A Work in Progress

Christmas at Stillmeadow

Stillmeadow has been a delightful place to spend time each month over the course of this year.  Gladys Tabor is a charming storyteller, and despite the decades that have passed since the original publication of Stillmeadow Calendar, it is amazing how fresh and relevant her observations are.  It seems only fitting that she and Stillmeadow should get center stage this holiday.  The beauty of reading is being transported to another time and place and moments of happier circumstances!

"Christmas Eve is an important occasion for me.  We sit around the fireplace talking about the past and the future.  The tree glows softly in the light of the candles on the trestle table.  Our voices join in the singing of carols, and in this uneasy world I find faith anew.  Music, I think, is the basic art.  It speaks to all in a language of its own.  Nobody has to translate it; it requires only listening to.  The words of the carols are beautiful, but even without them the message is clear.  The power of love, the true significance of good will, shine forth with greater meaning at this holy time."

******

"When everybody has gone to bed, I sit a few moments in the now-quiet house, watching the embers fade into ash, thinking how fortunate Stillmeadow is to have small feet still pattering around on the old oak floors."  (Maybe I can count the patter of kitty paws, right?).

******

"Holiday breakfasts at Stillmeadow are traditionally festive.  I abandon my usual soft-boiled egg for pancakes with golden maple syrup and crisp, tiny sausages.  Or creamed finnan haddie, which was Jill's favorite dish and which her son fixes for us now.  Ot corned beef hash, for a change." (I think I will be having tamales with my housemates).

******

"On a moonlit night in December, as the earth turns toward another year, I sit quietly and begin to make a new set of resolutions.  My first is to be better organized."

"What the new year may bring, we cannot know, but I pray God's blessing may fall on us as softly as apple blossoms fall in spring.  And then I put out the guttering candles on the trestle table and go to bed, feeling that tomorrow will be another adventure in living!"

October in Stillmeadow: Bounty

Shh.  Let's pretend it didn't just snow here last night and we are forecast yet more (albeit only a couple of inches) tomorrow.  If I do this quickly I can get my October Stillmeadow reading post in just under the gun and pretend it is still autumnal and not rather winter like.  Of course the weather in the Midwest is so changeable that in another week it might indeed be all warm and sunny.  A person can hope anyway.

Here's what I like to see in October:

"Days grow shorter now, the nights chillier.  Crisp mornings call for buttermilk pancakes and maple syrup, with country sausage on the side; at super the popovers are almost too hot to hold.  The trees kindle with color, a few at a time: small flashes of scarlet appear in the swamp, and the sugar maples begin to glow, as the great wave of autumn glory slowly rises to tide.  Leaves start to fall; I pick one up.  It is cool to the touch; a hint of pink lies under the gold.  As it dries, the serrated edges curl inward and the leaf turns to tawny brown.  I think, I am holding autumn in my hand."

Autumn is my favorite season.  The sticky heat of summer has drained away, there is a crispness to the mornings and all the glorious apples.  I buy more than I know I can easily eat in a week, but I want to stretch them out as far as they will go.  I am still hoping to get a loaf of sweet potato date pecan bread (heavenly) and then there will be pumpkin pie to look forward to. 

Sorry,  more descriptions of food, but then this is harvest time and the bounty of fresh food must be appreciated.

"Roadside stands splash more color along he roads now, and I wish I could paint them.  Great smoky blue Hubbard squash, dark green acorn squash, bright orange pumpkins, strings of Chinese lanterns, baskets of rosy apples and bouquets of bittersweet, and sometimes Indian corn and gourds--all make a carnival of autumn and testify to nature's endless bounty.  Jugs of freshly pressed cider stand in the cool shade, as well as jars of clover honey.  Sometimes there are new-laid eggs for sale, or homemade jellies, lucent in the sun, or rich preserves and jars of crisp pickles, and sometimes loaves of fresh homemade bread and pans of crusty rolls."

Maybe because I am especially fond of Autumn, I particularly enjoyed the descriptions she gave of Stillmeadow.

