Love Notes

As I sat on my favorite perch drinking my morning coffee and watching the goings on in Maine's Saco Bay, I chanced upon a Mutual of Omaha moment.  The water was all agitated and swirly due to a fast running incoming tide, and a group of cormorants had just arrived and were settling in to fish for breakfast.   I knew from my younger son, the outdoorsman, that there are diving ducks and puddle ducks.  Puddle ducks, he tells me, make for better eating, as they dine near the water's surface - on a diet full of lovely micro greens, seeds, insects and small fish.  Diving ducks, unlike their salad bar loving cousins, swim down to feed on all sorts of fish - bottom feeders, various crustaceans and all the other slimy stuff that never sees the light of day. 

Cormorants aren't ducks (I was pretty sure of this, just checked, got that one right, small victory accepted).   What I did not know is that cormorants are more than just divers, they're more like scuba divers, going down to depths of 25 feet and more.    I had only noticed that they seemed to be down there quite awhile before resurfacing with their catch.   Apparently I wasn't the only one watching.  READ MORE

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“At one magical instant in your early morning or late afternoon, you will see the light - light so extraordinary that it seems to have come from another world.”

There’s a hush that falls when the day turns the corner toward evening and the light becomes golden - that fleeting hour when a ray of sun slips through the window as if carrying a secret message.  Beyond the glass, it softens everything it touches: the lapping waves on a New England rocky coast, a small Virginia garden gone quiet, a strand of pearls on my studio table catching the glow.

Photographers call it the magic hour - that post sunrise or late afternoon sun that illuminates a subject, almost as if a glow were lit from within.   READ MORE

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Good things come in small boxes.  And sometimes with small price tags too.  Today, we're looking at little treasures.

Are you familiar with the lover's eye?

It all began in the late 1700s, when King George IV (then the rakish Prince of Wales) went to the opera and that evening fell madly in love with Maria Fitzherbert.   She was a Catholic, a widow and a commoner; he was heir to the throne.  Marriage was thrice forbidden.   While this deterred Mrs. Fitzherbert, George was relentless in his pursuit of passion, and in a gesture as secret as it was romantic, he sent her a tiny portrait of his own eye, painted in watercolor on ivory.   READ MORE

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I started out thinking today's note should be set to Ella Fitzgerald singing "Autumn in New York" ... and yet before I knew it, Nina Simone was crooning "Feeling Good" in my ear (so good!), fast forward forty minutes (which flew by) and I had created this playlist, neatly bookended by the two songbirds.  In my mind's eye, I'm picturing it as a soundtrack for a Nancy Meyers movie with you as the protagonist ... camera pans as you stroll through Central Park (or along your favorite hometown walking route) ... the director calls for a zoom in as you pause to kick a few leaf piles, and a red maple drifts up toward the clouds.  What is our lovely protagonist (YOU) thinking in that moment?  What is she longing for?  Where would her story lead, if she dared to write the next scene herself?  READ  MORE

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Autumn arrives with shorter days and brisker nights, and suddenly the comforts of home feel like treasures to be gathered close.   Perhaps it's our response to the return of a regular (perhaps even bustling) routine - following on the heels of August's dreamy la la land of seemingly endless daylight and loosened schedules.  Or maybe it's just our primordial call to bake.  Whatever the reason, fall seems to call us back to our nests.     Here are a few little indulgences to just sprinkle a little fall stardust into your world:  READ MORE

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