I say this every year, but how I wish that I could freeze time. Just now, in this very moment. Still on the sweet, breathless cusp of it all, with the days stretching out in gilded promise, glitter sparkling behind the closed doors of the Advent calendar and fresh bits of holly and greens appearing…
I agree wholeheartedly with Jodi’s sentiments about November over on Curious Acorn. (Y’all, get to know her if you don’t already. She is one of my best-beloveds.) It is truly one of my favorite months, second only to that holly-crowned queen of a December. Strangely enough, however, I seem to forget just how splendidly I…
Last night, we gathered in the home of the dearest of friends for an evening of music and fellowship. It was a celebration of God’s bounty in our lives, the most treasured and notable of which were the people that filled the rooms of our friends’ new-old house. With each year that passes, we take…
In 84, Charing Cross Road, Helene Hanff said that people going to England find exactly what they go looking for. It’s true. It’s there. The England we look for is the England of books and poetry and landscapes of an almost mythical loveliness. Bowered lanes and hedgerows that were familiar before we ever laid eyes…
I am excited to announce that the new collection of books, garnered during my recent travels in England, are in the Shop! Philip and I had so much fun scouring the countryside for the authors and titles suited to my little niche of a shop—he has become quite the book scout, able to spot a…
I’ve been there and back again, which will hopefully account for my relative silence around here the past month or so. But I’m home now, blessedly so, even though I left the Fairest Isle behind me, and I’m overflowing with memories and stories. Once the jetlag has abated somewhat and the suitcases have been stowed…
It’s rare that people pay a first visit to our old farmhouse without asking if we have ghosts. I can hardly blame them; I wondered the same thing the first time I came here. It’s certainly haunted with its own past, standing there under its trees, brooding gently over vanished things like a wise old…
In the old Victoria magazine, one of my most cherished departments (among a crowd of loved ones) was Favorite Things. I always saved Chimes for last, and I religiously denied myself so much as a peek at the main body of the magazine—with its ravishing spreads of Old Masters-esque photographs and seasonal quotations from the…
My car arrived in the darkness before dawn: a darkness that is never really quite convincing in this city that tolerates the night more than accommodating itself to it. I looked out my window on the quiet Manhattan street below. It seemed pent up with an unnatural energy, biding none-too-patiently for the first magic rays…
I have read and re-read the entries for the giveaway of Mrs. Miniver, and I am just marveling at the sheer goodness of the dreams submitted here. The range of compassion and aspiration–from farming to homemaking to artistic initiatives to the mastery of musical instruments–is really astounding, and the particularities of your visions are nothing…
One year ago today my dream of an online bookshop went live. I remember the excitement of messaging computer to computer with my husband and a dear friend on the west coast who had been helping us as we tweaked the final details behind the scenes and prepared to fling open the virtual doors of…
There is something about the long, languid days of summer that begs for a particular flavor of reading, in my mind. I have said this before, but books have their own season for me as definitely as my clothes. I’d no more pull on my cabled wool ‘barn sweater’–so de rigueur for frosty winter mornings–in…
I was properly horrified to glance at my feed reader and realize that my last post was three weeks ago! Where has the time gone? It feels like it should be May, and here it is the first day of summer. Philip and I have pledged between ourselves to be as intentional and aware as…
in a world which is doing its best, night and day to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting e. e. cummings
No coward soul is mine, No trembler in world’s storm-troubled sphere. I see Heaven’s glories shine, And faith shines equal, arming me from fear. ~Emily Bronte I wish I could say that I always share dear Emily’s indomitable confidence, but the truth is, fear is a foe I have to take arms against every single…
When I was in England visiting friends last month, I picked up some gems for the bookshop (and maybe one or two for myself ;)). It’s taken me a while to get them listed here, but I so enjoyed scouting in some of the most fertile book-county in the world for titles I knew my…
We’re delighted to announce that Hermione has a sister. Hermione is delighted, too. Perdita is exactly one week younger than her sister, (one week old today!) and she hadn’t had as much experience with the joy of life as Hermione already had at her age. But if anything’s catching in this world, it’s goat joy….
Meet the newest member of our family, our beautiful Nubian doeling, Hermione. Afraid I’m going to be a little occupied around here, what with bottle brigade and romps in the yard and stroking those gorgeous Nubian ears. And I may or may not have had her in my lap at the breakfast table this morning……
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