a garden and a good book

I just came in from working in the garden all morning, and it was wonderfully peaceful. The weather is perfect, the sun is out, and the birds are singing. Now I just need to curl up with a good book and my day could be complete.

my thoughts exactly!

read: the charles lenox series

A book is like a garden carried in your pocket.
-- Chinese proverb 

I believe there are different books for different occasions. I can't read certain books before I go to bed - my mind needs to wind-down and relax to ensure a good night's sleep and more importantly, a good tomorrow! But, at the same time I can't be bothered with books I find uninspiring fluff. Enter the Charles Lenox series. 

Set in Victorian England, this series centers around the affable gentleman detective, Charles Lenox. In these books, there's enough suspense and story-line to keep me interested, enough history and period details to satisfy my enjoyment of both, and none of the gore and macabre that many murder mysteries contain. 

In the most recent book in the series, "A Burial at Sea" we follow Charles Lenox on a secret mission to the newly built Suez canal in Egypt, leaving behind London - the setting for most of the other novels - for a journey aboard one of Her Royal Majesty's ships, the Lucy. It's an excellent environment for a mystery - very Murder on the Orient Express - in that all of the suspects are in a confined location.

In a particularly poignant part of "A Burial at Sea", towards the end of the story, Charles is reflecting upon his long journey. Finch writes that Lenox, "felt a certain gladness that the world was still a large place; it was getting smaller, it be sure, distances were collapsing -- why, the Suez was an example of that! ... Though he loved progress, part of him hoped the steamship wouldn't make Egypt a mere two-day voyage away, and take that feeling of majesty with it." I think this idea is something we all feel even today when distances have no doubt collapsed greatly. 

All of the Charles Lenox books have been a pleasure to read - I think you'll feel the same. I'm looking forward to the next book in this series, and hopefully the wait won't be too long.

garden inspiration

Where do you get your ideas for your garden? For me, there are several resources I flock to for inspiration. From neighbors' yards (I happen to be very lucky to live in a neighborhood where beautifully groomed gardens are commonplace) to movies (think anything set in the English countryside) to places I travel (most recently to Charleston and San Francisco) to botanical gardens (near and far) and perhaps most importantly from gardening books. Chocked full of helpful information and inspiring photographs, gardening books are the easiest and most instant way to visualize the garden of my dreams. In wintertime I cling to these books and long for the return of warm weather. 

Here are some of my favorite gardening books. A few of these are loaners from my mom & dad. 

all gardening bases are covered

my little reference collection

read: the imperfectionists

The debut novel by Tom Rachman, "the imperfectionists" renewed my enthusiasm for fiction - this story follows the lives of reporters, editors, and publishers of a Rome-based English language newspaper. Rachman's book is so well written, so entertaining, so witty, all with a true-to-life grasp of human folly. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a storyline so well intertwined that it keeps you engrossed. I couldn't wait to learn what happens next. Rachman's perfectly developed characters are vulnerable enough that you want to protect them and flawed enough that you wish someone would knock some sense into them! 

"spectacular"
"magnificent"
"beguiling"
all true!

I think what Rachman does especially well is his ability to create great dialogue between his characters and balance this with descriptions of scenes that vividly convey a mental image for the reader. Here's an example of the later:

Many of the buildings in central Rome were colored as if from a crayon box: dagger red, trumpet yellow, rain-cloud blue. But the paper's dour seventeenth-century building seemed to have been colored with a lead pencil: it was scribble gray, set off by a towering oak door large enough to swallow a schooner...

Doesn't your mind's eye have a crystal clear image after reading those words? I'd share more of Rachman's excellent writing, but I think you should read "the imperfectionists" yourself to enjoy this book to its fullest!

(re)read: The Secret Garden

On a recent shopping outing to one of my favorite shops, Anthropologie, a beautifully bound saffron colored book caught my eye. Picking it up, its title - The Secret Garden - instantly took me back to my childhood. I adorned this book when I was young, and I ended up buying the book and was excited to reread it as an adult. 

a childhood classic revisited

I've finished rereading "The Secret Garden" now and its words, imagery, and theme transported me back to childhood and reading it for the first time. I love the idea of a long neglected secret garden being stumbled upon by a young girl - I know I loved this theme as a child and I still think it's delightful. The transformation seen in the two main characters - Mary and Colin - are changes brought about by the kindness of others and the magic of gardening. And the author, Frances Hodgson Burnett writes in a way that so well illustrates each of her scenes - here she writes about the spring season in the book's namesake garden:

They drew the chair under the plum-tree, which was snow-white with blossoms and musical with bees. It was like a king's canopy, a fairy king's. There were flowering cherry-trees near and apple-trees whose buds were pink and white, and here and there one had burst open wide. Between the blossoming branches of the canopy bits of blue sky looked down like wonderful eyes.

Absolutely lovely!