The first taste of blueberries picked from the garden, the first splashed dunk in the Country Club pool. Meals on the porch. Everyday an outside tea party attended in sundress style. The lawn chairs are moved from the open sun, tucked under pine trees in the shade. The dog looks forlorn, overdressed in fur. Industrious […]
The three dogs all got along great, Maury’s, Jude’s, and ours. Maury (pictured with Joe below) brought me roses that he grew in his backyard, ones that adorned the dining table at the weekend meditation retreat for caregivers and counselors that he, Joe, and Alan Forrest (head of the counseling department at Radford University) just […]
Is it in the screech the baby phoebes make when their mother brings food to their nest on the porch rafter? The meditative in and out of a sewing needle, readying seasonal clothes for summer? The silence that lingers between the needle and the pen my husband is writing with on the other side of […]
Loud gusts of wind on the Blue Ridge Parkway sound like breakers on the shore. They make blades of grass quiver and hikers hold on to their hats. Spread out on a picnic blanket with my head propped on my bent arm, I watch a hawk surf the cloudless blue sky while my friend eats […]
If someone like me with a logical and skeptical mind can believe in the afterlife, there might be something to it. As a child in Catechism Class – where I was forced to memorize and recite a litany of questions and answers that began with ‘WHO MADE YOU? GOD MADE ME’ – I thought Eve […]
The January porch vacation (not a porch at all) is a sandy bayside opening with a gnarly grove of bushes growing on either side. Joe and I settle our chairs in the muddy bay beachfront to get out of the ocean wind and to watch the sunset. A fish jumps, a dolphin snorts by. Pelicans […]
“Well, if you want to sing out, sing out and if you want to be free, be free ‘Cause there’s a million things to be…” -Cat Stevens I’m not one to make resolutions, although when the New Year arrives I do find myself reviewing the past year. I like to brainstorm, set intentions for life […]
At some point in your life one of your kids or someone else might say, “You’re no fun anymore.” You might feel obligated to try and be more fun or you might begin to ponder how your idea of what fun is has changed. Fun is a beautiful combination of words that comes without effort, […]
The urgent, repeated call of a Pileated Woodpecker makes me turn my head and look. The maple tree in the yard is bared to the bone, exposing our neighbor’s red garage in the distance. Joe’s soaking his foot that he injured in a soccer game. Notebooks and catalog pages full of possible Christmas presents flap […]
Mud on potatoes dries to dirt in the sun, spilling from a bucket like a cornucopia overflowed. In the garden, a few tomatoes struggle to turn red but only make it to bright orange – the same color as the potted mums on the porch table, a $3 grocery store purchase for October’s yearly anniversary. […]
No one comes. No one calls. The constant motion of September wind sounds like ocean surf. It flattens the tops of trees like women’s hair blown back from driving in a car with the top down. It pushes the clouds across the sky. They rush like a river intent on downstream. The sun blinks as […]
Sheltered from the neighbors by a row of jasmine bushes and a fence lined with dwarf conifers and roses, a bird serenades, water streams from a dolphin fountain, and wind chimes remind me of home. There are whelk shells on the stone tiled table. I pick one up, hold it to my ear and for […]
