The Yellow House

I always forget how perfectly sequenced the winding-down of summer is. Two weeks ago I was at the beach, grains of sand and damp curls sticking to sweaty temples. A week later, the weather settled into a breezy warmth. Now, the little hairs on my arms prickle into goosebumps when I step out the door in the morning. “Autumn is stretching her legs,” Ben likes to say. Images and feelings that I had shut away in my head in mid-April flood back: cool, dewy mornings; knitted woolly things; damp leaves. Scarves. Hot soup and apples. Boots! For the first time in months, I can unpack these ideas without the immediate sensation that they’re otherworldly. They seem possible, even. » Click to read more

A few years ago, Louise discovered no-knead bread and our lives were never the same. If this sounds dramatic, then clearly you’ve never been to a party we’ve co-hosted. We bake bread in a sneaky effort to get someone to comment positively on it—and then proselytize bread-baking to anyone that we can get to sit still for a few seconds. (It works best if we strategically serve the bread after guests have had a few glasses of wine first.)

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The coming week is one of departures. My friend Carly is venturing south to Nicaragua, where she’ll live and work until the end of summer. By Tuesday afternoon, Ben and I will have flown the coop for a much-needed (state-side) vacation. And all these openings-up and movings and transitions into new places and phases seem timely, because I think we can finally say safely that spring is here.

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