Like you, I use my hours puttering in the garden to think about what I've accomplished, what I want to accomplish and bigger questions like 'will this tree keep growing once I'm gone?''

My mind filled in the blanks about the garden’s creator.

Have you ever dug a new garden and discovered clues to the people who lived on the property before?

In Downeast Maine it is not uncommon to run into an old trash heap when you start to dig around because people dumped their rubbish nearby then, if they couldn’t burn it.

I was not unfamiliar with trash heaps, having assisted my parents in 1975 with cleaning out a couple of decades of beer cans behind the 19th-century farmhouse they were updating in central Maine — putting in a flush toilet…

We are all getting older and some wiser, too.

Have you ever felt alone, caught glimpses of yourself in the mirror and wondered where to go from here? I would be lying if I said I hadn’t felt depressed, at least momentarily, when my sagging chin and graying hair left me thinking that my future would be filled with steady decline. Salesclerks speaking down to you, the quick-footed ambitious pushing past you to make their own way.

Today, I don’t have time to think about any possible affronts to my dignity because I’m too busy interacting with a community of…

The world is re-opening for those of us fortunate enough to have received a Covid vaccine and many of us are seeing life through sharper lenses because of what we lost over the past year. Life is short — no denying that any more — and Crow’s Feet writers are energized to engage fully each day.

In the past ten days we’ve had four new writers submit pieces to Crow’s Feet and we welcome Jen Gippel, PhD, Margie Hord de Mendez, Tatyana Sussex, Tess Wheeler. …

Many popular images of older people are wrong

This past year we’ve had plenty of time to ponder big questions, like how we might contribute, even unconsciously, to racism in the U.S. We’ve had time to examine whether we hold racist stereotypes that negatively influence the treatment of Blacks, Indigenous and People of Color. We acknowledge these racist stereotypes as a step to their eventual elimination.

But what about ageist ideas? Do we give outdated stereotypes the power to shape our own future? …

“I remember when I swam naked in a Georgia swamp.” Ruby Lee has been doing a lot of remembering and this week’s digest features three of her essays about growing up in the South.

As I age, I frequently think about my childhood, the warm moments when I felt free and truly loved and the harsh times when I wondered if I would ever fit in. This remembering helps me live more deliberately in the present, to appreciate how I have shaped my own life as best I can. …

A love story.

When I was a small child, perhaps five or six years old, my mother would send me out to the garden plot to weed the beans and cucumbers. It was a small plot that my grandfather planted for us every year around Memorial Day, so we’d have plenty to eat while at our lakeside cottage in Maine. I hated eating most of the vegetables in the garden and would have been much happier without the fuss.

Weeding, I thought, was so boring, not worthy of my time. Fairyland, a tiny hideaway of brilliant green moss tucked inside…

Are you too old to dream? That’s the big question many of us may be asking and, this week, Julia E Hubbel tries to answer in A Terrible-Wonderful Dream, where she writes about the adventures that can await you at any age if you are willing to meet the challenge.

Julia’s four pieces are part of the chorus of writers on Crow’s Feet who are sorting through how to move beyond limits placed on us by society and redefine what’s important as we age. …