You don’t need massive acreage to enjoy a stunning canopy. Select small trees deliver year-round beauty and much-needed shade while staying perfectly proportionate to North Texas yards. From scorching summers to unpredictable freezes, these hardy varieties are built to last.
This is Serifos without embellishment. Open sky, sea air, and stone terraces suspended above Megalo Livadi. The days unfold slowly here, measured by shifting light and the sound of wind against the hillside. If you are looking for an island stay that feels both exposed and intimate, this is where Serifos begins to stay with you.
Before marble and temples, the Acropolis was only rock and wind. According to myth, it was here that a city without a name was claimed not by force, but by what could take root.
Bordered by Canada to the north, Idaho to the west, Wyoming to the south, and the Dakotas to the east, Montana is often synonymous with vast wilderness. Its identity is frequently reduced to scale: big skies, open land, long distances. And while Glacier National Park and Yellowstone National Park draw the crowds, the state’s quietest truths are found further in.
Karpathos doesn’t care about your vacation photos. While much of the Aegean has been buffed and polished into a world of infinity pools, this island remains jagged. Unruly. Windy. And uninterested in playing along.
If you’re in Greece in December—especially by the water—you’ll notice a small defiance of the usual Christmas script. It isn’t always a tree. Sometimes it’s a boat: lit like a lantern, waiting where you’d expect pine needles and ornaments.
The Little Match Girl, written by Hans Christian Andersen in 1845, is not a story we reach for when we want comfort. It’s the Christmas story we hide at the bottom of the box, the one that makes the room feel too warm, our tables too full. A quiet, merciless tale of poverty, indifference, and the thin, flickering line between warmth and loss, it remains one of the most haunting—and most honest—Christmas stories ever told.
December doesn’t rush in. It slips through the seams like a cold draft. The kind of chill that nudges you toward thicker sweaters, toward flame and fabric and scent. The days pull shorter, the light turns rough and amber, and a gentle ache for warmth builds—something you can hold in your hands, not just remember.
They found her in drawers, buried in garden beds, floating in old tubs. Hard as bone, cold to the touch. She didn’t blink. Didn’t bend. Still, she stayed, passed down, picked up, rarely spoken about. They called her Frozen Charlotte.
When summer drapes the land in heat and everything slows beneath it, the Vitex tree begins to bloom. Its violet spires rise slowly, reaching into the shimmer with quiet intent. Called chaste tree, agnus-castus, or monk’s pepper, it has moved through centuries like a rumor, part prayer and part plant. In its petals live old stories: goddesses and gardens, acts of devotion, desire that once knew how to wait.
