The Roseledge Books Blog

It’s August already! How did this happen? Time must fly ever faster in a place of the heart. Maybe even place of the healthy heart. Note the ANTI-oxidant-filled blueberries ripening before your eyes on the webcam and the willowy Queen Anne’s Lace, wafting into Fall. Note, too, the few, very few, more sailboats in the harbor.

Lobster boats and sail boats moored and moving in the harbor's Main Street.

Then, when the news of the rest of the  world was filled with people behaving badly, just in time, a hero emerges. Walter Leonard, former classification czar, has filed a formal complaint against the National Security Agency and Justice Department seeking punishment of officials who classified a document that he says contained no secrets. Finally someone is willing to take on over-zealous classifiers and the (mostly elected or appointed) officials who don’t want us to know what they are doing to us or ours. A familiar Freedom of Information rant, maybe, but today, one with a welcome twist.

On that happy note, I will blame the fleeting time, a bit brisker book business, and flicking fingers of webcam downtime fame to justify putting bookish email responses here for all to see and maybe help out with a comment.     #1: If one moves to Boston, what are some good getting-to-know-you books? Hard to say for someone else, but as I became worldly at the Wahpeton (ND) Public Library a year or two ago, I found Cleveland Amory’s The Proper Bostonians generally helpful, especially when later enjoying Nicholas Kilmer’s Man With A Squirrel, Charlotte MacLeod’s The Withdrawing Room, or Jane Langton’s Murder at the Gardner. And maybe because I’ve always liked political novels, I liked Edwin O’Connor’s The Last Hurrah for big-city Irish politics made more current by William Bulger’s While the Music Lasts: My Life in Politics with a side look at Howie Carr’s The Brothers Bulger which adds to the mix brother Whitey, so much in the newspaper of late. Obviously, these mostly oldies are intended to get you into Boston Public Library for some serious shelf-browsing and to appreciate that BPL has an outstanding President in Amy Ryan. Hi, Amy.  Other suggestions?

Oh dear. If you are refreshing the webcam, you see the dog and walker venturing off the road with no poo bag in sight. When you come, just remember where not to walk with eyes up.

#2:   You might want first to look through Robert Finch’s Iambics of Newfoundland (when you are here next year, I hope) because the person who bought it recently said it was not what she expected and mostly slow-going.   #3: Remember as you devour Douglas Preston’s Dinosaurs in the Attic that Albert Bickmore, Museum of Natural History’s first Director, lived in the second house down the hill from Roseledge Books. This may not convince you that a degree in Museum Studies is in your future, but it may hint at what you missed at the Sea Street Barn Sale several years ago.  Something you won’t miss when you come and the tide is out are “the wrecks” in the cove out front of the house next door, burned before Harry’s aunt bought the house because burning was cheaper than insuring or hauling them away.

A kelp-covered remnant of schooners burned in the cove below Roseledge

First bestseller of the summer (3 copies sold): Farley Mowat’s Bay of Spirits. Lee Vance’s Restitution is likely to be the second, but first I have to get the box of new books from the post office. They don’t deliver because I live too close and I don’t walk because there is not time enough. So you all get to enjoy more pleasure of anticipation.

Day downer: Tom Cruise is going to play Jack Reacher, yes 6’5″ 250 lbs. Jack Reacher, in the movies.  AARGHHH!

Spiderman turns into a circus and Jack Reacher becomes a cartoon.  DOUBLE AARGHHH!

Is it okay to use Google when working the NYT crossword puzzle?, I asked.

And they answered, ” Never.”  ” Only on Saturday.”  “Only for proper nouns.”   “Why not?”

The question arises mostly because it is fun to argue on a lazy, hot summer afternoon.  Recently, though, it came up when researchers fretted and studied whether Google, with its ubiquitous availability,  is hurting our ability to remember things. It’s not a new question.  I think I remember that St. Augustine was faced with the same worry when, in the 4th or 5th Century, he codified Church rules — or maybe he developed a bibliography or both — and the Powers fretted (“Never”) that members would not remember the rules because they could always look them up — if they could read, if they cared.  Sixteen hundred years later, librarians thrive in an information-glutted world knowing where to look for answers to their own and the questions of others.(” Only on Saturday”  “Only for proper nouns”)  And Google is just one source. (“Why not?)

