Hollyhocks, Lambs, and Other Passions: A Memoir of Thornhill Farm

This is the story of an old country house and how it grew young again, and of the family that has grown with it during the last thirty years. Built in 1843 in the Worthington Valley of Maryland, Thornhill Farm was a sorry derelict when Dee Hardie and her husband first saw it. Today it is sometimes featured in Dee’s monthly column for House Beautiful. Its presence and character have molded the Hardies, even as they have molded Thornhill into something far more than a house surrounded by land. “Hollyhocks, Lambs and Other Passions” shows how a house can embrace a family’s joy and provide shelter in sorrow. It tells of the ups and downs of raising four children and forty sheep, of the importance of celebrating everything from christenings to Christmas, of stenciling pineapples on the dining room floor and keeping a piano in the kitchen, of digging a rose garden and painting hollyhocks on the barn wall, of Tom Hardie’s Sunday cooking, and tea parties for small grandchildren. Dee’s determination to keep– and make– traditions runs throughout the book. Dee Hardie herself is the heart of Thornhill Farm. The absolute passion she brings to everything she does, the grace and care with which she lives her life, her infectious delight in the world around her, have made her accounts of Thornhill memorable. With her commitment to living life deliberately, she slows us down, for a time, in a world that moves at breakneck speed.