Creative Non-Fiction

Someone once said: “Gardening is cheaper than therapy…and you get tomatoes.”   I think that pretty much sums up why I do it – all those hours spent digging, weeding, seeding, composting, pruning  – so many gardening words that I have grown (pun intended) to love.   It’s the feel-good factor that counteracts the exhaustion,…

I was born in the merry month of May, the month when Lily of the Valley blooms and permeates the air with its heady fragrance.  Is it any wonder that I adore that flower? Back in Pleasantville in New York State, where I grew up, we had a lush bed of these lilies, growing happily…

Okay, guilty as charged.  I’m an unrepentant Shakespeare groupie, dating from when I was age17 and saw my first professional production in New York City – Richard Burton in ‘Hamlet’.   In the years that followed, I’ve managed to see and/or read 36 of the 38 plays attributed to him.  He is my hero, and…

I can’t remember who introduced me to Estee Lauder’s ‘Youth Dew’ but the first time I took one whiff of it, I fell in love with it – and wore it for many years.  The fragrance Youth Dew was launched in 1953 as a bath oil…and because of its success, the manufacture of the perfume…

While listening to Radio 4 the other day, I swear I heard the announcer say that Austria had banned fish sales.  I thought to myself, why fish sales? Isn’t Austria land-locked?  Had their rivers become polluted?  Then, as I listened to the rest of the report, the penny dropped.  Not fish sales but face veils…the…