I want to begin by saying a warm thank you for the outpouring of excitement and encouragement attendant upon the announcement of my book earlier this week. If it weren’t for all of you, I wouldn’t have had the courage to let it out into the world. Thank you for celebrating this happy milestone with…
Oh my goodness. I am so excited about what I have to share today that I hardly know where to begin. This news has been over five years in the making. And now that it’s finally time to let it out into the world, I’m tripping over my own enthusiasm. It all began in the…
Slipping quietly into this little space on a brisk-but-brilliant almost-spring day to say a warm word of thanks to those of you dear souls (and you know who you are) who have spoken such kind words of late over my long absence from Lanier’s Books. Truthfully, it wasn’t until I received a profoundly gracious email…
I was mad at God. It was the 30th of November, a date by which I’ve traditionally completed all of my Christmas shopping, planned my holiday meals, decked half the halls and basically thrown myself heart and soul into the preparations for the season I love best. It’s not that I’m so organized: it’s just…
Wednesdays are my favorite days, and this is my favorite Wednesday of the year. I absolutely love the anticipation that this day means. Since early this morning I’ve been chopping herbs and pecans, grating orange rind (that lovely little burst of spray that escapes every time the zester perforates the orange is like a tiny…
I’m happy to announce that there are new books in The Shop today! I’ve added some real favorites, including several rare titles by Frances Hodgson Burnett and collectible volumes by Grace Richmond. I’ve also got two titles by Elizabeth Von Arnim, The Enchanted April and a beautiful copy of Elizabeth and Her German Garden. And,…
I. For Philip Cicadas sing at midday, metal-bright Murmur hymning indolence to earth, While painted ladies dart in fevered flight, Knowing of all most poignantly life’s worth. Fond sunlight coaxes salt scent from marrow Of warm-breasted marsh, and drows’d palms breeze-wake With green rapier-rattle. An arrow Pierces yet—Summer to her flight betakes. A silver ribbon…
Well. Hello there. I hardly know where to begin. After forty-plus days of retreat, I feel like my soul has had a thorough airing and scrubbing. Like I’ve been at once standing on a high and lonely mountaintop in a bracing wind and tucked securely in the cleft of a rock, shadowed by an Almighty…
I have always been a five year-old about birthdays. I love them, and I get very excited about celebrating the day that God in His mercy chose to give me life. The most ordinary things seem tinged with magic, and I pray I will never grow out of that. But I am also very awed…
This post has been brewing for a good long time. Ten years, as a matter of fact. What follows is something of a personal retrospective, probably not of the least interest to anyone but me. Truthfully, it’s one of the most difficult things I’ve ever written—how to confine an important decade to a few paragraphs?—and…
Like a white gull, caught in the cross-purpose of an opposing breeze, I hang, suspended upon grief and this searing joy. Weightless, effortless, aloft on these mercies, I hover ‘twixt heaven and earth, love greater even than that which wrings my heart burgeoning beneath these wings. Such gift, this graceful breath, inkling of the ageless…
I’ve been reading a lot of Lucy Maud lately. Dipping into one of her novels or re-reading her short stories for the umpteenth time touches such a deep, elemental place inside of me. There’s something about the awakening of the world in spring that makes me long for the companionship of her words—words which awakened…
“Is the spring coming?” he said. “What is it like?” “It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine, and things pushing up and working under the earth,” said Mary. ~Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden It’s rainy and cold today, but there are violets in the grass and…
This is what joy looks like: It looks like walking over the lawn in that time of late winter’s striving with early spring, when late afternoon and early evening brush fingers in passing, throwing careless glances over shadowy shoulders, and all the wealth of the sun’s golden fame has been heaped in the treetops, mounted…
I’ve lost count of how many times I have given up ballet. Every time there has been a bend in my road, it seems, ballet has been the thing to go, flung off the back of the wagon with the sudden turning. Weeks, months—and in this latter case, years—have intervened. But it keeps coming back,…
Merry 7th Day of Christmas to you all, and a Happy New Year! It’s been a glad (mad) bustle of a December and all my scribblings of late have been merely a desperate attempt to catch these sweet days in my journal as they fly. But I wanted to share this piece that I wrote…
Lord Jesus, Master of both the light and the darkness, send your Holy Spirit upon our preparations for Christmas. We who have so much to do, seek quiet spaces to hear your voice each day. We who are anxious over many things, look forward to your coming among us. We who are blessed in so…
Almost a year ago I had the pleasure of announcing the first title in the newly-inaugurated Low Door Press, a bindery dedicated to producing books created entirely by hand. The response to Kilmeny of the Orchard was overwhelming—and heart-warming. I cannot even begin to say what your enthusiasm and encouraging words have meant to me…
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