entertainment to my yuletide activities. I do my best baking and gift wrapping when I hear sleigh bells and lines like, “Holly, I need you to drive up to Kringle Corners a week befor … (read more)

I’m an optimist. So a few weeks ago, when my laptop seized up, I felt inconvenienced but not panicked. These things happen.

A few weeks ago, Mark and I bought a little fishing boat. Sold as an “inflatable kayak,” it’s basically a pair of 12-foot blowup pontoons with five aluminum slats set crosswise on top.

In the old days, people got their weather forecasts by looking out toward the pasture to see if the cows were lying down. Now we have weather apps. I’m not sure they’re an improvement.

Thank you, Addison Independent reporter, for having me come in for a sit-down interview. I’m afraid I only have a few minutes; as you know, this is a crazy-busy season for me.

Halfway through last week’s heat wave, and after 32 years of procrastination, Mark and I finally did it: we put in an air conditioner. For a moment, we felt like a young couple again.

When it comes to measuring stuff, I belong to the school of “close enough.” I don’t care about precision. It’s part of my charm.

Time changes a person. I was recently thinking about the first car I ever bought, a Datsun B310 “fastback” coupe, and how carefree I was back in my youth.

As husbands go, Mark does all right. But lately I’m finding he’s letting me down in one important way: He shows less enthusiasm for wild birds than I feel is appropriate for a man of his age.

Over the winter, I heard about an intriguing vegetable-growing technique called “lazy gardening.” As far as I knew, that was the kind of gardening I’d been doing for two decades.

I knew our hen Monique was different from other birds. But if you had told me when we got her two years ago that she would one day start coming into the house every morning to lay an egg, I would have laughed and said, “Yeah, right. Don’t be ridiculous.”