Some people go camping. We change the view by taking up landscape-modification projects. These projects start innocently, a whisper of an idea, a comment in passing… I gather inspiration, we trace lines over the grass using butcher’s twine, or rope that once served as a clothesline on a camping trip West. And then Christian gets to work…

We converted an expanse of lawn into a rock garden, as it seems to be the fashion in these hot, dry years.

I organized my pantry too, and this time, I swear, it’s “once and for all”. Has that ever happened to you, where the system you put into place, which makes you glow with satisfaction, slowly gets overtaken by the creep, creep, creep of store-bought bags? Here, (I’ll proudly point) here are my newly organized spices! But then, a week or so into the pretty jars from IKEA, (labelled too!) I realize that the tablespoon doesn’t fit into the mouth of the jar, and then six months later, cinnamon stands on its own, and I’ve started a little collection of spices in bags that I’ve not emptied into their appropriate container. When bay-leaves risk falling into your pot of boiling pasta again, it’s time to consider assuaging the nagging need to do. When you can’t find whether or not you have unsweetened coconut for making granola, and each time you make couscous the items you have to remove to get to it pool on the counter, it’s time to take the ennui seriously. To this end, I’m using canning jars: large ones and small ones. If it works for sad_papi, it works for me!