Mockingbird Hill Cottage

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A Delightful Dilemma

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Tuesday is turning into a rainy day, which is fine with me – I won’t have to water the seedlings. So far, it’s a gentle rain, though I think we might have some thunderstorms, as well.

There were lots of acorns to be gathered on our walk yesterday. I love acorns. They remind me of my childhood. I lived in a neighborhood filled with old trees; elms, maples, and oaks. Gathering acorns was one of my favorite things to do. For many years I lived in San Diego, where oak trees were nonexistent. We have a couple of them up in the woods on our property and there are lots of them in our neighborhood.

An acorn is a perfect little treasure. I never tire of seeing that little ‘cap.’

I’ve walked by this neighbor’s house many, many times, but this is the first time I noticed this:

Succulents (Hen and Chicks) growing out of a massive rock. If that isn’t Art, I don’t know what is.

I’m about 2/3 of the way through The Overstory. I should finish it by tomorrow, although I don’t want it to end. My next read will come out of this pile:

I’m not sure which one I’ll be in the mood for. I could call this my official To Be Read stack, but I have several of those! This one is the most recent, however, and the one that excites me most. Nonfiction or Fiction? I’m leaning toward Bookworm, but The Bookshop of Yesterdays  is also tempting. By tomorrow, I may be leaning toward something else. There’s also The Paris Architect, which I neglected to include in this stack. And Twenty-Five, a vintage Penguin paperback that just arrived from England. It’s by…drumroll…Beverley Nichols. It’s an autobiography written in Nichol’s twenty-fifth year.

What to choose? A delightful dilemma.

Happy Tuesday.

Sunday

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I love the light from the skylight at the top of the stairs.

I often forget to look for it, but thankfully, I saw it this morning. So lovely!

I did a bit more work outside yesterday. Today, I plan to take it easy and rest my back. Don is gone for the day and I’m feeling the nesting instinct. I always know when fall is on the way because I suddenly have a strong instinct to clean, rearrange, and feather my nest. I think that’s what I’m going to do today. That, and read and listen to music.

It’s another beautiful day here! Goodness, I feel like we were starved for sunny, non-humid, non-rainy, non-triple digit weather. It’s like manna from heaven.

The limelights are fuller than ever. So gorgeous. Even Don commented on them!

On books:

In addition to all the mysteries I read – some of which are written beautifully, almost like poetry – I think the three books I have read in the past few years that have had the strongest impact on me are A Gentleman In Moscow, All The Light We Cannot See, and the book I’m currently reading, The Overstory.

I cannot stress strongly enough how brilliant The Overstory  is, and how timely. Richard Powers is a lyrical writer. Yet he’s dealing with one of the issues that impacts our planet and our future on this planet: trees. Somehow he manages to write a novel that is complex, with interwoven stories/fables and compelling characters who eventually connect, all the while quietly educating us on an issue that couldn’t be more crucial. I recommend it highly. Even Don, who is Mr. Nonfiction, wants to read it.

It’s stunning. There’s a reason it won The Pulitzer Prize for 2019.

Okay, my friends. Time to do some work around here.

Happy Sunday.

Insects, Former Students, & The Overstory

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I took a little walk around the gardens yesterday in between massive thunderstorms. We had two days of big, prolonged, and loud thunderstorms. Huge cracks of thunder which shook the house, torrential rain that seemed to go on and on – what I think of as summer storms.

Anyway, sometimes I wander around just to see if I can spy some insect life on the flowers.

Look at this guy! Miniscule!

I looked for the yellow garden spider. The web was still there, but no spider. When they leave, they usually dismantle the web, so I figured he was still around somewhere. Then I noticed him on top of one of the nearby coneflowers.

He was expanding his web. You can see part of it on the left. This guy is like a major property developer. If you could only see how large this three-sided complex is, you’d be astounded! By the way, one of my former students commented on IG that I should name him Edward.

So Edward it is.

I was chatting on Instagram with a former student, Brian Hutchison, who is currently out in Los Angeles filming The Boys in the Band, along with another former student, Jim Parsons. They were part of the cast of the Tony Award-winning Broadway production about a year ago and now it’s being recorded on film. Anyway, apparently Jim and Brian were talking about me the other day and that made me smile. I’m so proud of both of them – truly nice guys who have done well. Brian sent me a picture of the two of them on set. We’re all still friends and I’m so grateful for that.

It’s always nice to hear from former students – both from the Old Globe/USD and Boston University. My extended family, I suppose. Thankfully, most of them keep in touch via Facebook or Instagram or email. I can follow their careers, their marriages, babies – quite frankly, that’s the only reason I remain on Facebook. It connects me to hundreds of former students.

I finished the Kate Atkinson yesterday and dropped it off at the library. I’ve started The Overstory  by Richard Powers, which won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It’s rather extraordinary, unlike anything I’ve read before. I don’t have the words to describe it yet, so I’ll use the words from the publisher’s blurb on the back of the book.

“National Book Award winner Richard Powers’s twelfth novel is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of – and paean to – the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, The Overstory  unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours – vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.”

So far, I’m completely enthralled and I expect to feel even more so as I delve further into the novel. He is a beautiful writer. I’ve had my eye on it for a while, but it just came out in paperback and that clinched the deal.

My back is getting much better. It’s still sore when I first wake up and begin to move around, but on the whole, I’ve turned a corner.

Happy Thursday.

Lambs Like to Party

Lambs Like to Party

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