Philip and I have just recently returned from a New England adventure, consisting of a blissful week in a cottage in Maine and a mad-cap weekend in Boston with my sister and her husband. Ten days becomes an eternity when there’s nothing to do but feast your eyes on gorgeous scenery and your mind…
Sunday, September 17 We’ve spent the weekend getting ready for our housepainters, who will arrive with the sun Monday morning; Philip has been polishing up the details on our newly converted porch. We’ve called it so many things since the project began back in the spring: summer kitchen, mud room, sun room, keeping room. And…
September 4th Today was one of our favorite kinds of days: we call them ‘farm days’. Getting up early, a hearty breakfast, a brisk ‘constitutional’ around the property in the fashion of Thomas Jefferson. And a long, productive day of meaningful tasks, either working together or blowing kisses in passing as we delve into whatever…
Sunday afternoon Philip and I held one of the solemn little ceremonies that our year is so happily and liberally laden with. Celebrating the ordinary, homely things that make life both interesting and familiar gives us so much joy. Things as commonplace as a new sweetness in the air and a new angle to…
I’m working on my autumn schedule this afternoon, and getting excited about the change of season I feel coming, though it’s still ninety degrees outside and will be for weeks yet. And though this summer has had a routine of its own, albeit a laid-back one, I am almost giddy over the prospect of a…
I hope that y’all are having a lovely summer! It’s getting too hot here to go out and garden past ten o’clock in the morning, but there are plenty of pleasant indoor things to put one’s hands to. Not the least of which is a good book when all (or almost all ;)) the…
Three weeks ago today I was on a ladder in the backyard doing yet another of those absolutely imperative tasks that must be completed before vacation: spraying the peach trees. I had already had that conversation with myself about how stupid it was to get up on a rickety ladder with a heavy, awkward sprayer…
We’ve just returned from an idyllic family vacation on St. Simons Island–one of Georgia’s famed ‘Golden Isles’–which I managed to enjoy immensely despite the fact that my right foot is encased in a cast and I can only hobble about on crutches at present! 😉 (A long story, involving a ladder and a peach tree…
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…
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