Creating with words or boxes

Q. When is it especially fun to write a blog?    

 A. When you get email like this one I received last week:

Hügelkultur and our raised vegetable garden bed

I’m not sure what started my husband’s venture into raised-bed gardening and Hügelkultur, but I’m going to blame YouTube and our neighbors Josiah and Iman.

Music brings us all together

Little did I realize, when I accepted a seemingly-simple Facebook challenge, that I’d be prompting an informal vote on my favorite music.

Share your COVID BIG history!!

During the COVID-19 pandemic, there’s a unique way we can be helpful: your state's historical society could be seeking your thoughts. Mine is.

Making the most of lines and circles

The young have much to teach the old. My three-and-a-half-year-old grandson, Max, has proved that. 

Jayber Crow: a book to lift you up

Need a book that will inspire you? Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry is made for COVID-19 days. In fact, it's a book for all days, for those who seek to remain human. I’ve never read a novel like this one. If you were to ask me what it’s about, I’d have to pause.

Bill Bryson's Thunderbolt: It's to LAUGH!

If humor is what you’re pining for, I’ve got the remedy. I have never laughed so hard and so often reading a book as when I read The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson. His memories of growing up in the Midwest during the 1950s are gutsy and irreverent, true to life but often exaggerated for comic effect. The memoir is a reminder that things really, really were REALLY different back then.

Shuffle

Before my mother became "Mum," she was Audrey, the country cousin on a farm in St. Michael's outside Kewaskum. Shirley was her city cousin in Milwaukee. They resembled each other, petite girls bubbling with laughter. Shirley and Audrey had no sisters and over their years of visits, they became more than sisters, the best of pals. They made their fun outdoors, exploring the barn, ice skating on the frozen river near the farm, or roller skating on sidewalks in Milwaukee.