A few years ago I read Eudora Welty’s memoir of her life and writing, One Writer’s Beginnings. At the library last week, I noticed a book in the gardening section (where I am spending more and more time!) called One Writer’s Garden, by Susan Haltom and Jane Roy Brown. It was an exciting discovery — a beautiful thick book full of history and photographs of the Welty garden. Eudora Welty’s works are full of flowers and gardens, and it is clear that this family garden was her inspiration. I was captured immediately!

I’m immersed in the book now, fascinated with the history of the family and garden, inspired by the beautiful photographs throughout, enthralled by the stories of Miss Eudora’s life as a writer and gardener, and intrigued by her relationship with her mother and her mother’s garden!

And this morning I came into the room to discover my husband looking through the book. He, too, is fascinated by it. He showed me one photograph that he said solved the question of what kind of fence he would like to put next to the sidewalk of our new home in the Grove. He’s been struggling with the design because, as he said, the fence must compliment the house, not detract from it. We’re inspired now by Miss Eudora! …he to build a fence (how sweet to perhaps be able to call it our “Welty fence!”) and me to be inspired with the flowers I plant along our fence.