I worked in the gardens until sweat poured down my face. It was one of those sultry August weekends in Iowa that makes us all flee inside to avoid wilting. Though tempted to sip iced tea in the air conditioning, my gardens called to me. It is that time of year when my flamboyant, showoff-y […]

Helena Fitzgerald wrote a lovely article in The Atlantic about the week we are currently living in. The lovely week between Christmas and the first full week of January. A week Fitzgerald lovingly calls "Dead Week." Please enjoy her words ... ********* Dead Week isn’t a week off for everyone, or at least the thing […]

And now, we rest. Leftovers tucked away in the fridge. Kitchen tidied a bit. Perhaps we have bid a fond farewell to our guests. And unless we are building up for a raucous New Year's Eve, we can simply rest. But in order to do so, we must fight the messages that resound both inside […]

My kids are grown ups. They are all partnered up and self-sufficient and happy and healthy and I love them to pieces. Two years ago, after watching me heroically and miserably try to pull off the magical Christmas I thought they still yearned for, they all approached me gently and said, "We have a proposal […]

Friends, if you live in or near the Cedar Valley, I want to personally invite you to a beautiful event happening soon. Blake Flattley and Tanner Olson are from Nashville and are bringing their music, poetry and joy to the area on September 21st. You can read more about them here and here and here. […]

Memorial Day is past; it is now officially "The Season of the Porch!" I have declared it so! We live in a very old home. The exact date she was built is sketchy. We have some books that came with the home when we purchased her almost 25 years ago, and they allude to the […]