"As I light the fire, small flames catch the leaves, and a spicy odor fills the room.  The scent of dead leaves is another of the many things that cant be described.  It is cool and musty and something else which may be the vanished sap.  It evokes memories of walking in deep autumn woods in Wisconsin when I was growing up, and of bonfires celebrating the big homecoming football game and of picnics by the Eight Mile Brook when the small children dropped their frankfurters in the smoky embers.  Jill used to say I spent half my life inhaling the smells of everything from mint to macaroni and that I certainly had some hound inheritance."

I agree with her and the idea of smells evoking feelings and memories.  To this day when I smell freshly cut grass on a summer's day I remember the heat of summer when I was little and out playing early in the morning an that fresh smell of grass that had just been mown.  Fond memories!

To end this post--some wise words (and Tabor always has some very wise words). 

"I reflect that nothing really ends, but grows into something new.  The harvest is in and the leaves will all be down soon, but they enrich the ground, and new leaves will put forth tender green in the spring, in the endless cycle of nature.  Today is a part of time, a unit, but it evolved from yesterday and flows into tomorrow like a tide"

As we near the dark days of winter, I find those sentiments comforting indeed.

September in Stillmeadow: Transitioning

I was thinking it is time to take a close look at where I am with my reading, where I had wanted to be and what I can realistically accomplish in the last few months of the year.  I am forever in 'catch up mode' these days, however.  So first a quick visit to Stillmeadow and I see that life there is much how I am feeling right now.  I had to smile when Gladys noted that her Spring to-do list needed to be chucked and one for winter should be started, since I am feeling the same way.

September really does feel like a transitional month and I get that feeling that it was similar for Gladys on the Cape.  School is in full force, summer is weirdly lingering but hot days in September don't feel exactly the same as they do in July.  The seasons are gearing up and Fall has arrived.  On the Cape the summer people have returned to their rest of the year lives and the permanent Cape Cod families can start their real/normal everyday lives finally.

The leaves are changing on the Cape.  But all at different speeds and curiously the same kind of trees in the same setting seem to be each doing their own thing.  For me Fall is all about the apples, which are my favorite, so this time of year they are an almost gourmet treat.  

"September meals are no problem, except how to keep up with the vegetables.  I eat tomatoes  at least twice a day.  The season is all too short for sun-ripened tomatoes.  I like them friend for breakfast.  I first fry thin slices of bacon until very crisp.  Then I take the bacon from the pan and cut tomatoes in half, dip them in seasoned flour, and fry them in the bacon drippings, turning only once.  I garnish them with chopped parsley."

I imagine her house must have always had the smell of good cooking wafting about.  I might stick with my apples for now, but I do hope she talks about pumpkins and squash in her October writing.  She mentions her cookbooks, which would be quite interesting to look at, so I will have to look for them.

There is the usual chat about kids and neighbors and even the dogs, but I seem most drawn to her reflections on nature and time and how to slow things down.  These are the bit I most like to dog ear in my book.

"Most of us spend a lot of time seeking happiness and always feel we shall achieve it magically.  We translate our yearning into symbols--a new house, a bigger and better car, a place in the city, a collection of something special or a rare painting worth more money than we have.  We want material success for our children along with ease of living and more luxuries then we had  when we were their age.  And then most of us wonder that happiness doesn't come to sit by our fireside.  If we are fortunate, we realize at some point in our search that we are taking the wrong path.  Happiness is, in the end, an attitude of mind.  It involves acceptance of reality and a warm appreciation of such simple things as a friend looking happy when we meet unexpectedly or the way the first star comes out at twilight.  It means an open heart."

Yes, I agree with her on meeting a friend who has a twinkle in their eye when they see you.  I have not had enough of that of late.  Maybe that is why I find my frustration level so easily raised.  I try and tell myself to just slow down, and breathe.  I am working (endlessly it seems) on finding the right balance.  Each month when I set myself a little time to read the next chapter (always making time to read it in one slow go), I find that it reminds me that calmness is a really good thing and to cultivate it.  But must make ready for the next thing, the coming of shorter, darker and colder days.  I am not quite ready for those, but it hovers in the back of  my mind.

