How To Grow The Garden Of Your Dreams …… In Six Easy Steps
Step One. Read books. Lots of them. People will tell you to put down your books and join the real world, for heaven’s sake. They will remind you that you live in a university dorm or an apartment reached by only a sliver of light or a temporary rental and do not even think of wasting time or money on land you do not own, but you would do well...
These Farmhouse Bookshelves
I sometimes worry that I have run out of books to recommend. Surely I've shown you every single book worth its shelf space in this old farmhouse? But then I glance at my lap (there is almost always a book in my lap), and I realize that some of the books I love the most, some of the books I am so used to seeing, always at hand, are books I've...
The Sound of Our Waiting
I wrote a version of this post almost exactly two years ago. In early June of 2012, I had been wandering in a Florida wilderness for two years. I was tired of waiting. Tired of rootless living. I was six months pregnant and desperate to leave Florida. I wanted my baby girl to be born wherever home might be. But I had no idea where home might...
These Farmhouse Bookshelves
Let's be honest. My springtime reading looks less like reading and more like one hour spent weeding the perfect reading spot under the sour cherry tree and then fifteen minutes given to sitting under that tree watching the peonies dance and catching my book as it just slips from my lap. So, not a great deal of actual reading. But books are...
This is Now (This is Always)
... for history is a pattern / Of timeless moments. - T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets The kids and I are reading the Little House books. One chapter each night. We began with Farmer Boy and a fire in the old stone hearth. Now we are in the big woods of Wisconsin, and there is birdsong through our open window. It is also haying time in the fields...
What Were You Made To Do?
You were made for the impossible thing. You were made for the goal you cannot conceivably achieve. You were made for the task you are ill-equipped to manage. The high bar you can never reach. You were made for the thing that terrifies you the most. The thing those others can do but never you. You were made for the dream too good even to dream....