Advice from a small town girl

I don’t know how I managed to reach this advanced age believing I had to do it all. Or that I could do it all.

I’ve never been able to decide if it’s an inherited trait or something I learned (or didn’t) along the way.

What I do know, and have already announced to all and sundry, is that I must give up my beloved pumpkin patch.

It’s so easy, in January when the world is dark and bleak, to allow myself to be seduced by seed catalog pictures of cheerful orange orbs. It’s easy to visualize them filling that dull winter landscape between the flowerbed and the bluff.

And it’s so hard to stop at one...