Seasonal Living
Marking harvest festivals quietly at home
On the fourteenth of January my aunt in a village outside Thanjavur wakes before the light and sweeps the front step with...
Section
Seasonal Living
How traditional households shifted food, rest, and rhythm with each turning of the season. Notes for slow modern days.
17 entries in this section
Seasonal Living
Full moon evenings: small household observances
On the evening of Karthika Purnima my grandmother used to bathe by four in the afternoon, an hour earlier than any ordinary...
Seasonal Living
Candles by season: more in winter, fewer in summer
On the shelf above my writing desk in Kyoto, there is a small wooden box. Inside the box, eight candles in various...
Seasonal Living
Sleep across the seasons: longer in winter, lighter in summer
My grandmother slept differently in different months, and she made no apology for it. In December she was in bed by eight...
Seasonal Living
Grain rotations: how households shifted what they ate
In my mother's kitchen there were three large brass containers, lined in a row on the lower shelf of the pantry. One...
Seasonal Living
Monsoon eating: warm foods for wet days
It rained for the first time properly last night. Not the half-hearted showers of early June but the real one, the kind...
Seasonal Living
Window light across the year: a quiet diary
The kitchen window in my apartment faces east. It is not a large window. About sixty centimetres wide and ninety tall, with...
Seasonal Living
Summer cooling habits: keeping the house quietly low in temperature
By eight in the morning the streets of Sfax are already shimmering. The shutters in our building, painted that pale blue you...
Seasonal Living
The seasonal garden: small balcony or windowsill traditions
The balcony off the kitchen in our Bangalore apartment is small. Just under two metres long, half a metre deep, with a...
Seasonal Living
Equinox days: small observances of balance
My grandmother in Nara always knew, without looking at the calendar, when the equinox was approaching. She would say nothing in particular....
Seasonal Living
Spring cleaning: a slower kind of refresh
The neighbour upstairs began at dawn. I could hear her sweeping the small balcony with that short coir broom, the kind that...
Seasonal Living
Fruits by season: a year of small fruit baskets
There is a small wooden bowl on the kitchen counter that I have owned for almost twenty years. It came from a...