This piece, originally published last spring on YLCF will hopefully give an account for my long silence around here…a condition I hope to remedy! I love how Catherine Marshall put it: Dreams carried around in one’s heart for years, if they are dreams that have God’s approval, have a way of suddenly materializing. And I…
My husband adores old books every bit as much as I do. Someday, I fear, the very rafters of our house will bulge with loved acquisitions. But even he looked askance at some of the derelict volumes I carted home from the dispersal of my grandmother’s house. Ex-libraries, with yellowed pages soft from use and…
Aren’t you bursting with butterflieson the fourth of September?Like you’ll have to get on the bus in your tartan dress, with your lunch box. Though your body is twenty-nine. Though your mind is an old thing. Karen Peris, Beginning the World As a child, I always felt a sweet rush of excitement, a…
…but I have been out of the country!! 😉 Imagine my delight, then, in the first surreal elation of homecoming, to learn the glorious news of our dear friend, Victoria magazine!! For those of you who are still in the dark, allow me the pleasure of bearing the glad tidings: Victoria is returning!! As of…
Well, after a WordPress update, a browser upgrade, a new laptop and an idyllic Maytime sojourn in England, I am back! Philip and I have just returned from the most special trip imaginable. It really was a pilgrimage in many ways, as I am sure all lovers of English literature and culture can understand, and…
We had an absolutely blighting frost this weekend, and much of the tender new growth that was last week so fair and fresh has blackened hopelessly or hangs limp upon shivering boughs. Where has our lovely spring gone? On Easter Sunday I wore a wool suit and fur in place of the white English net…
My husband and I were both raised Baptist. We never observed Lent or carriedpalms on Palm Sunday or went to Maundy Thursday services. Easter Sunday was,always has been, a day of bliss-I remember a few precious little sunriseservices we held…
We’ve just had the pleasure of hosting our beloved friends Joel and Lauren for the weekend. And these are not just your ordinary houseguests. Here’s what we did while they were here: ~Wired our new sunroom/keeping room for electricity (seven outlets!!) ~Installed insulation and tongue-and-groove paneling in the same room ~Put out twenty…
Here are our new babies—ten in all! There are few things in the world as sweet as baby chicks. We always have so much fun when we have a new brood of them…and I spend an inordinate amount of time leaning over the brooder, feeding them out of my hand, picking them up and kissing…
I’ve had that line singing in my head all this past week of cool radiant dawns and soul-warming mid-days and chilly pink dusks. This lovely, fragile time is like the world standing on tiptoe, holding its breath, flushed with the anticipation of all that is to come. I still need my sweater to walk the…
Sharing a loved book with a beloved person is one of the sweetest pleasures I can imagine. That’s why reading Jane Eyre with my husband this past month has sent my cup of joy spilling over the edge. Though I could never forget my first passion for this masterpiece—my initial reading was at fourteen and…
“It is the most friendly vocation in the world,” he announced…“A bookseller is the link between mind and mind, the feeder of the hungry, very often the binder up of wounds. There he sits, your bookseller, surrounded by a thousand minds all done up neatly in cardboard cases; beautiful minds, courageous minds, strong minds, wise…
Or, at least, to have a title that suggests as much? 😉 Here is a very fun site where you can receive one handed to you on a silver platter, completely free of charge, without the undo hassle of either an advantageous match to a good fortune or a bunch of unseemly social scrambling….
I love winter. I love the sense of repose its cold, grey days impart; the delightful pause between the flurry of Christmas and the flurry of spring gardening. January has habitually been my ‘quiet month’, a season of enforced calm that, I find, affects all the rest of my year. There was such a wonderful…
To My Dear and Loving Husband If ever two were one, then surely we. If ever man were lov’d by wife, then thee. If ever wife was happy in a man, Compare with me, ye women, if you can. I prize thy love more than whole Mines of gold, Or all the riches that…
February 8, 2007 That’s what I was doing yesterday afternoon. Playing nursery-maid to my biddies, on a blanket in the backyard with my tea on a tray. Fortunately my work was of a portable variety, and thus I sat, surrounded with pencils and notebooks and papers that kept rolling over the lawn on the light…
Madeleine L’Engle, reminiscing over her school years and the development of her craft in A Circle of Quiet, wrote: Looking through some old journals, I came across several [poems]. There was one, notable for its arrogance, if nothing else: We lived on 82nd Street, and the Metropolitan Museum was my short cut to…
While I’m certainly no expert on propogation, I thought I’d share my little successes in this most satisfying of garden practices, in the hopes that others might be inspired to take a few cuttings of their own–particularly when they see how simple and fun it can be. My mother-in-law is the master of this art,…
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