Great Green Room

As I tap on my keyboard, rain pounds the skylights. Moments ago, the intolerable South Carolina heat melted into a torrential downpour. Lightening frizzes the afternoon sky; the heavens grumble…

The satellite images are almost beautiful — a swirl of indigo, dynamic, graceful, as if a batik of inky color saturating silk with lines softly bleeding. The reality, however, of…

My friend Debbie is one of those dependable Southern women who always shows up at the right moment with the just-right offering or gesture. One sad night last month, Debbie…

I like the nightlife, but lately things have been getting out of hand. “Hey, did you hear that?” I mumble to my groggy bedmate in the predawn dark. The alarm…

On a summer sojourn to Virginia, sitting on the slanted porch of a centuries-old log cabin, I am transported more by time than place. My husband and I had escaped…

Toilet paper and trowel. . . check. Sleeping bag, sleeping pad. . . check. Rain gear, flashlight, emergency blankets. . . check, check, check. Whistles and mini-blast air horn (couldn’t…

Whew, another Earth Day has come and gone, and I, for one, am relieved. Now I can go back to the humdrum dragging of my blue recycling bin to the…

The eights are about to do me in. We sailed through the perky paired-off twos, the odd but seemingly wholesome threes and the no-problem fours. Fives were a flash, easy…

The tree is up. Those four words, punctuated by a huge sigh of relief, mark the true launching of my Christmas season. It can be mid-to-late December but before the…

I have a heron. A gorgeous, mysterious Great Blue. In the mornings when the sun is bright, I pull back my bedroom drapes and look first thing. He’s an early…

The view from my bedroom is breathtaking. If I stand just so and peek through my neighbor’s fenced yard at the right spot on a sunny day, I’m blinded by…