I often sketch or doodle on what ever piece of paper happens to be handy. My muse must like the rhythmic scratching of my pencil because it has helped me get past many a writing block. I thought it would be fun to share some of those sketches with you along with an excerpt or …
Summer is a great time for butterflies in South Florida, and I decided my more than a little wild butterfly garden could use even more wildness. Every morning swarms of butterflies dance their way through the garden, dozens and dozens of them fluttering around the firebush and the jatropha tree. One day I may even …
Book fairs are like treasure hunts for those of us who love to read; wonderful places where we can discover books we may have never seen otherwise. A chance for us to search out new and interesting authors. Do you remember the book fairs they would have at schools (do they do that anymore? I …
There are very few things that can compare to the feeling you get when you open your kindle to find the story you wrote there looking back at you. I can tell you, however, that holding the physical book in your hands takes that feeling to a whole other level. Lumina and the Goblin King …
We rarely get frost this far south, but even if you don’t take that into account, Florida is a crazy place when it comes to weather. In just a little over one month we have gone from frost to flowers to fruit. And the bowl of tomatoes was just the first of many! I have …
I have mentioned my early reading adventures in several posts now, and recently I have had another come floating up from the depths of my memory… Disney’s read-along books. They came with a record that slid into a pocket in the back of the book and I loved them! All of a sudden, books became …
I first read The Swan Maiden by Howard Pyle in those wonderful red books that I had found tucked away in my grandmama’s house. I loved the idea of a young woman who could turn into a swan, a three eyed witch who lived in a house that shone like fire and the barley woman …
Some of our oldest stories were told in pictures. Even today, there are some wonderful books that tell their stories without any words at all. Their pictures, seeds that take root in the imagination, blooming into a different story each time we look at them. The Silver Pony by Lynd Ward is one such book. …
This post certainly falls into the random thoughts category! I was going through pictures, looking for ones I can put into a calendar for this upcoming year; however, the pictures that seemed to keep grabbing my attention were the ones of food. Ummmm, food! One thing all of us share in one way or another, …
In a previous post I mentioned how different our memories sometimes paint the stories of our childhood, and that how, for me, the underlying theme of Housmans’ Rocking Horse Land was so much changed between my reading of it as a child and my reading of it as an adult. Well, one of the pictures …
Idyll Dreams & Nonsensical Things 