Summer Reading Plans and A Little Wool-gathering

Hear blessings dropping their

blossoms around you.

RUMI

Head's up... this is going to be a rambling kind of post. I've had a busy week with appointments along with some proofreading project deadlines I need to finish. I looked up from my desk yesterday and realized it was almost Friday, and my blog post was barely a draft. So please excuse any meandering going on, as I didn't have time to properly distill my thoughts.

Today I wanted to chat about my summer reading plans. This year, I am feeling—and remembering—how it felt when I was a girl, to be all excited for summer holidays. It's not like we have plans to travel anywhere, at least not too far this year, but there is anticipation in the air for a change in routines, with some lazy days for lollygagging on the deck or sitting in the garden, meeting up with friends for iced coffees, going on picnics and drives in the countryside.

And, at the top of my wish list this summer is to read a pile of books. Reading as a girl during the summer holidays was one of my favourite things to do (slurping orange popsicles and DQ chocolate dipped soft cones were a close second). Back in the day, with blue skies and warm sunshine forecast, I'd grab my book, a blanket, suntan lotion (probably baby oil - can you believe we actually used to do that?), and something to munch on. Settled on a comfy grassy spot in the sun, of course, I'd read until I got too hot, at which point I'd check to see if a tan was starting and either stick it out for a little while longer or head for the shade of the tall poplar trees.

Cathy Rentzenbrink, UK author, sent out her June newsletter today. In it, she talked about reading and mentioned that a main reason she reads is to have an enjoyable few hours off from her life. She also reads for the escapism and hopes to leave a book feeling expanded. When she writes, she wants to give that to her readers as well. Oh yes, I get that—it's what I want from my summer reading. Maybe a few nail biting adventures but I'm looking forward to some relaxing, gentle reads where one can jog along with the characters in an ordinary, easy way. No scary plots to keep me on the edge of my lawn chair. And on the last page, closing the book with a contented sigh that it all turned out well for my new friends, I come away ready to pick up my own life again.

I saw a book at the library yesterday that sounded like a good summer read. I love to read children's novels in the summertime. Probably because it takes me back there. In any case, the book I brought home is The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly. It was on the Staff Picks shelf for young readers (ages 9-12). Not familiar with the title or its author, I was charmed by the delightful yellow cover with branches and leaves twisted around the edges and a silhouette of a young girl in the centre catching butterflies. I'm captivated by the blurb on the back cover:  "The summer of 1899 is hot in Calpurnia's sleepy Texas town, and there aren't a lot of good ways to stay cool. Her mother has a new wind machine, but instead, Callie's contemplating cutting off her hair, one sneaky inch at a time. She's also spending a lot of time at the river with her notoriously cantankerous grandfather, an avid naturalist. But just when Callie and her grandfather are about to make an amazing discovery, the reality of Callie's situation catches up with her. She's a girl at the turn of the century, expected to cook and clean and sew. What a waste of time! Will Callie ever find a way to take control of her own destiny?" I started the book last evening.

Two books I just finished in the last few days that I recommend as nice summer reads are: The Story of My Life by Helen Keller and Music in the Hills by D.E. Stevenson. Both were published decades ago.

And it's been several decades since I read Helen Keller's short account of her life story. I'd forgotten how descriptively she expresses what she felt, smelled, and experienced, describing her sensations when she was out and about, often in the garden or woods. Having lost her hearing and sight as a toddler, of course Helen relied heavily on her remaining senses. She lets the reader see the world through her 'eyes' of touch and smell. It made me stop to ponder. We really do experience our world through our senses. And how it can shift our lives and change who we are when one of those senses is taken away. I try to imagine that for myself, but cannot dwell too long. How bereft I'd be without sight. I'm a visual person. How would I cope not having that visual stimulation. Helen's story gives me a new appreciation for my five senses and for the changes people who do lose them must endure as they discover new ways to interpret life around them. Helen certainly showed us that it can be done... and successfully, too.

