Spring had finally come to Beaufort, South Carolina. After a couple of false starts, with warm days teasing us between the cool, rainy days of a lingering winter, we'd had some sunny days and gentle breezes. The azaleas and their colorful companions had started to bloom. About the time my favorite season had just begun, I boarded an airplane bound for Chicago, where I was spending a week.

Book Review by Margaret Evans

"We started coming to Hunting Island in the early 1980s. Our first year, we arrived after dark and had to unlock the front gate with headlights as our only illumination. It was eerie driving through the Palmetto forest in the pitch dark that first night. It felt as if we had entered a pre-historic time. We quickly learned to keep the cabin light on if we went out, but mostly we settled in after dark.

"I generally rise with the sun. That very first morning Hunting Island filled my soul and marked it forever; and the Island continues to renew me even today. If we allow it, every life story is one of beauty, tranquility, and loss, and the ever-renewing cycle of life..."

By Margaret Evans

Candice Glover won American Idol last night, and I'm sitting here thinking that it feels like the day after Christmas. You know the feeling. All that collective excitement, anticipation and good will finally culminated in a day of great joy, and you got just what you wanted, and so did everybody else . . . and now what? It's bittersweet. (Or, maybe that's just me. I seem to specialize in bittersweet.)

Homeowners are busily preparing for the visitors to the 2013 'Garden a Day' sponsored by The Beaufort Garden Club. This is the annual Garden a Day event first envisioned by club member Marion Leach 19 years ago. Marion, now 90, still attends every garden, every year.