by Susan Yoder Ackerman | Jan 30, 2014 | -Miracles in the Garden with Susan Yoder Ackerman
“Let’s have a look,” the doctor said, with professional concern. Frostbite symptoms are serious, and a little rare here in southeastern Virginia. Robby pulled off his shoe and started pulling down his blue wool hand-knit socks. He was proud to show off the socks his...
by Susan Yoder Ackerman | Jan 22, 2014 | -Miracles in the Garden with Susan Yoder Ackerman
What I love about Virginia is the way the seasons do a challenging dance right around this time of year. Is it fall? Is it winter? Is spring around the corner? You wake up in the morning and sniff the air to find out which is on the menu for the day. Especially in...
by Susan Yoder Ackerman | Jan 15, 2014 | -Miracles in the Garden with Susan Yoder Ackerman
Robby and I came out of a little ice cream store on Pass-a-Grille Beach, Florida. The following sign met our eyes and we didn’t have to be warned twice: The graphic depiction of a sea gull swooping out of the blue to devour an ice cream cone was all too familiar....
by Susan Yoder Ackerman | Jan 8, 2014 | -Miracles in the Garden with Susan Yoder Ackerman
January is the season for homemade soup. And nobody understands that better than John and Everett Cassel. While the rest of us are assessing turkey bones and ham hocks, wilted celery stalks and sprouting carrots, the whole winter garden is their larder. This...
by Susan Yoder Ackerman | Dec 23, 2013 | -Miracles in the Garden with Susan Yoder Ackerman
About this time of year I really miss my Dad. When I was little, and even when I was grown with a family, he shared the joy I felt tramping through the chilly woods finding mistletoe and holly. He had had his eye on them all year. The last few years we gathered holly...
by Susan Yoder Ackerman | Dec 17, 2013 | -Miracles in the Garden with Susan Yoder Ackerman
It was the afternoon of October 6, 2005. Robby and I were making our way along the Nova Scotia coast toward Cape Breton where a French family had a bed and breakfast waiting for us in the little town of Chéticamp. It was hard to cover much territory because there was...
by Susan Yoder Ackerman | Dec 10, 2013 | -Miracles in the Garden with Susan Yoder Ackerman
Last week I took a cup full of precious West Virginia cranberries and picked out a few remnants of moss. I put some cream cheese and a stick of butter on the counter to warm up. And then it dawned on me. The recipe for Cranberry Coffee Braid called for Bisquick and I...
by Susan Yoder Ackerman | Dec 2, 2013 | -Miracles in the Garden with Susan Yoder Ackerman
My holiday baking began today with our traditional Cranberry Coffee Braid. It has had a momentous role in our family Christmastimes, with probably the most important appearance being the Christmas our son was getting up the nerve to propose to Michelle, and to soften...
by Susan Yoder Ackerman | Nov 25, 2013 | -Miracles in the Garden with Susan Yoder Ackerman
Walking down Sandpiper Street this time of year, you can see every beautiful tree Virginia ever had to offer. I love the bright yellow of the hickory. I like finding a tan sculpted hickory nut to hold in my hand as I walk. Another color I treasure is the burnt...
by Susan Yoder Ackerman | Nov 18, 2013 | -Miracles in the Garden with Susan Yoder Ackerman
When I answered the doorbell last week, two boys stood on the back steps with rakes in hand. After learning that we do our own raking, the tallest one said, “I just have one question. Does this house have three stories?” When we described our attic, he said elatedly,...
by Susan Yoder Ackerman | Nov 11, 2013 | -Miracles in the Garden with Susan Yoder Ackerman
I only dined once at the Indian Fields Tavern along Route 5 in Charles City County. It was many years ago, and the food was good. I loved the rolling fields and trees all around, and the sure sense that the James River lay just over a rise. While dining, I could...
by Susan Yoder Ackerman | Nov 4, 2013 | -Miracles in the Garden with Susan Yoder Ackerman
“Why go to the lake to draw water, when you have a well in your house?” Yesterday I read this quote in a book set in Calcutta, but it seemed a truth that translates well to my life in Tidewater, Virginia. My fridge is stuffed with fresh kale, lettuce, mustard,...
by Susan Yoder Ackerman | Oct 29, 2013 | -Miracles in the Garden with Susan Yoder Ackerman
We were home. The fireplace was blazing only hours after the car was unpacked. Looking into those gold and blue flames was as exciting as anything I’d experienced in the last few months: All very nice, but the fire had them beat. Still there was something...
