Edith Zimmerman

If you’ve ever poured cups of Epsom salt into your bath while wondering, “What is this stuff, and why am I doing this?

If you’ve ever needed further encouragement to stay in and binge on animal documentaries (I have not), they’ve now been shown to be scientifically good for you: Research from BBC Earth and the University of California has found that watching nature programmes [such as Planet Earth II] … increased people’s feelings of awe, contentedness, and joy. The nature programs also “acted to reduce feelings of tiredness, anger and stress.

In the spirit of spring reawakening, I asked the wonderful Rachel Winard of natural-beauty line Soapwalla (or is it a cult? I’d join) for some easy at-home facial-treatment ideas. -Edith Hi everyone! I don’t know if winter felt abysmally long to you as well; now that lengthening days and subtly warmer temps are here, I’m itching to start new projects. One of my favorite things to do: create at-home spa treatments using food items hanging around in my kitchen.

A cautionary tale. Or, I brushed my teeth with a stick.

Two longtime bookstore employees are currently transforming an abandoned Colorado cattle ranch into a “literary ‘home on the range’ for writers, artists and nature-lovers.” Jeff Lee and Ann Marie Martin of The Rocky Mountain Land Library project, who’ve collected more than 35,000 books about nature and the American West between them (they’re also married), are planning to finish this “live-in library celebrating the West” during the coming summer.

I often fall asleep listening to YouTube videos of a stranger speaking softly while she pretends to braid my hair (or make me tea, or massage my scalp). Or while she whispers about the candles she’s making, the starchy shirts she’s crinkling slowly, or the towels she’s folding. What matters most to me about these videos isn’t what she says but rather the quality of her voice (calm, soothing) and the attitude she projects (do I trust her? does she seem genuine?

Forget the Wheel of Life (and our home-oriented Life Balance Wheel) — or, don’t forget them, but after you maximize those wheels’ utility, there’s a new wheel in town: the Historic Paper Odor Wheel, developed by a team out of the University of London to more precisely describe and categorize the smell of old books.

While natural beauty guru Rachel Winard (of the cult-favorite brand Soapwalla) and I were talking about good, easy facials to make with food that might currently be in your kitchen, I also asked her for pointers on how to start an essential oil collection. Essentially: What are the essential essential oils? She suggested these five (for which you could come up with your own mnemonic, too — my first attempt is “let little ponies eat … tea trees.

Last year I came across a video of a young woman repeatedly wrapping her hair into a specific bun style — a nautilus bun — and securing it with a single hair stick. It was transfixing, and it seemed to promise an old-fashioned solution to the modern-day I-don’t-have-a-hair-elastic problem, as well as a potential solution to the hair-elastics-have-been-tearing-my-hair-out-for-decades problem.