"September is a special grace for those of us who face a long, bitter New England [and Midwestern, too!] winter.  Summer's lease has been all too short; now it is over.  Nature is at her mysterious work of turning leaves, putting gardens to bed, signaling wildlife to prepare for the heavy snows."

On to October, but hopefully not yet more than those turning of leaves!

October Prompt: Call of the Wild

I was hoping last month to tackle two books from my reading stack, but I did at least finish the one I set out to read.  As always time gets away from me and my eyes are always always always bigger than my stomach.  So here we are in a new month (and Fall has arrived with a bang by the way, as well) and a new prompt and I am going to have to agonize over my choice as they all really do look good and I want to read several, but likely I will manage one only.  Maybe two if I can be especially diligent in my reading.  But to choose one to start with!

So my prompt is "Call of the Wild" and initially I think I was aiming for a nature book with this theme, but now that the month is here . . . I do want to read a nature book still this year (and I still need to catch up--once again--on last month's chapter about Stillmeadow) . . . but I am not quite in the mood for it just this moment.  So, maybe a little word play instead with the theme.  How about nature words in the titles?  My prompts are only meant to be inspirations and jumping off places anyway.  

My "longlist" of books this month:

Rabbit Hall by Eve Chase -- I really liked the other book by her I read and this one is described as a cross between Daphne du Maurier and Ruth Rendell and they are both favorite authors of mine.  "Amber Alton knows that the hours pass differently at Black Rabbit Hall, her London family’s Cornish country house, where no two clocks read the same. Summers there are perfect, timeless. Not much ever happens. Until, one terrible day, it does."

Dear Mrs. Bird by AJ Pearce -- "'This charming, irresistible debut novel set in London during World War II about a young woman who longs to be a war correspondent and inadvertently becomes a secret advice columnist is “a jaunty, heartbreaking winner' (People).  I really want to read this, but do I really want 'heartbreaking' at the moment?

A Catalog of Birds by Laura Harrington -- This sounds like something more off the beaten path for me, which is very inviting to be honest.  "A Catalog of Birds is the story of a family and a community confronted with a loss of innocence and wounds that may never heal. The legacy of war and its destruction of nature is seared onto the memories of a small American town.  Laura Harrington has written a tale of forgiveness, of ourselves, and those we love. Illuminated by heartbreak and promise, the novel is alive with spirit and wonder and hope for the future."

Trouble with Lichen by John Wyndham -- I do enjoy a good John Wyndham novel and it has been too long since I last read him.  "Francis Saxover and Diana Brackley, two scientists investigating a rare lichen, discover it has a remarkable property: it retards the aging process. Francis, realizing the implications for the world of an ever-youthful, wealthy elite, wants to keep it secret, but Diana sees an opportunity to overturn the male status quo by using the lichen to inspire a feminist revolution. As each scientist wrestles with the implications and practicalities of exploiting the discovery, the world comes ever closer to learning the truth . . ."  

The Yellow Dog by Georges Simenon -- You can never read enough Simenon in my book!  "In the course of this strange case, a customs official is shot, a retired journalist is lost and found, and a vagrant is attested, but through it all Maigret has his sights set firmly in the direction of the truth, even as a strange yellow dog haunts the neighborhood. Fast-paced and wholly unpredictable, The Yellow Dog is a sharp mystery set against the cutthroat backdrop of small town politics."

The Language of Bees by Laurie King -- I am ready for another Mary Russell adventure and this is up next.  However, these mysteries require attention and commitment (and they are worth every ounce of effort by the way), so is this the best month for it--as I am rushing to catch up on so many things?!  "Mary has often observed that there are many kinds of madness, and before this case yields its shattering solution she’ll come into dangerous contact with a fair number of them. From suicides at Stonehenge to the dark secrets of a young woman’s past on the streets of Shanghai, Mary will find herself on the trail of a killer more dangerous than any she’s ever faced—a killer Sherlock Holmes himself may be protecting for reasons near and dear to his heart."

