My favorite book is Cold Mountain, by Charles Frazier.  That probably shouldn’t be a woman’s favorite book, but it is mine.  I’ve actually never read it visually, but I listen to it several times a year as I fold laundry or work the garden.  The first time I listened to it I was working a…

Happy gnat season!  After mud season, and immediately following my least favorite season (blackberry winter), comes gnat season.  It’s horrible, they swarm your face, and though they rarely bite, just their presence can quickly lead to insanity.  When we first opened the bluegill pond we thought we should get rid of the gnats because, for…

The Road Lily is so common a flower that it’s largely ignored and like other wildflowers is frequently overlooked in gardens.  But actually, it’s not a wild flower, and it’s not a lily.  Road Lily, or Orange Day Lily, is originally from Asia and was brought over with some of the first European settlers.  It’s…

Bigleaf magnolia (Magnolia macrophylla) is one of our more beautiful flowering trees, though at times difficult to see as the flowers are typically so far above us.  So to find some flowers at more or less eye level I walked to one of our cliffs where from the edge you can see out across the…