Sep 3, 2017

It was the smallest but most frequently visited house on the block and this was for two reasons. Firstly, the owner, despite her many years, was an incredible gardener and, to her neighbors, it seemed as though she spent every waking hour out of doors, sometimes with gloves and a shovel, sometimes with bare hands stained with dirt and green, but always there and always happy to chat with her passing neighbors. They’d start with hellos and move onto gardening questions and somehow always spend more time walking the dog than they’d meant to, but always they’d come away with a quieter step and the answers they needed to the heartfelt questions they didn’t know they had. She was the kind of listener that smiled a lot and said very little and had the rare quality of making you feel good about yourself and motivated to be better all at once. And secondly, she baked very good chocolate chip cookies.