It may not be a technique approved by reading and writing experts, but it worked for my husband and his daughter. She was in grade school and struggling over a book, 10 or 15 pages into it, and ready to give up.

It was one of those times when kids start to puddle up and parents start to breathe heavily and you know you’re in for a learning moment. So they sat together on the couch, opened her book and started reading it. Backwards.

Some people would frown and call him a spoiler, but his intent was not to give away the ending. He wanted to show her that the story was indeed going somewhere. They turned to the second to the last chapter in the book, read it and he asked her, “How do you suppose they got to this place?” And then they backed up another chapter and he asked the same. Pretty soon she became interested in trying to figure out the path of the story, from the beginning. She started over and finished the book. And, the best thing, she became a dedicated, passionate, constant inhaler of books and a teacher, now sharing her love of words with second graders.

Another daughter became a lawyer which took her into a different world of reading and writing. Big books, hard words, lots of syllables, long tedious sentences. But in addition to mastering legalese, she can still tell a succinct, funny story. And she’s not shy about sharing her opinions in writing, sending advice to Barack Obama when he was a candidate and turning out newspaper commentary like one defending the president’s nomination of Dawn Johnsen to the office of legal counsel .

She’s also on the library board and this weekend hosts a fund-raiser where book lovers mingle with authors and dine inside the library. (Go to www.scplf.org)
Another daughter has her first book coming out next week, a memoir based on her first year as a stepmother. This one never intended to have children nor planned to be an author, but now there’s her picture on a shiny new Random House paperback. (See www.izzy-rose.com)

But we have books.

I’m bragging about my daughters because I’ve been thinking that parents pass on many things to their children they may not even recognize as valuable at the time. Our children will not inherit grand pianos and silver tea services, and forget those pitiful stocks. The house is no longer worth the money we put into it. But we have books, stacked and stored all over the house, including my husband’s “Life and Times of Wyatt Earp” and my “Golden Book of Fairy Tales” and a tiny Bible that my mother got when she was 11 from her parents.

As books become more endangered, the publishing industry walloped by the economy and competition from the internet, there are still many of us who can’t imagine a bath, a bedtime, a vacation, a stolen hour on the porch without a book. This week a woman stopped me at the gym to rave about the latest Rose Tremain novel. At a play a friend walked up and said “Astrid and Veronika” by Linda Olsson. I responded with, “Loving Frank” by Nancy Horan.

The latest pick by the youngest reader in the family, age three, is “A New Barker in the House.” It’s about a Welsh terrier family with twins that adopts a brother who speaks Spanish. Some people would have you read it over and over.

It’s not whopping big news that having friends is good for your health, but it’s nice to have scientific support for flying off with your girlfriends once a year.

Last week we went to San Diego where the three of us first met, not as surfer girls, but as young married career women, reporters on the same evening newspaper. We are no longer married to those same husbands and our careers have morphed widely, although we all still know how to write a headline and a lead sentence. The newspaper merged with the morning paper. The building itself, which was downtown, is gone. A mall is in its place. The newspaper moved out to the shopping center. Everything’s changed except for our annual need to get together, this time on a beach in San Diego.

Two live in California and one in Indiana, but we prefer meeting at a neutral location like Savannah, Chicago, Key West or Phoenix. When my husband and I moved to Germany, my two friends flew over so we could have our getaway in Strasbourg and Heidelberg.

Our vacation routine is the same. We get up and hit the streets in pajama tops and sweatpants, seeking coffee and newspapers. This time we scored papers at a liquor store up the beach, next door to a coffee house with a patient barista. One of us is known for her complicated espresso orders.

We don’t play tennis or golf. Well, two don’t, but we try to exercise. This time, there were walks on the sand and bicycles on the boardwalk. The fittest of the three brought her exercise bands. For activities, we eat, we shop and search out art museums, sometimes a play. This time we cruised beach towns to hunt up our old addresses in one time funky places showing off new wine bars and garden art stores.