The Peacock Emporium by Jojo Moyes -- "In the sixties, Athene Forster was the most glamorous girl of her generation. Nicknamed the Last Deb, she was also beautiful, spoiled, and out of control. When she agreed to marry the gorgeous young heir Douglas Fairley-Hulme, her parents breathed a sigh of relief. But within two years, rumors had begun to circulate about Athene's affair with a young salesman.  Thirty-five years later, Suzanna Peacock is struggling with her notorious mother's legacy. The only place Suzanna finds comfort is in The Peacock Emporium, the beautiful coffee bar and shop she opens that soon enchants her little town. There she makes perhaps the first real friends of her life, including Alejandro, a male midwife, escaping his own ghosts in Argentina."

Not to make any snap decisions, but I don't want to spend ages over choosing either . . .  What should I read next?  I shall be giving the books the one page test--read the first page or so and whichever clicks--I hope that will be the one!

A Quiet August in Stillmeadow

Where did August go (and more, where is September going--speeding by already and I am only now tardily catching up in Stillmeadow).  August faded quietly into almost fall, though it feels not a bit like fall yet.  So much so that I had to be reminded of a little seasonal reading that I am usually contemplating well before the end of summer.

Do the dog days of summer happen in August?  Maybe that is why the month passed by so silently.  Much like the ladies in Stillmeadow I have been enjoying some early harvest veggies, and corn is a favorite (what else . . . living in Nebraska at Iowa just across the river).  That is where the chapter starts, "corn stands silken in the field, chicory stars the roadside, and goldenrod mints her coin."  (Goldenrod is the Nebraska state flower by the way).  I like to roast my corn in the oven (grilling is nice but not so easy for me), but lately I have been giving it a gentle boil and then shaving the kernels of the cob and giving a nice shake of pepper and parmesan cheese.  Yum.  Here is what Gladys suggests:

" . . . when Jill experimented with hybrid corn, she would come in with a bushel of perfect ears while I kept the kettle boiling and our children stood around with open mouths.  Don once ate twelve ears, but the girls settled for six apiece.  In those days, we felt corn was inedible unless it took only five minutes from garden to kettle.  Since Jill's death, I have had to use store-bought corn.  If you add a little milk, a little sugar and seasoned salt to the boiling water, even store corn is good.  And I cut the kernels from the cob afterward ad brown them in butter for the next meal.  It helps."

I have heard of adding sugar to the pot, but never milk.  I wonder if it works.  So many variations on cooking corn.  Do you have a favorite way of preparing it?

She also ruminates on letter writing in this chapter, which I am always happy to read about.  In her case she received letters from many of her fans and readers.  (Imagine if she was writing today--do you think she would have an Instagram account and we could see Stillmeadow?).

"The spirit of friendship contained in the many letters I receive has filled many hours over the years.  Now, in August, I wait until evening to answer my mail, for the house has cooled off and I can write without mopping my face every other minute.  I try and answer all the letters, except those that do not have the sender's addresses.  (My own family puts their house, or apartment, and street numbers on every letter!)  Sometimes the name of the city or town on the postmark is clear, and I take a chance on it and always get the letter right back."

***

"Occasionally I receive letters addressed to Gladys Taber, Writer, Connecticut, and am always amazed at the postal department,  One Sunday the postmaster from the nearest big city came with his wife to call because, he said, he wanted to meet the woman who got all the poorly addressed mail!"

***

"If postal rates keep jumping, the time will come when it is cheaper to send day telegrams!  I found some dear old one-cent postcards when I was cleaning out my desk not long ago and eyed them wistfully.  There were also some two-cent stamped envelopes.  Oh, the lovely bygone days!"

Indeed.  Lovely very Bygone days.  Imagine a one- or even two-cent stamp!

