For all my minimalist tendencies, I do get carried away when it comes to fresh flowers in the house in summer.

Quite simply, it’s hyacinth and grape hyacinth bulbs, jumbled together and forced to life in a tray of watery pebbles. Quite remarkably, it’s an experience that’s changed my life. 

There’s a bank of drawers in the kitchen. Four drawers to keep the flow flowing and the working kitchen working.

It’s one of the first things I do in the morning, touch a flaming match to the wick of the candle in the kitchen window.

Sometimes, the smallest shift can be the key that changes everything.

In the small, quiet bedroom nestled under a seven foot, beaded plank ceiling at the back of the house, there’s a bed on one wall, with nightstands carved out of flanking floor-to-ceiling cabinetry.

Spring’s eyelids are beginning to flutter in her sleep. Just over two weeks from now, the calendar says she’ll arrive

I’ve got my eye on the tall cottonwood in the middle of the shelter belt on the far side of the pasture. It tells me things I’m curious to know.

The cool touch of a porcelain knob in the palm of your hand, the comforting weight of a solid wood door as you swing it closed, the quiet click of the latch bolt as it pops into place.

A length of cotton rope, tight between two posts. White cotton sheets, draped and dancing in the breeze. Glorious summer sun.

High moonlight captures winter’s leafless trees as it falls, drawing them in silvery-black ink across the snowy canvas below.