This isn't the easiest time of the year, and if your regular life is piled up with distractions, the Christmas season can send you right over the edge. I know because I often have overreaching expectations of myself. As a freelance writer, I have deadlines. All writers do, even if they are self-imposed. I'm also a mother and wife, which is my most important vocation. Today, one child is lying on the sofa sick. Another is at school, but also planning a ski trip for part of the holidays with friends, and I need to finalize her class reservation and ski rental, along with lift tickets. I'm excited for her to have this opportunity, and yet the details of pulling it together make me a bit nuts. I am so not a detail person. Then, there's the lure of the Internet, that constant noise in the background of all of...

As I ate two, beautiful eggs from our chickens this morning, I thought, "It's the little things which satisfy." I'll try to keep that in mind this Advent season if I get caught up in the hustle and bustle to make everything "just so." The perfect tree, the perfect mantle decoration, the perfect post . . . 'er, I digress. Human beings are not perfect, and never will be. We all make mistakes, especially when we try to be something we're not. I know this firsthand. Diva is coming home from college for a short visit tonight and tomorrow to help decorate the Christmas tree. Personally, I don't need the tree, but it's not all about me, especially at Christmas. I hate to admit this, but there is something about the Christmas tree which brings out the perfectionist I try so hard to keep in lock down. Perfectionism is a...

Not so long ago, I was a GAHM--Garden at Home Mom--who loved my landscape and had a Journalism degree with an emphasis in Botany. I started writing for the local paper on Sundays about gardening, and for a regional magazine. Then, I started this little blog where I muse about pretty much anything, and you guys read it. Imagine how happy I was to connect with so many new friends who loved gardening too. Pretty soon, I wrote for two of my favorite companies and some national magazines, along with my much-loved regional one, Oklahoma Gardener. Then, Proven Winners--you know, the people with the black on white containers--contacted me about a year ago, and asked if I'd like to write for them. I nearly jumped up and down, but stopped myself because that wouldn't be pretty. You so don't want to see that. Why was I so excited? Imagine the...

One spring, forty years ago, a young girl toddled after her grandmother in the small yard behind her grandmother's white-frame house. The girl was five with plain, brown hair cut into a bob, and cat's-eye glasses perched upon her nose. She wore black, patent, Mary Jane shoes which pinched her feet and a dress sewn by her mother out of cotton, made soft by many washings. Her grandmother shortened her long strides for the girl to follow. She grabbed a hoe and made a short furrow in the dark earth. The girl bent over and dropped gray and white, striped seeds into the valley made by the hoe. The earth was damp with dew and black from all of the compost and manure lavished upon it. It hummed with life. Of course, the little girl didn't know all these things then.  She just knew she wanted to be near her...