Susan Palmer's Exquisite Now

A writer takes a minute for a closer look

recent posts

  • Ol’ travel buddy

    2016, train to Canada
    2025, flight to Colorado

    I’ve been traveling with this Osprey roller bag for 11 years. Bought it in 2014 when I was flying a couple times a month for work. It’s probably topped 700,000 miles of handling, thrown into planes, trains, buses, cars and at least one river raft four a five-day float. While it’s a bit scruffy looking (stains, etc.) the only damage is some wear on the bottom.

    In a few weeks, Craig and I will be doing three weeks in Europe and I pondered getting a new bag for that trip. I checked out a slightly larger but comparable roller bag in the Osprey family with additional bells and whistles (back-pack straps, for example). I’ve been pondering it.

    This morning, however, packing for a few days in Colorado, I noticed how I have a great system for packing this bag, whether the destination is Paris or Anchorage or London or Athens or Albuquerque or Philadelphia. I’ve stuffed it so full I thought I might split the seams, but the fabric and the sewing have really held up. Also, there are very few bags of this color, and it rarely gets confused with anyone else’s luggage.

    It’s not broken, so I won’t replace it.

  • Not dead yet

    Back in 2022, I bought this azalea, one of three to put in a new garden space. But more stuff happened than expected that year, and the new garden space took a little longer to establish. So the three azaleas remained in their pots and while I remembered to water them, I didn’t always remember very often.

    In 2023, the new bed was finished, meant mostly for roses, but the three azaleas went into the ground there, barely alive but still trying. They didn’t grow much but they didn’t die either.

    They survived the ice storm of January 2024, but they didn’t thrive that summer for a couple of reasons. First, the mock orange that resides a little south of them completely lost its mind, grew very tall and blocked almost all the morning and early afternoon sun. Second, some nameless insect had its way with the azalea leaves, chewing many of them back to almost nothing.

    This spring, one of them finally bloomed, scraggly but also lovely. But they are not happy, and I can see the insect damage beginning again. I am pondering a new space with more light for them. And better TLC.

    Here’s to tough plants reaching any way they can for the sun.

    I take it as a metaphor for writing. Yes, I may have neglected some story or other, but a spark of life often remains, and I can bring a little TLC to it.

  • What crows think

    picture courtesy of Cornell University’s All About Birds

    Every spring the neighborhood crows visit our river birch tree, which I can see from the window by my desk. I’m banging away on the computer and the flutter of movement catches my eye.

    About the time the diminutive catkins droop and the leaves come on, the crows show up. They proceed to tug on the spindliest twigs (which the river birch has lots of). When they successfully pull one free, they fly away with it and I suspect they are nest building. Winter winds have broken off some of the small branches and twigs, and there are often bits on the ground under the tree. I used to wonder why the birds didn’t take the easily accessible debris.

    Now I think the live twigs are more pliable for nest building. But really, who can know the mind of a crow?