The vines we tend

September’s letter to paid subscribers 🍅

“Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives…
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes…”

— William Martin

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Dear friends,

This week on Dandelion Seeds, I got to write about one of the people I love most in this world: my father Rob.

A toast to our first night at the beach this summer.

In “Between Two Branches,” I wrote about a moment that happened more than a decade ago now — the moment my dad taught me how to prune suckers from our tomato plants, and inadvertently gave me a metaphor that’s helped shape many of my decisions since then.

There are a couple of reasons that moment came back to me recently.