It looks like an orchid, doesn’t it? It isn’t, and it isn’t a willow, either. Chilopsis linearis is actually in the begonia family, along with the catalpa tree and the trumpet vine. But the leaves look willow-ish and the native peoples used it in the same way they used willows. Close enough.  Here in the Texas […]

It’s been a blistering summer already, 108 at Bill’s weather station yesterday afternoon. But summer has another way of announcing itself here in the Texas Hill Country. The beans are beginning to ripen and drop from the honey mesquites (Prosopis glandulosa), to the great delight of the raccoons, rabbits, possums, coyotes, and deer. (I’ve read […]

Life in the MeadowKnoll chicken yard is usually serene and uneventful, a welcome relief to the chaos of Covid-time. Our five Girls lead a tranquil life, punctuated only by frequent visits from Mom (me), their regular egg-laying visits to the nest box, and the irregular visits of the bull snakes that like to snack on […]

                      It’s not just a day for moms on our human calendars. It’s a big week–a month, actually, for moms all over our Hill Country homestead. This whitetail doe brought her fawn for us to see, while the two of them enjoy a morning browse […]

We’ve lived here at Meadow Knoll for over thirty years, and this has been the most beautiful spring I can remember. The New Dawn rose on the trellis beside the deck is heaped with fragrant rosy-pink blossoms. To the delight of the hummingbirds on their northward migration, the crossvine climbing the east wall of the […]

The fiber crafts have been my lifelong passion. I learned to crochet when I was a child and became a doily and potholder entrepreneur, peddling them to the neighbors. I learned to knit in my twenties, and my kids got socks. At midlife and beyond, it was quilting, spinning, weaving, felting–all of which are lovely […]

It’s a cliche to say that life is a journey. But it is. Sometimes the way ahead is straight and clear and well-traveled–plenty of mile markers and traffic signs. Sometimes we reach an intersection and we don’t know which road to take. And sometimes (like right now, for instance) the road just seems to disappear. […]

The Covid-19 news of the past few weeks is having an effect on all of us. The sun may be shining, the daffodils may be blooming (or not, yet, depending on where you live), and you may be going about your business pretty much as usual. But things are changing–or rather, this thing, this virus, […]

The other day (on Valentine’s Day, actually), a reader wrote to me. Mary is someone I hear from often enough to recognize her name and appreciate her comments. She writes: “I’m so sorry to learn there won’t be a 2020 China Bayles. Is there anything we, China’s readers, can do to persuade a 2020 book?” […]

Some things in nature aren’t beautiful. They just are as they are, like ball moss growing on a branch: a plant that is not a parasite (as people often think) but an epiphyte, getting a living by perching on a convenient limb, minding its own business and making its own food. Its roots only cling, […]