August NYRB: Heaven's Breath

Every year I say this is going to be the last year (for a while) and rather than renew my NYRB Classics subscription I will instead read some of those books I didn't get to in the previous years.  I have been a subscriber since 2013!  So that is a year's worth of classics for 7 (or nearly so) years.  A total of 84 books by the end of this year, which I am happy to have, but I won't even count how many I have actually managed to read.  It is always a dilemma as the books are so good, but as much as I hope and tell myself I will keep up with my reading, I never do.  Case in point--the last NYRB I even mentioned here was back in March and I gave up on Max Havelaar.  Wrong book at the wrong time.  And being such a mood reader I have to usually feel inspired to pick up a book and then really engaged to keep reading.  More so these days when it comes to classics, though I would love to get out of my classics reading rut.

So it is surprising that this month's selection, a book about natural history, on of all things--the wind--that I am finding quite compelling.  I took it to the gym yesterday thinking I would read a few pages before moving on to one of my current novels, but ended up spending nearly my entire work out reading about weather patterns.  Who knew it could be so very interesting.  Of course I am a firm believer that in the right hands, with the right author, almost any topic can be made not only wholly accessible, but downright entertaining. 

Lyall Watson's Heaven's Breath: A Natural History of the Wind was originally published in 1984.  The back jacket blurb calls it encyclopedic and enchanting and if all nature and science books were like this one I would be an enthusiastic reader of all things science.  It brings to mind the books of Diane Ackerman (and now I kind of want to revisit my shelves and pull a book or two of hers off and add them to my reading pile).

Although this is only about 329 pages (not including 14 pages making up the Dictionary of Winds in the back of the book), it feels like a hefty tome, which is a little bit intimidating.  I admit that reading this is like having a cartload of information wash over me--it is a sensory overload almost.  Reading it is like being inundated with facts since he starts with the broader picture, the start of the world, and then works his way in.  I am enjoying what I am reading and penciling little bits that I would like to remember (and there are lots of pencil marks so far), but I know I am only absorbing a small portion of what I am reading.  It begins with the big bang and the arrival of the universe.  He describes the solar system and the planets and their natural satellites and what their atmospheres are like and then he begins to focus on Earth/Gaia.  It is so very fascinating.  At the moment I am reading about the physics of the wind--it is like building the framework and then he'll move on to specifics.  

This feels like a journey and in the introduction that is what this book is likened to.  Since I have no idea what to share from the text (though I might have to share bits and pieces as I go), let me give a teaser--the first couple of paragraphs of the introduction to give you a sense of what this is all about.

"Sailing back from the Trojan War, Odysseus and his men land on the island of Aeolia, the domain of Aeolus, the Keeper of the Winds.  Aeolus gives them an oxhide sack that contains the captive winds of the world--apart from a gentle westerly to waft them safely home--with strict instructions not to open it.  Believing there is treasure inside, the greedy crew do just that.  The opening of the sack unleashes a chaotic gale that hurls their ship upon the waves, out across the wine-dark sea, blowing Odysseus madly off course.  His adventures last ten years."

"[This book] is that oxxhide sack.  All the winds of the world are inside.  If you open it, you will be blown to places you never expected."

"Lyall Watson is a modern-day Keeper of the Winds.  His natural history of the great invisible forces that shape our planet--from the sand dunes of the Sahara to the serotonin inside our brains--twists and turns, uplifts and surprises like the subject it describes.  'Wind is defined as air in motion,' he tells us early on, then explodes this apparently simple statement in every conceivable way.  The reader is propelled back through recorded history into deep time, from the formation of the universe, through physics and mythology, biology and psychology, religion and sociology, in and out of an extraordinary diversity of cultures."

I was thought the most interesting parts (mythology and religion and psychology and . . .) were going to be the best bits, but he has me on an area that feels quite foreign--the physics.  It can only get better.  At this rate a book about wind might well be one of my best reads of the year.  See, it is books like this that make me waver.  Maybe I will renew my subscription after all.  What other gems might I miss otherwise?

July in Stillmeadow

Doesn't the name Stillmeadow, as a place that is, evoke peace and quiet.  A place outside the city where nothing but aspects of nature stop the eye's gaze.  Maybe the road, and it should be a road and not a street, passes by, but not too close by.  A still meadow.  Now that has a lot of appeal to me at the moment.  My monthly forays into the pages of this book, and into the inner space of my imagination are a very welcome distraction from how frazzled I have been feeling of late.  

