The House that Built Me
Purely on a spring lark the other day, or simple folly, I Google-viewed my old house and garden in Maine and briefly lived to regret it.
My Beautiful Madness
With apologies to Mr. Eliot, during the 15 years we lived on a coastal hill in Maine, April really was the cruelest of months, far more fickle than anything he knew in England -- teasingly warm one minute, biting cold the next, with brave green crocus shoots poking through the hoarfrost one morning followed by a foot of new snow falling the next, days alternating between mud and ice, sun and gloom, and me the whole while dreaming of spring back home in Carolina.
A Walk in the Woods
Transcendental tree-hugger Henry Thoreau once observed that a man who walks through the woods for the positive effect of the life of a forest on one's soul is likely to be regarded as a loafer, whereas a fellow who surveys the woods for its uncut timber is broadly hailed as an enterprising citizen, a man in quest of a better world.
Forever 52
On a cold Friday in late January of 1975, I skipped a senior history seminar class at college and drove three hours home to surprise my father for his 60th birthday, bringing him a bottle of his favorite Napoleon brandy.
The Hope List, 2013
Owing to a pitiful track record on the matter, I gave up making New Year resolutions years ago.
Call Me Mr. Bates
As the most popular period drama in PBS history prepares to make its third-season debut on Masterpiece Theater, we politely offer our own tribute.
The Spirit of Fezziwig
It was getting dark and I was cold, standing outside the music shop where I’d just taken my last guitar lesson for the year, waiting for my dad to pick me up after his office Christmas party.
My October Friend
He’s my oldest friend and might be the closest thing I know to a Renaissance man.
The Settling-In Season
For the first time in five years I don’t have a child of mine settling into college this September.
Tales of Vacation Road
Sometime in middle August, for the first time in three years, we’re taking a house at the beach for a week.
Dog Days and Good Country Cookin’
For better or for worse, in sickness and in health, till death do us part, I hail from a clan of serious Southern cooks and consumers.
The Shoe
An ode to Nettleton shoes and the golden age of haberdashery
The Power of Enchantment
In the spirit of Midsummer, get lost in the tangled web of your own wild imagination
Birds Let Loose into Darkness
As I think back on it, I’d all but given up hope for a job at my hometown newspaper the warm May afternoon I was summoned to see Miss Juanita Weekly, the managing editor of the Greensboro Record, the largest afternoon newspaper in the state.
The Forgotten Lenton Rose
It was a funny little plant, growing wild among the weeds of a neglected terrace planter when we moved into the house that April.
Friends From Another Life
There are just three of them left now, old friends from another life.
Eat, Drink and Be Scary
Last Halloween a lone trick-or-treater thumped on our door, a cute little girl dressed like a Bob the Builder, complete with a work belt, electric drill and construction hardhat.
Summer's End
My late Southern grandmother used to say it was a sin against God and nature to wish away time and rail against the weather. But please permit me to get this off my chest:
An Artful Life
Southern Pines artist Meridith Martens is a beguiling contradiction — a homebody who has made a life of roving and painting in the world’s glamour spots, a successful commercial artist whose stunning eye for realism is perhaps only matched by her restless taste for change and a personal exploration of the abstract.