As for my D.E. Stevenson book, I thoroughly enjoyed this recently reissued novel. Music in the Hills is one of those comfort book reads (you know about The Comfort Book Club if you follow Miranda Mills on YouTube). This novel is a gentle story about Mamie Johnstone, happy wife to Jock Johnstone, who both live near the village of Mureth, farming not far from the Scottish Borders. Alexander McCall Smith wrote the introduction for this edition. It seems appropriate since their writing styles are similar. He says: "These are not simple romances; nor are they anything that would today be recognized as thrillers. They are in a category of their own: clearly-written straightforward tales that take the reader through a clear plot and reach a recognizable and unambiguous ending.  . . . These are gentle books, very fitting for times of uncertainly and conflict." D.E. Stevenson wasn't highly considered by literary critics in her day, but her books sold millions. Readers loved her writing. This new-to-her reader does too. I look forward to reading more of her reissued works.

Other books I hope to read this summer (the list is by no means complete, we're just getting started):

- Some Agatha Christie summer-set mysteries (perhaps A Murder is Announced and 4:50 from Paddington).

- Maybe some Rosamunde Pilcher: The Blue Bedroom & Other Stories; Voices in Summer in which the novel opens on a lovely afternoon in late July, and convalescing Laura heads to Cornwall to stay with family while she recuperates after surgery; and The Empty House which opens "...on a Monday afternoon in July, sunny and warm, the hay-scented air cooled by a sea breeze...". You just know some adventures are about to begin.

- The Emily of New Moon series by L.M. Montgomery. I read this years ago but am looking forward to dipping into the world LMM creates for her readers of all ages.

- The World War II thriller by Kate Quinn, The Rose Code. This is a re-read for me, one of my favourite Kate Quinn books. It's unputdownable. Unforgettable story, unforgettable characters that you come to love. A gripping and utterly satisfying read for a summer's afternoon.

- Perhaps one of Louise Penny's earlier novels. She has her newest book coming out in the autumn. And in the meantime I wouldn't mind rereading my favourite of all her novels All the Devils are Here, in which readers find Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Quebec investigating a sinister plot in Paris, the City of Light. Another favourite is The Beautiful Mystery, where the crime takes place "in the monastery of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups, hidden deep in the wilderness of Quebec, where two dozen cloistered monks live in peace and prayer"... until someone is murdered.

- On my shelf for several months now is the daunting 800-page classic novel Middlemarch by George Eliot. I was never tempted to undertake this prominent novel of the Victorian era until I read something Barbara Kingsolver wrote in her wonderful book of essays Small Wonder. She advised readers to forget about reading bad books, or even moderately good ones... "With Middlemarch and Pilgrim at Tinker Creek in the world, a person should squander her reading time on fashionably ironic books about nothing much?" I was intrigued! And I had to know why she considered these two books the benchmark of great literature. With both in my possession, perhaps this summer is the right time to read them.

- And last for today's list, but not least, is Susan Branch's delightful memoir Martha's Vineyard, Isle of Dreams. And, did you know that Susan Branch is leaving Martha's Vineyard and is moving back to California? It was a big surprise. I'm happy for her as she looks forward to new adventures back where she first started out, but I cannot believe how it shook my own moorings to find out she was moving away. I always felt settled knowing she was in that lovely place creating beauty for herself and her readers, which includes me,  and I always looked forward to visiting her blog to see what new things she and Joe and kitty Jack were up to. Anyways, I'm going to immerse myself in her book while she travels west this summer. You can read all about it, if you're not familiar with the story, on her blog. 

Here I stop and call it done for today. I do hope you found something today that made it worth your while to visit. I'd be interested to know, do you have any reading plans for your summer?

❦

Wishing you a beautiful week, and to all my fellow Canadians,

Happy Canada Day on July 1st!

Brenda

Photo credits:

Top Image by Erik_Lyngsoe from Pixabay

Book Image by Brenda Leyland @ It's A Beautiful Life

My Summer blog schedule:

I post on Fridays

Summer Holidays - Like When We Were Kids

"Summer afternoon—summer afternoon;

to me those have always been the two most

beautiful words in the English language."

