At some point, you just move forward

The clear sunny morning promises heat this afternoon. Rolled out to check the gardens and think how many things I’d like to be doing outside.

Writing awaits, and I want to finish some work before I play. I did pick thyme, sage, and rosemary for tonight’s as yet unknown dinner. Lentil soup perhaps. I think of Virginia Woolf’s diary: “One acquires a certain power over [Read more →]

July 4th dawns hot and bright, with no rain clouds in sight, yet. Rain expected later today.

Encouraged by the application of nutrients, the kitchen garden boasts tiny green tomatoes, one cucumber, greening parsley and basil, and a few baby peppers. 

Here in the United States, some consider this day a solemn time to contemplate the ideals upon which our country was founded. For many, it’s a day of barbeques, parties, marching bands, patriotic speeches, and trimmings of red, white, and blue.

As with most holidays, Frank and I like to spend this day alone together in blessed quiet with our books, journals, and Baroque music, preferably Bach.

But the thought of marching bands takes me back to [Read more →]

Rain, rain, rain nearly every day. When the rain stops, the sun creates a steambath effect.

When I got out of work a little early, stopped by a garden center to pick up bee balm, Russian sage (such a heavenly scent), rudibeckia (in memory of my friend Becky), black sweet potato vines, artemesia, diantha, blue salvia, and hen and chickens. Most of these plants were distressed and half-priced, so I brought them home to heal.

My garden assistant planted them around the little mailbox garden by the road. He also worked 40 pounds of cow manure and compost into the soil of the kitchen garden.

July already, and still no big garden. As I look out at the field of mostly white clover that is the front yard, I begin to come to terms with the thought that the garden of my dreams is not yet to be. Why disturb the feng shui for now? I don’t deal well with heat and humidity. Perhaps a fall garden, perhaps a spring garden next spring, perhaps not at all.

One thing I do know for now is [Read more →]

As a long-term keeper of journals, over 30 years now, I’m amazed that I’ve just ordered my first Moleskine. Oh, I’d heard about them and read about them, and in my head, I pronounced it in two syllables: mole-skin or mole-skine.

Then at the journal conference, I saw and examined several of them (Thanks guys!) and felt the heft and richness. And acid free!

Although I spend much of my time now journaling in computer programs, my introduction to journals and diaries was on paper. When I’m tired, stressed, or ill, I love to speak one of my favorite phrases: [Read more →]

When I announced our move back to the Midwest, my New York friends and acquaintances had lots of comments, chief among them: [Read more →]

Well, it depends.

Just returned from a newly formed group of kindred spirits. Drove past the meadows and through the tunnels of trees with the warm night wind in my hair and the night sounds of crickets and frogs.

People sometimes talk about me now living “way out there in the middle of nowhere,” but I can’t agree. I have what I need and love right here, right now. It must be everyone else living in the wilderness. It’s all a matter of perspective, I suppose.

I actually have more [Read more →]

Exhaustion. Exhilaration. Too many words, experiences, and perceptions to process from the Denver pilgrimage.

I’ve long trained myself to give up expectations and end results, but this conference and the “the other part” far exceeded anything I might imagine.

The conference was fabulous. Details to follow. I’m still reverberating from Christina Baldwin’s opening keynote speech: “Restorying the World: How Journal Writing Can Heal the Future.” Her book, StoryCatchers should arrive in my mailbox any day now. (I flummoxed myself by [Read more →]

No rain, but dense fog this morning as I roll out at 6:00 am to pick up the newspaper and check my little kitchen garden.

Those luscious yellow-orange blossoms on the zucchini have all been chewed off the stems overnight. The blossoms lie on the ground, and I gather them up to sautee. This was not the plan, though.

It’s obvious [Read more →]

Rain, rain, rain all this spring. The parsley and zucchini flourish, but the cucumber and collard plants look a bit pale. No big garden plowed. Three tomato plants get leggier and leggier before being transplanted, and the hostas wait to be planted in a triangular shade garden. The rain beats down the geraniums, petunias, and lobelia to tatters.

I may just call the neighbor who volunteered to plow my garden and say, “Shall we build an ark, then?” One learns to wait when nothing else is possible. Some day soon a garden will make itself a reality.

In the meantime, [Read more →]

It was only since I returned that I understood my love for Palladian windows: the library, the courthouse, and the sheriff’s office. There’s nothing like reading in a recliner in a room full of books in front of the fireplace under tall, dignified windows.

It’s no longer the same, of course, but [Read more →]