July is lazy in my opinion, or it should be anyway.  It has a lazy feel in this chapter, too.  Gladys Tabor writes about July at Sillmeadow in her usual meandering way.  Some family news and reflections on the weather and nature in general.  A few recipes are included, and a story or two about the dogs and grandchildren (not that I mean to pair them like that, but it seems in her eyes they are all equal.  Everyone is family and so worthy of mention).

I think sometimes I reach for older books, books published in the early part of the twentieth century, to get away from the noise of today.  I am finding that watching or listening to the news is increasingly dispiriting.  I need to listen to it, but I don't want to.  Part of the charm of Stillmeadow is the feeling of nostalgia the book has.  It is a lovely escape, but Tabor is critical, too, of the world about her as much as she appreciates her family and home and the natural world.  I sometimes think why didn't we listen harder then (this book was published in 1967) and do more, and every day I wonder if now it is too late and we are heading so quickly down a path that I wonder if we can ever turn back from.

So I have only two excerpts to share for July.  One is a gentle critique, which now in hindsight feels even more critical for our lack of action.  But I will also share one that is a bit more hopeful, as Gladys Tabor seems a most hopeful person.

"Nature replenishes herself unless man interferes.  It was a man who made he dust bowl.  As I read Stewart Udall's book The Quiet Crisis, I wished it were required reading for every American.  It is a beautiful book, although parts of it are heartbreaking.  It maybe that no country in the world has such varied natural beauty and wealth of rivers, lakes, mountains, plains, and forests.  But we have been busy destroying it since we first took it from the Indians.  It is time, now, today--not in fifty years when it will be too late--to realize we must conserve every resource.  The quick dollars we acquire ruining the land will not feed our children and their children."

*****

"Perhaps, after all, our best thoughts come when we are alone.  It is good to listen, not to voices, but to the wind blowing, to the brook running cool over polished stones, to bees drowsy with the weight of pollen.  If we attend to the music of the earth, we reach serenity.  And then, in some unexplained way, we share some of it with others."

June in Stillmeadow

I blinked and June was over.  I wish I could do the same for July.  July is the roughest month (for me) of summer.  I am always happy to see the back end of it.  I should not complain as the heat, the real hot stuff, did not arrive until just this past weekend, though it seemed to make up for the lack of it last month.  So now I am hurrying to get in my June reading about Stillmeadow.

The chapters in Stillmeadow Calendar inevitably begin the same way with an eye on the weather and what nature is offering the inhabitants of Stillmeadow.  She reflects on the state of the garden and the plants and flowers that are making an appearance.  Why did it surprise me that even in the mid-60s when this was published that even then they were dealing with Japanese beetles.  I thought this was a relatively new invasion, but I was wrong.

"I remember the days before the Japanese beetle when the Quiet Garden at Stillmeadow glowed with color.  Now it takes hard work to preserve the specimen blooms.  There are a good many remedies for the beetle invasion.  But it takes a concerted effort on the part of a whole state to conquer any pest."

She does not give suggestions unfortunately, though she is hesitant to approve the use of insecticides and laments the wholesale use of pest killers for the fallout and all the nature that is destroyed by its use.

Although I do love the bits about her garden and what is in bloom, it is always the meandering bits about family and community and just whatever odds and ends she is dealing with or reflecting on at the moment.  I had a chuckle over this and actually think I do quite agree with her (at least I would not be one to walk about in my swimsuit outside of the beach).

"I cannot explain why summer people seem to think it is a fine idea to go shopping in bikinis.  And most of them are barefoot.  Even men appear in bathing trunks and nothing else.  I just have a feeling that in their own home towns they do not shop without having some clothes on.  I don't like it at all, for I think it shows a lack of respect for the inhabitants of the places they visit.  As far as I am concerned, nudes belong in oil paintings and not by the roadside."