HENRY JAMES

The first day of summer dawned beautifully, with clear blue skies and a sunrise worth waking up for. As the old saying goes, let's start as we mean to continue. 

These last days of June often remind me of my childhood when the warmer days would beguile me as I squirmed at my desk in the classroom, feeling the breeze through an open window and yearning to be outside in the warm sunshine, secretly counting the days until summer holidays. Author George Eliot wrote that the days were longer back then, that summer afternoons were spacious. Oh yes, and they were alive with possibility for exploring, playing with our friends, and making grand plans for summertime adventures.

Thinking about those long ago days, I have a yearning in my soul to try and capture some of that wondrous feeling this summer. To pretend we're on school summer holidays and dream about possibility and playing with our friends, making a few plans for little adventures and maybe some bigger ones.

The other day I was in the kitchen peeling a bowl of hard boiled eggs for lunch. To make the Irish egg salad sandwiches I mentioned in an earlier post HERE. And then the wildish thought came to me—why not phone our dear friends (it's quarter to noon) and say we're bringing Irish egg salad sandwiches for lunch, put the tea on, hope you're free, hope you haven't eaten yet. They were right ready to join in, with V– on the phone and J– excitedly chirping in the background, 'Oh yes, come!' So we packed a picnic—the egg salad, of course, fresh Cobbs 'everything' buns, a large Washington 'Cosmic Crisp' apple to cut into slices, a bag of Miss Vickie's Sweet Chili and Sour Cream potato chips, and a small packet of Lotus Biscoff cookies for dessert.

A good time was had by all. Eating and chatting about everything and nothing.

After lunch we stepped into the garden to see how things were beginning to grow. I mentioned to my girlfriend how much I was enjoying the clouds of blue flax blooming out there (see photo above). She said it had reseeded itself and was now growing in several spots... as if it had all been in the grand plan. It looked so lovely. I love when that happens. When little and big surprises show up in the garden giving us those unexpected delights of beauty and scent.

Our spur-of-the-moment visit hit the spot in more ways than just eating egg salad sandwiches to satisfy hunger. It scratched an itch for something I found myself longing for from summers long ago. That's what I want this summer. A feeling of being on summer holidays, with spontaneous happy events that don't need a lot of planning but turn an ordinary day into something buoyant and soul satisfying. I'm hoping that we'll have many more of them over the next few couple of months.

When I started this post, I thought I didn't have a thing to write about, but here I am, happily typing this on the longest evening of the year so it can post first thing in the morning. The sun is still up, the robins are singing, and now I can contentedly call it a day. But first, I'm off to watch the sunset and the long twilight.

It's my wish for you that you'll also experience that sense of childhood summer holidays as summer begins. With room to play and dream and whatever else makes summer special for you. I think next time, I might chat about summer holiday reading, because I LOVE reading on my summer holidays. Until then....

❦

Here's wishing you a beautiful day,

Brenda

Photo credits:

Brenda Leyland @ It's A Beautiful Life

My Summer blog schedule:

I post on Fridays

Scent of Lilacs in the Air

Now that lilacs are in bloom

She has a bowl of lilacs in her room

And twists one in her fingers while she talks.

T.S. ELIOT

Alas, we have no bowls of lilacs in our house today. We have no lilacs blooming in our garden this year. Our lovely Korean Lilac, which struggled last spring, showed no signs of life when winter was done; we finally cut it down this week. It was a little sad, but we're grateful for all the lilacs in bloom around town. Rick and I went out for a coffee yesterday afternoon (after gardening all morning), and when we stepped outside the café, I caught the scent of lilacs on the breezes. Oh, what a delight.

Lilacs scenting the air reminds me of something I read years ago by Helen Keller, maybe it was in her autobiography. Details are vague in my mind but it was about a time she traveled north by train from her home in southern US, up to Boston. What I never forgot was Helen's description of how the air was so heavy with fragrance where she lived and she noticed how the scent grew less intense the further north she traveled. I was intrigued; I'd never noticed the air where I lived to be scented with the fragrance of flowers - be it lilacs, flowering apple trees, or whatever. In my experience, one always had to bend nose to petals to catch a whiff. 

