One of the things that made me happiest about my Brooklyn garden was its provenance: some plants I inherited, some I bought, while others were given to me by friends and family. And though I’m sad I couldn’t take anything from that garden to my new house, I’ve already sowed the seeds of randomness in Piermont, with an apple tree from a good friend and tomato seedlings from our generous carpenter. One day, I’m hoping I’ll get back to Brooklyn to take a cutting from “my” old Rose of Sharon.

It strikes me that there’s something similar going on with almost all of the material things that I care about — my books and notebooks (the ones that survived), especially — which accumulate as much meaning in the aggregate as they have in the particular.

Where do your favorite things come from?

Here’s a question for the group:

Apple is going to move away from skeuomorphic designs.  (Like turning the page, typing, pen or pencil icons, records, wooden shelves for books, etc.)  Basically skeuomorphs describe design elements that have no purpose in their current form but are used to give a familiarity to something from the past.

Apple’s designs will change, which means many other developers and inventors will take note, including app developers.  Apps are rapidly becoming indispensable tools and aids for living. 

Do you think the moving away from familiar but older products will have an impact on their use?  Will less and less people be able to “recognize” them, and therefore, pass them by?

There was never any question that we’d eventually need to leave Brooklyn — that our modest rental would grow too small, too rickety, too run-down for two parents who worked from home and a baby who’d soon start exploring the gaps between the floor and the wall. When that baby was born, of course, we had no idea how, and how soon, we’d have to go.

The truth is, we haven’t had time to miss Brooklyn amidst the chaos of our departure. But now that it’s spring — though I can’t believe my good fortune to have landed in this lovely Hudson River Valley town, and though I’m thrilled to observe the hyacinths and irises poking their way out of the ground in our new yard — I really miss my garden. The lovely Rose of Sharon we inherited, the Siberian irises and poppies that I splurged on at the garden store… (The termite colony and six-inch leopard slugs I’m just as glad to have at a comfortable distance.)

I always assumed I would bring a few plants with us whenever we moved, and would occasionally indulge in a bit of pragmatic self-importance as I reasoned through which ones. The blueberries were in a wooden container, which was dicey given the termites. The roots of the irises were knotted deep into the ground. The Black-eyed Susans and daisies were easy to transport, but also easy to sow anew. And pragmatism aside, I knew it would be nice to let the house’s next tenants enjoy the surprise of watching what came up in the spring.

I trust they are, perhaps with the added awe of nature’s post-storm resilience.

I try not to be crass or self-important. Nonetheless, I think a lot about the value of my time. Would I rather go out of my way to save a dollar on a box of Cheerios, or buy it at a local deli? Is it worth taking on a high-profile but poorly paid freelance assignment? Is it worth stuffing my schedule to the gills or reserving some unpaid time during the day to start dinner so I can take my son to the playground in the evening?

I thought about this recently when I tried to buy our babysitter a gift card for her birthday. I wanted a physical card, and I knew I wouldn’t have time to go to an actual store until several days after her birthday. So I went online and bought a virtual card that could supposedly be printed… except that that system was down. I found it very difficult to explain to otherwise sympathetic customer service representatives why, after two failed rounds of “why don’t we just resend the virtual card” (which cost me an additional 48 hours), I wasn’t willing to spend more time on the phone while they tried to think of other ways to solve the problem. Because what I stood to lose was not just the $25 I’d spent but the work I’d failed to do while dealing with the problem, and the missed opportunity to pull together a different idea on time…

On the other hand, once you’ve “invested” in a certain idea, it’s hard to know exactly when you’d be better off if you dropped it, so it was only after two days of calling that I gave up and went elsewhere for my gift.