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…
little tree little silent Christmas tree you are so little you are more like a flower. who found you in the green forest and were you very sorry to come away? see i will comfort you because you smell so sweetly i will kiss your cool bark and hug you safe and tight just as…
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…
Thanksgiving, like any other beloved memorial with which the years are reckoned, has its own certain types, its venerable standard of ‘brightest and best’ against which each year’s observance is weighed. They may all—or most—be cherished in our hearts, a mellow, collected memory of loved rituals and the loved ones that give them meaning. But…
It was a glorious November day, stark and long-shadowed as only South Georgia can make it. The road we traversed was a familiar one—as familiar as the drive to my own home—and every field and house and stand of pines was a familiar friend. Even the red dirt roads veering off to the left and…
After an insanely busy week that crash landed in illness, the post I’d been weaving in my head never actually made it to the page. As my mother is always faithful to remind me, “life is what happens when you had other plans”. Nevertheless, I thought I’d just pop in and say Hello! and a…
A re-post from a year ago…simply because I’m feeling so nostalgic. And so wistful over the thought of absent friends that I can’t help it… It is the burnished season. At last. The sheep and goats amble across the pasture these late afternoons in a wash of amber and the trees around the house are…
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…
It’s easy to forget—or perhaps never fully realize in the first place—just what a treasure we hold in our hands in the form of a book. In times not too far past, books were solely the possession of the wealthy. As recently as the publication dates of many of my favorite nineteenth century novels, books…
What a perilous thing is revisiting. In retracing the steps of former joys, one always runs the risk of replacement. There is always the danger of finding things not quite so magical as memory has painted them. Be it the effect of time or merely the angle of the sun on a given day and…
A year ago I was waking up in England. I was going to sleep at night to the sound of the sea pounding on a Cornish shore and opening my eyes in the morning to the carol of robins and the cry of gulls outside the open casement. Lying amid downy pillows, drowsily bewitched by…
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…
My sister and I have always held that this is the perfect time of year to be reading a Lucy Maud Montgomery book. No matter how many times they’ve been read and re-read—the condition of my beloved paperbacks is quite appalling!—there is just something about September that seems to evoke a mood sufficiently wistful to…
The ‘chic vintage affair’ with which I envisioned conducting the drawing just wouldn’t cut it for the outpouring of entries that came in, so I had to resort to a slightly more no-nonsense chapeau in straw and black velvet. (But it is rather more Anne-ish than a feathered and frilled number, wouldn’t you agree?) I…
One month ago I drafted a post introducing the Bookshop at Lanier’s Books and I pushed ‘Publish’ with a pounding heart. Four weeks later, we hit the 100-mark with books sold and marked the first small anniversary of a dream-come-true. “I can’t believe I’ve done this one hundred times,” I told Philip as he watched…
Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes. The Henry David gem had been buzzing at my mind all day, and all day I had been tenaciously smiling it down. I had smiled it down when I cut out one of the skirt pieces upside down, and when I had to trot back to the store…
Disturb us, Lord, when We are too pleased with ourselves, When our dreams have come true Because we dreamed too little, When we arrived safely Because we sailed too close to the shore. Disturb us, Lord, when with the abundance of things we possess We have lost our thirst For the waters of life; Having…
There is no such thing as art. There are only artists. Ernst Gombrich, The Story of Art I had that driven home this past weekend at The Rabbit Room’s first-ever gathering in the flesh, saw it living and breathing, laughing and even getting choked up at times. Felt its electricity tingling in my veins and…
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