THE EXCEPTIONALLY LOVELY SUMMER we enjoyed in the Northwest this year gave way to fall right on schedule last Saturday, almost as though a switch had been flipped. The rain began—it’s still raining—and I’m in my usual nostalgic autumnal mood, mourning the warmth and beauty of summer in the garden at the [...]
I JUST GOT BACK from a walk that perfectly captured this cold, wet spring we've been having, and I keep thinking about these lines from one of my favorite Robert Frost poems (Two Tramps in Mud Time): The sun was warm but the wind was chill. You know how it is with [...]
IT'S JANUARY, AND if there’s a better month for snuggling inside with a good book and a cup of tea, I don’t know what it is! I’ve recently been inspired to think about my favorite books of last year in terms of Oscar award categories by the fabulous Elsie @ Tea and [...]
I'M FINDING IT REALLY DIFFICULT to gather my thoughts about England, a place I’ve been in love with since I saw Mary Poppins when I was six years old. During the pandemic, when I was feeling nostalgic for all the trips I wasn’t taking, I tried to find the journal from my [...]
“THERE’S SOMETHING HYPNOTIC about the word tea,” says Lord Peter Wimsey, one of my all-time favorite fictional characters, in Dorothy L. Sayers’ incomparable 1935 novel, Gaudy Night. In my Welcome post, I wrote about how I fell in love with the taste of tea at a young age. Like a well-steeped cup, [...]