I know summer is here when this enameled pitcher comes down off a high shelf. Its burnished orange is the only thing that will do for this wildflower bouquet, echoing the outrageous flaming of the first sprays of butterfly weed. And though larkspur, feverfew,...
For a hundred years now, summers have brought company to our farmhouse--sleeping bags on the attic carpet, picnics under the oaks, and joyous firefly-catching at dusk. Not to mention food and more food any and every hour of the day—like these Memorial Day lentil...
Lisa’s garden this week is awash in beautiful colors. The cool flowers she planted last fall and wrote about all winter are bursting into bloom. They sat with their small but growing feet in the cold and damp of a miserable winter. And now they are shining like this...
This afternoon Oliver Wendell Hertzler was put into the earth he loved--all but his spirit, which was received in a place he loved even better. With a few words and pictures, I celebrate the gifts he has shared with me and my family, especially in the last few years....
The dreamy blue of wild false indigo eluded us for decades. Our very first wild flower garden, back in the 90’s, grew from a pack of seeds scattered over the lawn and a few choice plants bought at the Virginia Living Museum native plant sale. One of those plants was...
It was Mother’s Day morning. As special pancakes puffed in the oven, I slipped up to the guest room to open the blinds to the gorgeous May sunshine. I don’t remember which little boys had slept in the tousled bed, but I will never forget the dove. She sat a few inches...
I had just taken two loaves of cracked wheat bread from the oven when a package arrived. The sender was Bunni, my forever friend, my first neighbor and childhood playmate, and like me, a descendant of I.D. and Fannie Hertzler who first purchased the 1200-acre plot of...
The greatest delight in our farmhouse-yard-turned-suburbia is to let things grow. Yes, Robby mows the green weed/grass lawn. He carefully trims and sweeps the curbs. We never stop weeding. But all around, in the flower beds and corners and shady groves, we leave the...
Feathers rippling, dust scratched and tossed, red combs quivering…the busy sound of clucks and trills and every now and then the triumphant arching crow of the presiding rooster. My memories of chicken days on my parents’ Lucas Creek Road home don’t date back to...
When I was a girl, we had the novelty of an April Fool’s Day snowstorm. As if the calendar date weren’t unusual enough, the snow was memorable in that it fell on fully-unfurled dogwood blossoms. Up until that day, I had thought of dogwood blossoms as white. That day,...