However, opinionated she may be about the wearing of bathing suits, she seems very polite nonetheless.  She goes on to describe one young lady in particular who she spotted in a drugstore wearing a bikini with gold spangles, and toenails lacquered in gold to match.  She had a cigarette in a gold holder, too, but it was the gold earrings that just seemed too much, yet all it elicited from Gladys was an "Oh!" in a too loud voice! 

She digresses into the area of antiques (having to fix a collapsing antique bed), and I liked this image she offered.

"My so-called double bed would not comfortably accommodate two people, although it does very well for an Irish setter and a cocker or so.  Plus a stack of books for my night reading, and a bevy of pillows.  And, well, it is lovely to look at when the June moonlight falls on the pineapple posts." 

It may be June in Stillmeadow, but this is something that can be taken through the rest of the summer, too.  Something to ponder!

"I think we take too much for granted, and no doubt this helps us to get our work done, whatever it may be; but I believe an hour looking at a Silver Moon rambler is a well-spent and exciting hour.  It is important to sit in the leafy shade, and think long, slow thoughts about unanswerable questions, and find serenity.  Like the opening bud on a rosebush, a new response to life unfolds."

June 21: Reading (Cactus) Notes

Remember my new cactuses?  Such cute little plants?  

Here we are almost a month later.  I can't decide whether they are progressing nicely or waving their (leaves?) at me in consternation.  The jade plant is the one I am worried about.  Following the advice of the lady at the nature center I clipped the top of it off as it was leaning towards the light (as in--it was not in the best situated window and needed more direct sunlight).  The idea was that it would expand out rather than go gangly up.  So I moved him to my south facing bedroom window and he promptly has dropped a couple of leaves.  I am a little worried about him now.  It is interesting that he has lost the color on the tips of his leaves.  I want to trim that top bit off and make him a little more even, but I am afraid to mess with him.  

However my little succulent (I am not sure what variety she is) seems to be doing okay.  I think she got a couple of little sunburns?  But otherwise she seems to be reaching for the fun and getting a little taller, though I don't think she has grown any new leaves.  I am trying to err on the side of drier soil rather than overwatering.  I wish they could tell me when they needed a little water.  I have bought some cactus fertilizer that I plan on mixing up this weekend.  Maybe that will help?

Cactus woes aside, I am enjoying my reading and have finished a few books (and hope to finish a couple more this weekend), which means I have been thinking about what to read next.  I need to catch up a bit on writing about those books I have recently read, but I'll save that for next week.

I thoroughly enjoyed the Elly Griffiths novel that I finally got around to and loved Lettice Cooper.  My Japanese novel reading of Ito Ogawa's was really interesting--Japanese magical realism perhaps will give you an idea of what it was like.  This weekend I am going to spend time with Anthony Quinn's Freya, which had been set aside for no good reason other than too many books on the go and it happened to be a chunky read, but now I am totally immersed in the story.  And I fully expected to like Ruth Reichl's writing and indeed she is a marvelous storyteller.  I want to read all her memoirs and anything else she has written.  So I will be in the land of foodies, though she writes about growing up and her family and travels and studies and many delicious-sounding meals as well as 1960s London with Freya.

And next?  That is the difficult question.  The Cooper is the Persephone Books edition, so I was thinking it is time to pick a Virago Modern Classic.  I have never read Elaine Dundy's The Dud Avocado (my copy is a VMC), so I might pull that from the shelf, but since I'll be perusing my VMC bookcase, who knows what I will end up with.  (Or maybe something entirely different). 

As for the Quinn, I thought when I finished Freya I might just pick up another of his books--Our Friends in Berlin, which looks like a good spy novel, or maybe something entirely different like Rebecca Makkai's The Great Believers which I have been eyeing for a couple of weeks now.  I have been thinking of picking up one of my unread Sarah Waters or maybe the last Pat Barker novel--the third of her Life Class trilogy. 

