A couple of weeks ago we were sitting on the front porch of our dear friends in Birmingham, savoring a cup of tea and fresh scones with them and a new friend from across the street. How effortlessly does conversation flourish upon the common ground of our fellowship in Christ! We womenfolk had kept up…
A couple of weeks ago we were sitting on the front porch of our dear friends in Birmingham, savoring a cup of tea and fresh scones with them and a new friend from across the street. How effortlessly does conversation flourish upon the common ground of our fellowship in Christ! We womenfolk had kept up…
Way back in March I promised to share a new poet I’ve grown to admire. I thought it was high time I kept my word. 🙂 Sir John Betjeman (1906-1984) struck a chord with me from my very first perusal of his works. He was called a modern-day Tennyson, and I can see why. His…
I’ve been having trouble with my internet connection this past week and the windows of time that I’ve been able to get online have been quite hit or miss…my apologies to those of you who have sent me kind emails and such. Hopefully we’ll have this resolved soon! Also, because I have been inundated with…
I could read a seed catalogue from cover-to-cover. Especially one with beautiful photographs. I still remember the thrill of that first one from Park Seed, and the infinite sense of possibility that it offered me. I was seventeen, and completely dazzled with the notion that a whole garden could come from an envelope of those…
What felicity on earth can compare to that of setting out the seeds for a summer vegetable garden in the midst of the gentlest of April showers? It was like a benediction upon my labors and the fruits to follow…if only it could exercise some sway over squash vine borers… Elizabeth von Arnim says…
An impromtu and blessedly sweet gathering of dear girlfriends a few weeks ago turned into a ‘high school reunion’ of sorts; a fête for old friendship and old times, as we realized how quickly time had flown since we’d all been together in those homeschool days gone by. Our guest of honor, the returning comrade…
I’ve spent every spare moment in the garden this week. How wonderful to be alive and outside in such a lovely old world as this! I simply cannot believe it each morning as I see the sun rising over the woods to the east that we are to have yet another of these Eden days….
It happens every year. March gives way to April, and I wake up one morning and see that a miracle has transpired, overnight, as it were. And every year I am unflinchingly convinced that no spring has ever been as gorgeous as this one. ‘How could it have been?’ I ask myself. If it were,…
Bread and butter, devoid of charm in the drawing room, is ambrosia eaten under a tree. Elizabeth Von Antrim Some of my thoughts on tea party weather…
I’ve just had one of the goldenest of golden days with my best girl friend. She’s here from Australia, whence she wandered when she married her true love almost ten years ago. Every time I go up to her former home—almost an hour outside of the city and set on a hill commanding views of…
After several busy weeks I’m sensing the need to pause and refresh the springs of inspiration a bit. Lest any of you fear that I’ve wandered off into some black hole in cyberspace, I’m only reading, journaling, trying to spend more time in the Word, discovering a new poet (which I’ll tell you all about)…
I was remarking to a friend the other day that what with preoccupation with another friend’s grief and sickness of my own, I’ve been moving through my days more slowly than normal. Almost deliberately. Unable to process the next task till I’m done with the task at hand. Refusing to let my tired mind be…
My best friend’s mother went to be with Jesus tonight. After a heroic battle with cancer she passed quietly from this world to the next, quite literally with her Lord’s praises on her lips. All I have been able to think since I received the news is that she is looking into the face of…
We saw Ballet Russes a few weeks ago; two of seven people in the audience. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that a film so utterly devoid of appalling content was so under-attended. My sister tells me, however, that it was slated to run for two weeks in New York back in November and that…
An ordinary morning last week turned into a post for the Young Ladies Christian Fellowship…
‘There is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea.’ Ralph Waldo Emerson I grew up in a busy, lively household. There was always someone coming and going, some project underway or some party planning afoot. But no matter how full the days were, the wheels of industry always ground…
I came across this precious poem in a search for Alice Van Leer Carrick the other day and I just had to share it. How well I remember what is was like to be quite small and to lie in bed at night imagining all the wonders just beyond my window… Why does the…
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