Each Thanksgiving morning, I heat the casseroles and pies I made the night before in the oven, childhood excitement filling me as a catch snippets of the parade on TV. I always wish we could delay our departure until my boys get a glimpse of Santa (the parade’s caboose), but we must make it to […]
The ‘Country Girls’ in the front flower bed just finished their fall flush. I identify with those garden mums. I am a country girl too, in spite of the fact that, like them, I’ve never actually lived in the country. Our house in this suburban city is a dear home to me now, but it […]
There is something magical about planting a rose bush. The story of Martha Gonzales and her small rose garden has captured my imagination as any real-world fairytale is sure to do. I have a feeling that, like all of the precious women I know, Martha Gonzales didn’t realize how special she was. And when she tucked […]
“Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” I Thessalonians 5:16-18 On days like this one, I am apt to say, “What a beautiful day!” Sometimes, I say it out of immense gratitude to God. Lots of times I say it with an […]
The October garden sighs flowers in celebration of having endured the summer heat. Autumn reawakens something in me as well. Following is a list of “blooms” in my garden and in my life over the past month. * ‘Country Girl’ chrysanthemums, waving pale pink happiness to passersby * A desire to play more with my children […]
The Lake District in England is overlaid with many a poem and book. Ten years ago, when I set foot there for the first (and only) time, it was already familiar, beloved even, for I had been touched by Wordsworth’s poems and delighted by Beatrix Potter’s picture books. Similarly, this month as I baked pumpkin […]
I met a fascinating clocksmith on Friday, when he visited my house to install a moon dial. It had fallen off during shipment of the grandfather clock I’d been dreaming about for much of my life. To me, a grandfather clock, with its carefully crafted workmanship, stands tall for the value of time well spent, […]
This summer, my boys and I were running errands, listening to Dragon of the Red Dawn, by the amazing Mary Pope Osborne,* when my heart was linked to a seventeenth-century Japanese poet: Basho. In the book, Basho’s character says, “[M]y banana tree is more beautiful to me than all the beauty of the Imperial Garden.” […]
The following “video essay” made me pause to look—really look—at a tree today . . . how its arms waved in the breeze, its green leaves in stark contrast to the blue sky. I thought about how, even though it has lived on this earth longer than I have and will be standing tall, shading […]
We listened to the audio version of Little House on the Prairie on our way to spend a weekend in the wilderness. In it, Pa says, “There’s no great loss without some small gain.” That comment lodged in my mind, the way a statement will when I want to test it, prove whether or not […]
A Children's Book World 