Perhaps that's why the anecdote stayed with me. I tried to imagine what that must have been like for Helen. Not being able to see or hear, she could smell. How sharp her sense of smell would have been. To think of her noticing the shift in the air, enough to mention it in her writings. And for me, what a wonder to imagine places in this world where the fragrance of flowers is so intense the air is drenched with it. It's an experience foreign to me. Here in northerly Alberta where I live, we get only a few days in a year where we might catch a hint of fragrance when all the trees are blooming. I never take it for granted if I happen to catch May Days or lilacs wafting in the air on a perfect summery day.

Now I wonder what it would be like to live where the fragrance of wisteria drifts wildly on the air, or the lavender in Provence, or roses in Grasse, France. Would it be like walking into a flower shop, but on a grander scale—the air filled with the scent of roses, carnations, heliotrope, lavender, peonies, lily of the valley. Perhaps it gets overpowering. Do people get tired of all that fragrance? Maybe they do, but I hope not.

I was working in the garden yesterday, and my little four-year-old neighbour came over and asked me to pull down a branch on the large lilac tree in her family's front yard. She wanted to smell the lilacs. She then tore off a few sprigs—her mom must have shown her how to twist and pull, for she was quite the expert. She was delighted with her fistful of flowers. I mentioned that she might want to choose sprigs in full bloom rather than the ones still closed up. She took note of that, for she proceeded to identify which ones were in full bloom and described how the shape was different. Smart as whip... and cute as button!

I loved the moment. She probably won't remember it, but I think I'll carry it in my heart's eye for a long while.

Wherever you are today, I hope you'll take time to stop and smell what's scenting your corner of the world, whether lilacs, peonies, roses. Or wildflowers. And whether you catch the scent in the air or you must bend near to get a whiff. Here's to our wonderful sense of smell and all the good things our noses can enjoy on a summery day.

❦

Wishing you a beautiful weekend,

Brenda

Photo Credit:

Image by Pixel2013 from Pixabay

Summer Blog Schedule:

I post on Fridays

Friday Five: Unexpected Gifts

"I love how the unexpected things come to us,

such 'insignificant' things in the grand

scheme, yet such a pure-in-spirit gift."

KATHY HILLACRE

Happy Friday! We're well into June and summer is burgeoning around us. The winds are still strong and sharp, where a person isn't sure if she should leave her jacket in the closet. But we've had delightful rains, and as Kermit the Frog might say, we're feeling the green. It's so beautiful.

For today's post, I've gathered a few things that were unexpected gifts in my life, including the quote above that I just found written in my journal, and I'm pleased to say it belongs to my sister. No gift feels insignificant today even in the grand scheme of things, for they each have been pure-in-spirit gifts this week.

One. Outside my window

A single tulip blooming in our front garden this spring. Rick planted these bulbs a couple of years ago (I'd totally forgotten they were there), and this spring it came into full bloom. It stands like a queen in the garden, and I go out and gaze at it with a flutter of joy. It's like looking at brush strokes of paint with all the waves of colour from the deepest to the palest shades. There is no way my photo has done it any justice.

And to think, it has such an ordinary name on the package: "Blue Parrot". If that's blue, I'll eat my hat. Okay, if you peer closely, maybe, there's a hint of blue right in the heart of it.

Two. Reading pile from the library

I'm often late to the party when it comes to reading books that come hot off the presses. So too with Carol Shields's novel The Stone Diaries, which received awards and nominations more than thirty years ago. I finally reserved a copy at the library, after I found Penelope Lively discussing it in her wonderful book Life in the Garden. I found other books that caught my eye, and this past week I've been working my way through the pile. I've now read Carol's novel and enjoyed it, a good story with good things to ponder, which I always love when the characters have things to work out and think about - makes me ponder them too.

