It’s been a long week. Here are some easy-on-the-brain links đ: Have you seen the photos of the ginormous sea creature that washed up in Indonesia? This is wild. Big dinosaur news:Â A nodosaur has been unearthed in all its spiky glory. Amazing. OSCAR DE LA RENTA stamps! They are fabulous. When …Read More
Thursday was such a scattered day. With rain in the forecast, I wanted to get those plants I bought earlier in the week in the ground. I was delighted to read that Euphorbia does bloom, and Astilbe can stand 6 hours of sun. I mistakenly referred to the white Campanula as harebell yesterday. Oops. It went …Read More
On my screen this week is a short story for a Southern gothic anthology. But it’s more Jane Eyre/The Secret Garden than Flannery O’Connor. It’s one of those stories that I can see the end of very clearly, but I will have to rein myself in because it really wants to be a novella. I’m …Read More
I’ve never seen a dead person who wasn’t already embalmed and funeral-ready. The idea of being right there in the presence of a fresh corpse terrifies me. (I’m not crazy about open-casket visitations, either.) In fact, just thinking about writing about real-life corpses sent me running for a bag of potato chips, and I spent the …Read More
It’s late now, and I’ve spent the last few hours writing on my laptop in the dark. If I were alone in the house I’d never do that, but Husband, Son, and all the animals except one cat are sleeping peacefully. It’s lovely to work in my home, surrounded by sleeping objects of my affection. …Read More
Things I learned this weekend: Wasps can swim. Black-eyed Susans don’t transplant very well if you drown them instead of watering them in lightly. I have missed gardening. Viburnums are a bitch to trim. Rain makes weeds. Plants are cheaper at the farmer’s market. Begonias are my new favorite. Well, they’ve been …Read More
“Regret is the worst human emotion. If you took another road, you might have fallen off a cliff.” — William Shatner I don’t know that regret is the absolute worst human emotion, but it certainly can be one of the most destructive. It’s enough to be genuinely sorry for something you’ve  done wrong. …Read More
It’s the first Saturday in May. You know what that means: the running of the Kentucky Derby đ in Louisville, KY, my other hometown. Here’s a little history of the race, along with the WWD fashion and hats photos from 2016. Trivia: When I was growing up in Louisville, you could start wearing …Read More
Happy Friday! It’s been a restful, if wet and dreary, week back home. A little cursory research tells me that we’ve had nine or ten inches of rain in the last six or seven days. When I left for New York last Tuesday, I could still see through the trees to the sky. But now …Read More
I’m not sure when I first read Peyton Place, but it was early on, surely in my late teens. Written in 1956, it was still a rich, salacious find even in the late 70s. I’m a big soap opera fan from way back, so discovering a murder/sex soap opera in print–one that was competently written at …Read More