In ecology, resilience is defined as the capacity of an ecosystem to respond to a disturbance by resisting damage and recovering quickly. Here in Kentucky this year, we had a beautiful early spring in March. The grass turned green. The flowers bloomed. The trees pushed out their leaves. Fruit trees bloomed, including the wild pawpaw trees over in the field …
Writers write stories they want readers to read. This is certainly true for this writer. I sometimes say that a book takes two to truly come to life. The writer who spills the story out onto the pages and the reader who then invites those words into his or her imagination to experience that story. That’s not to say …
Have you ever seen a spot like this on one of your plants or maybe in your yard where it looks as though somebody spit on your plant and it stuck? I spotted this bit of spittle on a plant while I was walking with the dogs sometime this week. I’ve seen the spit spots before and knew they were …
I’m working hard to try to finish my new book. It’s been a struggle on some of the writing days. It’s not that I haven’t had time for writing what with the shelter in place advisories for the last two months. But some stories take a little more tugging and pulling to get them out of my imagination. So to …
When I give a book talk, I like the question and answer part the best. One of the questions I’m often asked is “What is your favorite book?” I always tell whoever asked what a hard question that is for an author to answer. It’s something like asking a mother which is her favorite child. All these books shown in …
In Kentucky we usually have several cold snaps before spring finally comes to stay. So we call them winters. Redbud winter. Dogwood winter. Locust winter. Blackberry winter. The names come from whatever is blooming when the chilly air sweeps back into the area the way it has several times this spring. This year the cool spells have been colder than …
Happy Mother’s Day to all of you. I’m a day late but then lately I seem to be at least a day late on most everything. The weekend was busy with a visit to the garden center to buy some new plants. Now if it will just warm up enough to plant some of those blooms. We could have frost …
Every Wednesday on my Facebook author page, I do a Shaker Wednesday where I share a little Shaker history from some of the resource books I used when I was writing my Shaker novels. Earlier I had posted a picture of my latest Shaker book, The Refuge, alongside a picture I have of the Shaker Tree of Life. This picture …
Spring means grass growing and flowers blooming as winter backs away to await its turn in December. Many say spring is their favorite season of the year because of the way our natural world shakes off the gray of winter and breaks out in color. Since I’m someone who likes walking out on my farm in all seasons and that …
Books are something social – a writer speaking to a reader – so I think making the reading of a book the center of a social event, the meeting of a book club, is a brilliant idea. ~Yann Martel Are you in a book club? Have ever been in a book club? I have to admit that I’ve never been a …