I’ve been busy, but I don’t want to leave you completely empty-handed for the week. It’s hot, and heat puts me in the mind of Peter Mayle books. As nice as summer is here, I think I’d still rather be in Provence. The dogs cope with the summer heat by sleeping through it, stretched out [...]

THIS is EASILY my most favorite summer-related passage from any book, ever. Then he asked me what my plans were for the summer, and in the flush of some strong emotion or other I said, more or less: It’s the beginning of the summer and I’m standing in the lobby of a thousand-story grand hotel, [...]

I have poison ivy. Not bad, but still lousy. In light of that, here’s a bit on the evil ivy from author Ann Patchett. It’s from an essay she wrote on Tennessee as part of an anthology of essays on all 50 states, and I’d been saving it for later in the summer, but it [...]

I intended to post something of substance written by me today, but it ain’t happenin’. Banner images here are acting up, probably because they know the cat’s away. Please disregard the man behind the curtain and instead be distracted by a favorite passage from a favorite short story: But it was wading ankle deep, when [...]

Today, I’m celebrating Arbor Day with tree-related ceremonies at two schools in town. A passage for our friends the trees seemed apropos. Puszcza, an old Polish word, means ‘forest primeval.’ Straddling the border between Poland and Belarus, the half-million acres of the Białowieża Puszcza contain Europe’s last remaining fragment of old-growth, lowland wilderness. Think of [...]

If posting is light this week, it’s because I’m actually out IN the garden. For now, since we’re talking about Magnolia, I’ll leave you an ever so Southern Gothic passage in which Magnolia appears in a very different context than that I recall. The night was hot and sultry. Though the windows of the chamber [...]

So the first official day of spring came and went, and let me tell you, I get VERY restless this time of year. It’s a good time to get lost someplace, whether it’s someplace local, some exotic destination, an intense work project, or even just a book. I seem to have spent a lot of [...]

A jet of cool air carried me through the door, as though the greenhouse were breathing me in. The floor was gravel and my footsteps crunched and echoed off the high glass ceiling. It was so warm inside that I immediately began to sweat, and so fragrant as to be almost malodorous. I smelled potting [...]

The doors of the house, wide open from dawn until bedtime, were closed during siesta time under the pretext that the sun heated up the bedrooms and in the end they were closed for good. The aloe branch and loaf of bread that had been hanging over the door since the days of the founding [...]

I’m thinking about light, and new ways to think about light. For example, light as seen through the eyes of tiny animals who live between blades of grass. The light, gold and smooth, lay like a gold rind over the turf, the furze and yew bushes, the few wind-stunted trees. From the ridge, the light [...]