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Archive for February, 2007

Jane Eyre

Sharing a loved book with a beloved person is one of the sweetest pleasures I can imagine. That’s why reading Jane Eyre with my husband this past month has sent my cup of joy spilling over the edge. Though I could never forget my first passion for this masterpiece—my initial reading was at fourteen and […]

Elizabeth Goudge on the profession of bookseller

“It is the most friendly vocation in the world,” he announced…“A bookseller is the link between mind and mind, the feeder of the hungry, very often the binder up of wounds. There he sits, your bookseller, surrounded by a thousand minds all done up neatly in cardboard cases; beautiful minds, courageous minds, strong minds, wise […]

So, you’ve always wanted to be landed gentry?

 
Or, at least, to have a title that suggests as much? Here is a very fun site where you can receive one handed to you on a silver platter, completely free of charge, without the undo hassle of either an advantageous match to a good fortune or a bunch of unseemly social scrambling.
Hoping you […]

Winter’s Charms

I love winter. I love the sense of repose its cold, grey days impart; the delightful pause between the flurry of Christmas and the flurry of spring gardening. January has habitually been my ‘quiet month’, a season of enforced calm that, I find, affects all the rest of my year. There was such a wonderful […]

I know precisely what she was talking about…

 
To My Dear and Loving Husband 

If ever two were one, then surely we. If ever man were lov’d by wife, then thee. If ever wife was happy in a man, Compare with me, ye women, if you can. I prize thy love more than whole Mines of gold, Or all the riches that […]

Chicken-Sitting

February 8, 2007 
That’s what I was doing yesterday afternoon. Playing nursery-maid to my biddies, on a blanket in the backyard with my tea on a tray. Fortunately my work was of a portable variety, and thus I sat, surrounded with pencils and notebooks and papers that kept rolling over the lawn on the light gusts […]

From A Circle of Quiet

 
 
Madeleine L’Engle, reminiscing over her school years and the development of her craft in A Circle of Quiet, wrote: 
Looking through some old journals, I came across several [poems]. There was one, notable for its arrogance, if nothing else:
We lived on 82nd Street, and the Metropolitan Museum was my short cut to Central Park. I wrote: […]

The Art of Propogation

While I’m certainly no expert on propogation, I thought I’d share my little successes in this most satisfying of garden practices, in the hopes that others might be inspired to take a few cuttings of their own–particularly when they see how simple and fun it can be.
My mother-in-law is the master of this art, and […]