I learned one of my favorite words—lagniappe–when I lived in New Orleans in the early 1980s. It’s a French-Louisiana-Cajun noun that means “a little something extra,” a bonus, a gift. I first heard it over a very large platter of very large, just-shelled oysters, a bountiful lagniappe for residents and visitors to the most exotic […]

As many of you already know from the latest LifeScapes post, I’ve decided to move my blogs  over to  Place & Thyme on Substack. Place & Thyme will launch on Aug. 7, with the August issue of “All About Thyme.” SusanAlbert.com is a good catalog of my books and resources, but WordPress doesn’t make it […]

Did you ever happen on a phrase that suddenly kicked something off in you, way outside its original context? That’s happened to me more than once–most recently, when I was interviewing Janet Tyson about her work on Elizabeth Blackwell, the historical character in Hemlock. Janet began her research project in her mid-60s, she said, so she have […]

The current cross stitch work-in-progress–Charles Wysocki’s “Quilts for Sale”–has slowed a bit because the chart isn’t quite accurate and I’ve had to make some fairly major adjustments. This happens, when the pattern maker uses software to convert a painting or photograph. Artificial intelligence (in whatever form) makes mistakes. Takes a human eye to spot them […]

The pyracantha is especially beautiful this spring, and I’m not the only one who thinks so. Here’s a bee, gathering pollen from this prolific early bloomer to take back to feed her friends and ensure the continuation of the hive, at the same time that  she helps to ensure that the blossoms will produce those […]

Well, bluebonnets, of course. And pyracantha, yellow Missouri primrose, daffodils, paintbrush, Texas mountain laurel, redbuds, dogwood, and more. Late March and early April paint the Hill Country with lovely swathes of color, before summer blasts through and turns everything brown. These are among my favorite days of the year here at Meadow Knoll, where the […]

Here we are, almost the middle of March–how does this happen? Is it a function of being immersed in something so deeply that time telescopes in the doing? Or of keeping busy with too many tasks? Or of too many events in our world, too readily reported to us, too many to keep straight? Or […]