Controlled clutter includes things I cannot live without: red china marker and paintbrush eraser.

The only flowers I can grow.

When an oysterman says, “Going to haul” he means the weather is going to change. (Chesapeake Bay Museum)

I want one of these!

My office companion, who swears like a sailor if her dinner isn’t served promptly at 5:30.

Tell me what you feel in your room when the full moon is shining in upon you and your lamp is dying out, and I will tell you how old you are, and I shall know if you are happy. —Henri Frederic Amiel

Tell me you wouldn’t follow the arrow if you happened upon this sign along the road. I would.

Colour itself is a degree of darkness. —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The boy’s surprise at catching the sun sleeping — that, I want to feel that.

We ought to do good to others as simply as a horse runs, or a bee makes honey, or a vine bears grapes season after season without thinking of the grapes it has borne. —Marcus Aurelius

My youngest says the white v’s on a four-leaf clover show up as a diamond rather than a triangle. When she walks, she’s looking for diamonds. And she finds them. A lot of them. (from LUCK)

Amid the books are two photos of Mikhail Baryshnikov, one of the most charismatic people I’ve ever met.

Funny and sad; so telling of where we were headed … living automatically. Let’s not, okay?

First gift from the man I married. He got me from the start.

You’ll find her in Conjure, Silver, my illuminated novel.

The hat, the rope of pearls around her ropy neck. There’s a story here.

Longing to return.

1512 rendering of bird’s wing.