I started this post on Saturday and only finished it today. But here’s a glimpse into our Thanksgiving–easily the most meaningful of my life. I do hope that each of you had a special and restful holiday… Oh, how I love this time of year; this happy hobnobbing of autumn and Advent, the lingering glow…
Just popping in to say that I’ve finally completed and dispatched the first installment in what I hope will be a weekly newsletter chronicling our restoration story. I’m still overwhelmed by your response to my query, and I sincerely hope I didn’t miss anyone who asked to be included. Please do not hesitate to let…
January 3, 2018 It is the tenth day of Christmas, and the third of a brand new year. I’m sitting at my little desk in the waning light of a January day. Even from this distance, I can hear the sounds of hammerings and saws coming from the house, the occasional pounding, the muffled noise…
Dear Ones, Just popping in on this early December morning to say that I haven’t forgotten about the newsletter! I’ve been working away on the first installment (which includes a brief history of our house) in the few spare moments this phase of the restoration affords–and taking pictures of absolutely everything! But I will say,…
It’s a most unusual Thanksgiving. Instead of the typical flurry of preparation, I spent the morning scouring the internet for antique slag glass lamps (I’m obsessed) and historic wallpaper patterns. Afterwards, a leisurely ramble through the pasture with the animals, and lunch in the yard—it’s mild enough here in the South to eat outdoors, at…
October 26, 2017 Five months ago this night I innocently threw a load of sheets and towels in the dryer, and the next thing I knew, my house was in flames. “Contents fire,” the forensics experts agreed, with clinical detachment. In other words, they had no idea what aberration in that whirring mechanical heart caused…
Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. ~Frederick Buechner This is not the next post I expected to write, and it’s certainly not the post I want to write. But you dear readers have followed my journey here in sunshine and in shade, and I feel the need to…
The first three months of this year were filled to bursting with good things. School resumed with Hilary term in January, and although I was only taking one class (Italian Renaissance Art), it was every bit the challenge that my previous Oxford courses have led me to expect. I’m required to take half of my…
I am so sick of death. It’s been a year of bereavement. Even before Daddy died we were mourning the cruel progress of disease, hearts fainting before the horrors of each new stage. There were bright moments of sweetness and light, to be sure, little triumphs of love and glimpses of a glory beyond our…
“Is the spring coming?” he said. “What is it like?” “It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine, and things pushing up and working under the earth,” said Mary. ~Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden It’s rainy and cold today, but there are violets in the grass and…
Last month, I had the great privilege of interviewing one of my heroines, Andi Ashworth, upon the occasion of the re-release of her book, Real Love for Real Life by the Rabbit Room Press. You can find the interview here, and I really urge you not only to avail yourself of the gentle wisdom of…
I was properly horrified to glance at my feed reader and realize that my last post was three weeks ago! Where has the time gone? It feels like it should be May, and here it is the first day of summer. Philip and I have pledged between ourselves to be as intentional and aware as…
Meet the newest member of our family, our beautiful Nubian doeling, Hermione. Afraid I’m going to be a little occupied around here, what with bottle brigade and romps in the yard and stroking those gorgeous Nubian ears. And I may or may not have had her in my lap at the breakfast table this morning……
It was a brilliant but brisk winter day, and I was none too sure I wanted to brave the cold with my clippers and shears. But the calendar would not be denied. For it’s a cardinal rule of gardening here in God’s country that pruning must needs be effected no later and no earlier than…
I had been looking for them for weeks, from the first real shock of cold weather in early November, expecting at any moment to be brought up short in the midst of a day’s round by the sound that is at once the most wistful and the most exhilarating I have heard in nature. To…
The brightest, most blessed season of the year. My heart has been leaning into it for weeks, friends. But the miracle of the first dawning of Advent never ceases to catch me off guard–can it really have come again? The earliest tasks of the season always bear with them a certain tender awe. And always…
Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns. ~George Eliot Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves…
I felt like the villain in a Gothic novel. I had stormed the castle gates, hooded and veiled, and thrown the guards into confusion with a diversion of smoke. Right to the very heart of the fortress I plied, past those who fain would shield their queen to the death, into the sacred quarters of…
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