I have not even started to contemplate a new nonfiction (since I try and stick with one only at a time, it is always an almost agonizing choice--silly, I know).  I need to whittle my mysteries down (I have a thriller, and two Japanese crime novels on the go), but I did pick up the next Kinsey Millhone book.  I am up to L is for Lawless now.

Such "difficult" (but only in a good way) dilemmas to have.  What are you reading (or finishing maybe) this weekend?

May in Stillmeadow

"This month the full flowering moon floats above the horizon, serene and eternal.  Its light is translucent and casts shadows delicate as lace.  In the rich nighttime scent of lilacs, it has all the mystery and tenderness of young love."

The trees have bloomed here.  I love this time of year and there are several spots where I walk and pass by trees in bloom.  There is always just a short window of opportunity to see the buds open and explode into color.  Tiny pink buds open into fragrant tiny white flowers.  And now I will occasionally catch the scent of lilacs and I have to stop and let the aroma sink in before moving on.  It has been a strangely cool and very wet (and for some in my area that means yet more flooding) May, which makes me wonder what summer will bring.

In Gladys Tabor's Stillmeadow May seems all about gardens and blooming flowers too.  She has a soft spot for violets it seems.  She wonders whether a person is born with a sense of beauty of special things or if it comes with being immersed in nature while growing up.

"There are lots of violets at Stillmeadow.  I like to go to the upper meadow to find the white ones, which I put in a tiny child's mug.  By the back door bloom the almost-black purple ones, which are much larger and have wider shining leaves.  I suspect these were planted in that particular spot many years ago."

"There are the regular blue violets, too, shorter stemmed and plentiful in number.  They pop up in the middle of the lawn, bloom at the edge of the pond, and grow by the woodshed where the white lilac is coming out.  They have stolen out beyond the fence to carpet the vegetable garden; they peep around the end of the woodpile.  In short, they take over!"

That actually sounds quite pleasant to me!  If Gladys is the cook in the household (I didn't realize she wrote cookbooks, too, which she mentions in this chapter--no wonder she is always sharing recipes), her friend Jill was the gardener and could not wait to sink her hands into the earth come spring.  I imagine Stillmeadow must have been quite a place--a countrywoman's delight, which Tabor most definitely considers herself--a countrywoman at heart.

One thing I love about reading this book over the course of the year is how it makes me think about the rhythms of the year.  Tabor was certainly in tune with nature.  So often it, for me anyway, it comes down to the more obvious aggravations that the seasons bring.  Too cold, too snowy, too rainy and soon too hot and humid.  If even for a short while she makes me stop and think about all the smaller details that change with each season.  The things that should not be overlooked and appreciated no matter how quickly they may pass (those blooms on the tree open so quickly--just a few days and then they are gone!).  After all the work Jill put into planting their garden (and it was a lot of work), the change is eye opening to her.

" . . . I ask myself, is this the same countryside that only a few months ago was swept by bitter winds?  Or did I only imagine the stinging snow and glittering icicles?  Changing seasons will forever be a mystery to me.  Time has folded winter away into yesterday; tomorrow, summer will make May just a memory."

It is funny to think that not so long ago I was shivering in my coat and covered in layer of clothes and today I am in short sleeves with just a sweater to keep the spring chill at bay.

I do have to share one more thing.  I wish I had created a sort of dramatis personae in the front of the book.  Jill I know, but there are other characters that people her book.  Family and friends and I am not always entirely sure who is who.  I think Betsy is her granddaughter and great fan of Gladys's dogs.  

"Only the other day I looked out and saw Don's daughter Betsy rolling on the green grass with the cockers.  I noticed that she was feeding them dog biscuits--those pretty colored ones.  Holly was not the least interested: she doesn't care for dog biscuits.  However, I saw that Betsy was giving a biscuit to each dog and taking one herself.  All of them were chewing happily.  I have made it a firm practice never to interfere with the raising of the new generation, so I didn't say anything.  I reflected that anything more sterilized than a hard-baked dog biscuit could hardly be found.  Perhaps she was just trying to be one of the cockers."

That made me laugh.  Apparently no harm came and I suspect worse things have been consumed by small children!