The Radcliffe Ladies' Reading Club by Julia Bryan Thomas is a kind of coming of age historical novel set in 1955 as young ladies come together to attend Radcliffe College, while one older woman, Alice Campbell, turns a derelict building into a bookshop of her dreams, "knowing firsthand the power of books to comfort the brokenhearted." A book club is formed and students from the college join in. I enjoyed reading this - it's not too complex a story; there are a couple of troublesome heartrending spots, but there's a hopeful ending which helps keep it in the 'comfort' reading zone.

Still waiting to be read is Dylan Thomas: portrait of the artist as a young dog  which is a volume of autobiographical stories by the modern poet, who died at age 39. Also on the not read pile is The Postman's Fiancée by award-winning author Denis Theriault sounds lovely from the description: "Twenty-two year old Tania has moved to Montreal to study, fine-tune her French and fall in love...she meets Bilodo, a shy postman who spends his days perfecting his calligraphy and writing haiku." 

Neither have I read Colm Tóibín's slim fictional volume The Testament of Mary. Mary, the mother of Jesus, is living in exile, years after her son's crucifixion. I look forward to seeing how the author writes his story about Mary.

   

  

Three. A companionable encounter at the greenhouse

I decided to visit the greenhouse today. It's high time to get the annuals in, despite the sharp winds blowing. I was looking especially for sweet pea plants. Up and down the plant-bulging aisles, I finally found them. Another woman was already hunting through the 6-paks looking for specimens that didn't look past their prime. She showed me one poor plant and seemed discouraged at its peakedness. One could see these poor things were longing to be in the ground. I found one that look promising, with fresh sprouts, and handed it to her. We then found another one for me. It was such a sweet moment, two women who both love sweet peas, heads bent, chatting even though we've never met before.

We ended up being in the line up so she showed me some other beauties she found. And then on my way out of the greenhouse, I noticed a plant laying on its side in the parking lot. It was the beautiful two-tone geranium my new friend had been showing me. I caught sight of her and hurried to catch up - she hadn't noticed it falling off her cart. I said, well, this is the third time we have chatted now, we need to exchange names. I told her my name, she was Denise. Goodbyes said, I wish I'd also asked to share text messages. She could have been kindred spirit.

Four. A peek at flowers I bought

I don't know if you recall the sweet old song called English Country Garden: "How many kinds of sweet flowers grow / In an English country garden." It opens by listing the many flowers that one might find in a garden. You'll find a lovely rendition of the song HERE.

Here is my list of flowers that you will soon see growing in my Canadian city garden: Sweet peas and Euphorbia, Gazanias and Zinnias, Alyssum and Beeblossom, Stocks and Evening scented stocks, Lemon Marigolds, Purple salvia and Osteospermum, Verbena - pink and purple, Bacopa - pink and white. The colour scheme was not especially forethought but it turns out it's in purples, pinks, whites, with splashes of oranges and yellow.

Image by Catceeq from Pixabay

Five. Time for lunch and flowers won't cut the mustard

I saw someone online describing a delicious sounding Irish-style sandwich. Which sounds perfect for lunch. Especially if I've been out in the garden all morning. Made with chopped hard-boiled eggs, it includes shredded lettuce, diced tomatoes, thinly sliced green onions (scallions), salad cream (or mayo), salt and pepper, as you wish. Mix it together and serve on your favourite sandwich bread. Cut into halves, thirds or squares.

Not having made them yet, I have no photos, but I found the above on Pixabay and I think it's close to the description. If you Google it, I'm sure recipes will float up, along with photos from every angle and greatly detailed instructions on how to make a sandwich. 😉

Before I sign off, I want to invite you over to InScribe Writers Online where I am Guest Blogging today. Our prompt was the letter "R", and I chose to write about the word 'restoration' exploring how restoration is a beautiful, hopeful thing and matters on so many levels. You'll find the post HERE.

❦

Wishing you a wonderful weekend,

Brenda

Photo Credits for this post:

Brenda Leyland @ It's A Beautiful Life

(except for the sandwich photo above)

Summer blogging schedule:

I post on Fridays!