“A rainy day is the perfect time for a walk in the woods. I always thought so myself; the Maine woods never seem so fresh and alive as in wet weather. Then all the needles on the evergreens wear a sheath of silver; ferns seem to have grown to almost tropical lushness and every leaf has its edging of crystal drops. Strangely colored fungi — mustard-yellow and apricot and scarlet — are pushing out of the leaf mold and all the lichens and the mosses have come alive with green and silver freshness,” wrote Rachel Carson in “The Sense of Wonder.”
Every parent of a sick child wants to do whatever possible to make the child feel better. But most cold- and flu-like illnesses in children are caused by viruses, which will be cured by the child’s own immune system.
Noah Lee Carter was born to Heidi and Jared Carter of Boulder Creek at 8:14 p.m. Dec. 6, 2010, at Kaiser Permanente Santa Clara Medical Center. Noah weighed 6 pounds, 15 ounces.
Last year, I was brave and published my New Year’s resolutions — at least those that pertained to the garden. It’s now the day of reckoning. Let’s see how I did and which I’ll keep up for 2011.
• Isabel Jade Beverly was born to Katherine Emilia and Nathan John Beverly of Ben Lomond at 6:14 p.m. Dec. 14, 2010. She weighed 3 pounds, 8 ounces at Dominican Hospital in Santa Cruz.
Like every other child, I wasn’t able to contain myself as Christmas grew nigh. To thwart my brothers’ and my enthusiasm, my mother and father adopted the extraordinarily irritating habit of not putting anything under the tree until after we went to bed Christmas Eve. That meant no slack-jawed gazing at the presents, no rattling the innards to discern the contents, nor peering through them with the X-ray glasses ordered from the back of Fantastic Four comic books.