AH, SPRING! THIS TIME of year, I walk around with Gerard Manley Hopkins’ lines beating in my head: Nothing is so beautiful as Spring— When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush . . . Though, as a gardener, I always think that if Hopkins had [...]
“MIDWINTER SPRING IS its own season,” writes T.S. Eliot in “Little Gidding,” one of The Four Quartets. “Sempiternal, though sodden towards sundown, / Suspended in time between pole and tropic.” I’ve always loved that description of “midwinter spring.” I’ve been thinking of it today because it’s the perfect midwinter spring day [...]
VALENTINE'S DAY IS just around the corner, which has me thinking warmly about things—and people—I love. But first, a brief history. Apparently, there was more than one Saint Valentine: Valentinus, from the Latin word for worthy, strong or powerful was a common name between the 2nd and 8th centuries A.D. The St. Valentine who [...]
I’VE BEEN BUSY WRITING production notes for the upcoming audiobook of The Walled Garden (so exciting!), so I haven’t had a lot of time to think about what to write here. It’s January in the Pacific Northwest and though the weather continues cold and raw, there are tiny signs that the garden is [...]