After the heartbreak of last summer’s drought, I let it be known far and wide that I had officially become a three-season gardener: winter, spring and fall. After all, I reasoned, there are plenty of things that can be grown in the South over the winter; plenty of things that need a good dose of…
With a bound she leaped to the top of a hill and looked down into a dell carpeted with bluebells. She checked and paused, still poised on her toes with her arms stretched out. The bluebells ran down the sides of the dell in rivulets and gathered at the bottom into a pool of…
I simply cannot believe that it has been one year since we brought all these lovely animals home to live on our farm-in-the-city. When I go down to the barn in the morning, or leave it at night, I often pause and look around me, just trying to remember what it used to look like—even…
I did something today that I have never done. I went to the post office to pick up a very special delivery, namely, a package of honeybees! (Basically, a little screened wooden crate with the bees fully visible and active inside.) We’re officially beekeepers now–and I’m alternating between a dizzy joy and a quaking terror….
The old Art Deco theatre in my hometown has recently been restored, and Friday night Philip and I went to a movie there. The fact that it was a favorite of mine, based on one of my all-time favorite books made it even more special: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, set to the…
It doesn’t feel like Spring this morning. I woke to the wind rattling about the eaves of the house and to leaden clouds, so unlike the mild sweet May-like weather we had on Saturday to make it seem almost laughable that we were able to have our first meal on the patio and that Philip…
Glory be to God for dappled things— For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings; Landscape plotted and…
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 little sister and her husband are painters. They’ve dreamed of careers in art since they were children. And it’s with much more than a sisterly bias that I can say they are both extremely talented. With an enviable ardor they packed up and left everything they had ever known not six months after they…
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…
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