by Susan Yoder Ackerman | Sep 16, 2013 | -Miracles in the Garden with Susan Yoder Ackerman
Purple eggplant and green-striped tomatoes notwithstanding, there is nothing like the color of ripe red strawberries. Lucky I was hanging out on a berry farm several weeks ago while my sister got well. In fact, the night we returned from the Pittsburgh hospital, this...
by Susan Yoder Ackerman | Sep 9, 2013 | -Miracles in the Garden with Susan Yoder Ackerman
After horrendous Pittsburgh traffic, it was refreshing to pull up in the driveway at Owl Creek Farm and stop between the flower-rimmed farm pond and the square-log house where Linda and Del live. She was home to heal from her hip surgery, and I was there to help in...
by Susan Yoder Ackerman | Sep 3, 2013 | -Miracles in the Garden with Susan Yoder Ackerman
The crickets are cranking out September music, and the time of goodbyes is upon us. There is nothing around the house that reflects an empty nest more startlingly than a refrigerator. I remember dropping our first daughter off at Wellesley and driving home in anguish...
by Susan Yoder Ackerman | Aug 26, 2013 | -Miracles in the Garden with Susan Yoder Ackerman
A goldfinch flew out of the rudbeckia and I should have been used to that, but I was not in Lisa’s garden, I was in the middle of Pittsburgh! Other things I did not expect but found along city streets: ...
by Susan Yoder Ackerman | Aug 19, 2013 | -Miracles in the Garden with Susan Yoder Ackerman
Coming home from church one night and finding Robby with a new can of wild game dog food, I knew we were in for another foster baby bird. Our neighbors, Dakota and Rebekah, had rescued a tiny dark scrap of a thing and brought it to us to protect it from a house full...
by Susan Yoder Ackerman | Aug 13, 2013 | -Miracles in the Garden with Susan Yoder Ackerman
I will spare you a photo of my bare feet squishing into mud, but the experience today in Lisa’s Garden between the new zinnia rows we were weeding took me back to some of childhood’s best moments. The feel of satiny mud slithering between my toes, the excitement of...
by Susan Yoder Ackerman | Aug 5, 2013 | -Miracles in the Garden with Susan Yoder Ackerman
All my life, zinnias have been the stuff of pretty summer bouquets–the multi-petaled flowers even a child could draw. I knew zinnias to come in every cheerful color you can name. I even found zinnias to flourish—with watering—in the West African desert, and as...
by Susan Yoder Ackerman | Jul 22, 2013 | -Miracles in the Garden with Susan Yoder Ackerman
The sweetest thing about our little wild robin baby was how his black crest stood up when he was excited. Or maybe the sweetest were the coos and chirps he spoke to us in response to our words. Sometimes he got so happy hearing us talk, he would close his eyes, coo...
by Susan Yoder Ackerman | Jul 15, 2013 | -Miracles in the Garden with Susan Yoder Ackerman
I should probably put out a neighborhood alert when I go for my evening walk. The neighbors don’t always know what to make of me, especially when I get a mile or so from home, and they don’t know to say, oh, that’s the lady who lives in the stone house with the big...
by Susan Yoder Ackerman | Jul 8, 2013 | -Miracles in the Garden with Susan Yoder Ackerman
When our son married Michelle, I bought a huge bundle of stargazer lilies to grace the fellowship hall for the church reception. The exquisite beauty of the pink speckled lilies and their incredibly sweet fragrance seemed the perfect expression of how happy we were to...
by Susan Yoder Ackerman | Jul 1, 2013 | -Miracles in the Garden with Susan Yoder Ackerman
On June 13, while Lisa was running out into the Peninsula’s freak 65-mph windstorm barefooted, I was sitting in the Newport News Williamsburg Airport watching the sky blacken and hoping our flight would not be leaving within minutes, as they said it would. I was...
by Susan Yoder Ackerman | Jun 25, 2013 | -Miracles in the Garden with Susan Yoder Ackerman
Sweet sleepy sounds are coming from the ceiling fan in our kitchen, and all is well. Perched on top of a fan blade is a three-week-old robin fledgling, trying to sleep. We tiptoe in and out of the kitchen and try to leave the lights off. We are just so glad that...