There you stood in your pale green frock with white trim, showing a little age but resolute and desirable still, ready for come what may. You embraced us when we walked inside, asked where we’d been, and so we knew we were yours. We massaged your muscles and traced the contours in your bones with … Continue reading Farewell to Thee, Dear Clapboard New Englander
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Travel Story: Wilmington, NC at the Solstice
summer solstice 2021, Wrightsville Beach The Chef and I are home one week now after our exploratory trip down in Wilmington, North Carolina, where we'll soon count ourselves as residents among the local population. David had some promising interviews and we managed to find a place to live, a gigantic list item ticked. These images … Continue reading Travel Story: Wilmington, NC at the Solstice
Sunday Serendipity: I Show My Hand
ostensible planter of daffodil bulbs Last weekend I went in search of some historical documents, any I could find, for a young cousin doing some research on our family genealogy. I didn't turn up much that will be helpful insofar as the particular thing she was looking for. But I did come across an envelope … Continue reading Sunday Serendipity: I Show My Hand
Sunday Photo Essay: Hope Springs Eternal
plucky parsley I was not absolutely sure I believed Chef David when he came inside from his run earlier today and announced last year's Italian parsley appears to have overwintered in our frozen Vermont soil, and is coming back. I'll be damned, I said a little later on in the afternoon when I crouched down … Continue reading Sunday Photo Essay: Hope Springs Eternal
House Plans: Carolina Dreamin’
The Stuff of Dreams; New York Public Library Digital Collections I swear, I am so sick of myself. Must be the pandemic-induced isolation…anybody out there feel the same? Lately I’ve tried to take this, what? torpor, I suppose, and redirect it into designing our North Carolina home, in my head at least. The Chef bought … Continue reading House Plans: Carolina Dreamin’
Summer Gathering: A Memory
summer in Knoxville Let me tell you a story. It is a summer evening in Knoxville, Tennessee. The day has been hot, but the hottest part is over. It’s still sticky outside, though, and the cicadas are singing in the massive, centuries-old hardwoods all around the big house on the corner in this grand midtown … Continue reading Summer Gathering: A Memory
Biscuit Baking, Redux
For the last couple of weeks I've been hemming and hawing over a post that refuses to be written. When that happens, I've learned the best strategy is to step away from it and come back later, or not at all. Yesterday morning, though, I published a private post for one particular young man who … Continue reading Biscuit Baking, Redux
Sunday Photo Essay: Deep, and Crisp, and Even
deep, and crisp, and even Scenes from our little corner of southwest Vermont over these last couple of weeks:
A Family Memory: Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax and Surprise Connections
From The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax, by Dorothy Gillman, 1966 I can still see the dog-eared paperback clear as day on the guest bedroom nightstand in my childhood home in Memphis: a mystery novel by Dorothy Gillman titled The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax, my great-grandmother Gracie’s reading selection on that visit. On the book jacket a woman … Continue reading A Family Memory: Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax and Surprise Connections
Sunday Almanac: We March Inevitably Towards Winter
It is always a little sad to me when the snowplow rig assemblies start showing up on pickup trucks around town; it’s inevitable, but cold weather comes a little too soon on the heels of summer (to say nothing of ephemeral fall) in these parts, and wears out its welcome along about April, when everybody … Continue reading Sunday Almanac: We March Inevitably Towards Winter
