Welcome to a Wet, Soggy World

Welcome to a Wet, Soggy World

The picture of the mother robin and babies isn’t mine, but it might as well be. The nest is on a brick ledge like mine and the mama and her babies look exactly like the ones here at my house. The babies have hatched! The weeks of sitting on those eggs and keeping them warm […]

The Rains Came Down and the Floods Came Up

The Rains Came Down and the Floods Came Up

  Many of us have been experiencing rain, rain, and more rain. And, flooding. Flood records are being broken as creeks and rivers overflow and dams are strained to capacity. What a wet month! A few years ago, when I was writing the fourth Darcy and Flora cozy, Grave Heritage, Tahlequah experienced the wettest July […]

A Home of Sticks

A Home of Sticks

She sits on her little nest of sticks and feathers and this and that. It’s sort of a hodge podge of building materials, but it suits her and it’s home to those tiny blue eggs she warms patiently, day and night. Robins’ nests aren’t known as architectural wonders. And, although they do their best, mama […]

Getting in Touch with an Old Tradition

by blanche manos · leave a comment (edit) Yesterday, my family and I kept up the yearly tradition of putting flowers on the graves of loved ones. Decoration Day is always the same Sunday every May and has been that way for generations. The beautiful little cemetery lies in northeast Oklahoma, surrounded by trees, gentle hills, and a creek […]

Cornered With Nowhere to Run

Cornered With Nowhere to Run

  An excerpt from the soon-to-be-released Moonstruck and Murderous. Ned has gotten herself cornered. I took a deep breath. I was in a tight place with little room to move. Pushing against the inglenook’s brick wall to give myself leverage, I stood up. The brick under my hand moved. What? Was the mortar so aged […]

Winds of Change

This is the second and final installment of my May 5, 1985 Daily Press article about the tornado which destroyed Peggs, Oklahoma on May 2, 1920. In 1920, Walter Neel lived with his parents, brothers and sisters on the Gid Morgan farm, two and a fourth miles southeast of Peggs. The storm went a mile […]