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 as gods clear their voice. This is a summer gift — wrapped in heavy dark clouds and delivered at the end of a searing day — an afternoon thunder storm, and in its glorious wake, ion-smelling air rinsed clean of humidity, if only for a little while.

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 the Louisiana disaster makes me feel more
like a shorebird drenched in sludge — my spirit is heavy, dark, poisoned,
immobilized. There is no beauty, only the thick, toxic weight of despair.

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 dropped by to pay her last respects to our walking companion, my elegant greyhound, Casey. For weeks I had watched my already sleek racer wither to skin and bones, and that day, after numerous rounds at numerous vets, I’d finally gotten a definitive diagnosis — cancer throughout his abdomen. I brought sweet Casey home for one last night so my girls could say goodbye, and Debbie appeared, her smile warm and gentle, her eyes sparkly with sheen of soft tears, her arms full of tomato seedlings.

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 is about to go off, but it’s been preempted by the scratch and maw overhead. A muffled thump, small footsteps — these early morning audio extras disrupt my sleep, and disrupt the cozy feeling I savor, all tucked in my warm bed, that my home is my dominion, my territory.

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 to the Blue Ridge Mountains for reprieve from coastal South …

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 hurt) for warding off bears. . . check and double …

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 curb, minus the pomp and circumstance. I can poke around …

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 as pie, and even the sixes and sevens seemed to …

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 tree gets planted in the living room corner, 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 bird, and often he’s already landed, punctual, a morning staple, …

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 a dazzling shimmer. Charleston Harbor. A gorgeous, expansive liquid plain, …