We agree on Kevin Spacey and the need for dogs.

Driving is always amusing. Two prefer to be in the driver’s seat, which leaves the other controlling personality to bark directional changes and the third to sit gratefully in the back.

At night we usually watch movies, lament the state of newspapers, tell other sad stories and have cocktails. One wine, one scotch, one brandy.

We’ve been friends for 40 years, although one still tells people she’s only 48 and that would mean we met in grade school. To be honest, she does have the youngest face, which we can attest is her own.

In many ways we don’t match and if we lived next door to each other we might not have remained as close as we have miles apart. We have vastly different lifestyles, sometimes heatedly different politics and opposite tastes in everything from pre-roasted grocery store chicken to why Meryl Streep did “Mama Mia.” Only one uses “Facebook.” Only one reads with a Kindle. Two wear pepto pink and canary yellow. One prefers black.

We agree on Kevin Spacey and the need for dogs.

A recent health story in the New York Times said that having friends prolongs life, boosts brain health and aids in recovery from illness. Friends make us feel protected. They give us confidence. They keep our stress levels down.

In our case I think we know so much basic history about each other – parents, ex-husbands, kids, health scares and idiosyncrasies, that we cushion each other like family. We have enjoyed different levels of professional, marital and financial success but we’ve never competed. If one said “help,” the other two would be there tomorrow. Oh sure, we’ll tell one that she snores and one that she’s bossy and one that she’s told the same story twice already.

Still, if friends do keep you healthy we’re pretty good insurance for each other.

You know that this is not going to be nearly as casual a backyard farming year. With all the veggie growing hoopla at the White House it would be practically un-American to not rip up your lawn and grow edibles, even though here in California we not only have serious water issues but we have practically year-round farm stands selling the most beautifully formed, artful, organic, locally grown produce that money can buy.

Of course, that’s part of the reason for planting it yourself. The hope is you eventually will save money, after a significant investment in plants, drip systems and in our case, new pumped-up dirt.

Yet, the pressure is on – a near farming frenzy – to grow your own. I saw it last weekend when I attended my first-ever lecture on gardening, where a rapt audience of weekend farmers sat in hard chairs and took notes for two hours on how to grow vegetables in containers.

It’s true that Americans will follow just about any trend, but who would have thought self-sufficiency would become the latest cool thing. There are people who never planted a petunia educating themselves on starter fertilizers and how to make your own gopher wire. I imagine by August they will be able to blind taste a green bean and identify it by microclimate and diligence of the gardener.

Self sufficiency, the latest cool thing.

The day after the gardening workshop, our downtown farmers’ market opened for the season, creating a similar nervous buzz around the veggie starts. That’s when I began to panic, like I do every spring when I sense that the gardening race is on and I missed hearing the starter bell.

Sometimes spring gets ahead of me. I like it to come on slowly so I can savor the first appearance of blue forget-me-nots and yellow oxalis. Some scorn their beautiful faces and call them weeds, but I love that they’re free, tenacious and happen overnight. We even have an orange poppy growing out of a stone wall.

But they’re not edible and this year it’s all about planting to eat. Now it’s suddenly April and it seems like the whole world is planted and we don’t even have seedlings in the kitchen window.

Adding to my worries was last summer, which was such a flop. Our tomatoes were like sulking teenagers, ignoring all attention and love. I blamed it on the dirt. My husband said the plants were bad. It probably was both along with the grape arbor next door blocking out the sun.

This year we have relocated the tomato patch to the hottest, sunniest side of the house. We bought special soil and mixed in special compost and have such high hopes we stuck in a teepee-like trellis that makes it easy to harvest the bounty we are sure to have. Cukes, peppers, squash and beans will go into the raised beds that replace the old lawn.

Nothing exotic. I’m happy to remain a nouveau farmer and don’t aspire to veggie queen. I’ll leave that to Barbara Kingsolver and Alice Waters. But I am practicing how to do an Obama fist-bump in garden gloves.