You look at this boat and what do you know? What would you do to know more?

The question now is not “do you recall something” but rather “do you know which is a good — or the best — source to find the something you do not recall?”  And in this search for and browse through best available sources comes new learning, even a speculation or two.  Oh the joy!  Oh the answer to a clue in the crossword puzzle!

Mostly, Google searching is fact-checking, with context a by-product of the many listings, a little like the card catalog of old.  Most of us need some kind of context or scheme to cluster odds and ends so they make sense.  Because (I think)  it has one such scheme which might be useful,  Jonathan  Spence’s The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci lurked on RB shelves waiting for me to finish this year’s series continuations* and then — whoosh — it was gone to an alert reader who spotted it hiding underneath several unlike books.  Careful browsing is the hallmark of a real reader in a good bookstore. RB has the former and surely is the latter.

I have ordered another copy.  Cross your fingers that it is not currently out-of-print in paperback, as are Blair Fuller’s Art in the Blood, Claire Mowat’s The Outport People, Marilyn Dwelley’s Spring (and Summer and Fall) Wildflowers of New England, Celia Thaxter’s Island Garden with watercolors by Childe Hassam, etc., etc., etc.  But I am getting carried away.

The ribs of old schooners as seen at low tide. What do you think happened?

It’s a very slow summer.  This makes seeing those of you who come, even after ten years, even more fun.  You in the nation’s MANY hot spots are missing out on breezes, wine on the porch with the last of the native carrots small enough to be an hors d’oeuvres, and the first wild blueberries on the low bushes by the driveway.  New books get shelved tonight, always a fun exercise in reader aesthetics and best marketing efforts.  How many readers asking for multi-generational books does it take before a little section emerges?  How faded or yellow does an older new book have to be before it goes in the $1.00 basket?  Should Finnish mysteries be grouped with Scandinavian mysteries?  Is mention of “that painter from Maine” enough to put a mystery involving art critics next to Wyeth books on the art table?  I love this stuff.

Can you see the ripening high-bush blueberries increasingly in the center of the webcam?  Yum and strong hearts.

*Latest series continuations to read:  C. J. Box (Wyoming game warden, Joe Pickett), Catherine Coulter (FBI Couple), Margaret Maron (North Carolina judge, Deborah Knott) , Daniel Silva (Israeli art restorer, Gabriel Allon), right after I  finish Lee Vance’s Garden of Betrayal, not in a series that I know.

The webcam is cursed. How else to explain the total blackness (loss) of the picture and the unusual shot of Roseledge’s ceiling corner? Okay flicking one’s one useful (left) hand across the keyboard and hitting random keys that require a click before continuing is a possible explanation, but I say the machine makers should have foreseen the problem.  And surely I heard the camera complaining about the same view all the time as it fell to the floor and viewed the (handsome) ceiling beams.  The very good news is that son Charlie was raised to figure out what to do.  A long time ago, a friend at Underwriter’s Lab (UL) figured I was the reason UL was born.  I give Charlie and UL purpose.

Lobster buoys on the dock before they mark a pot. No webcam near.

Book news:  Lee Vance’s Restitution has a classy reference to a Wyeth painting that at first read might be “Christina’s World,” but I think is the painting of Betsy asleep in the grass with blueberries.  I didn’t double check because I want to think I’m right.  I liked the book no matter what, but his reference to a Wyeth makes it a RB neighborhood treasure.  I ordered Lee Vance’s Garden of Betrayal, the second in what I hope is a series.

Few things are more fun than having a RBR look at the shelves and suddenly exclaim, “Oh, you have (Robert Finch’s) The Iambics of Newfoundland! I have that on my to-read list and even tried to buy it, but the bookstore person had  trouble with iambics.” We’ve just the book for she who looks (iambic tetrameter alert), like  a personal bookseller who interprets a literature-map,  of related authors.    Personal trainer? Personal chef? Personal bodyguard?  Small “body-treat” potatoes compared to a personal bookseller,  who caters to the mind.

Two excellent book suggestions from RB people: Eva Murray’s Well Out to Sea: Year Round on Matinicus Island, always fun for summer visitors who find it harder and harder to leave, and Kitty Pilgrim’s The Explorer Code, which will be a great addition to the North Atlantic adventure novels — when it comes out in paperback!  Until then, Dan Brown’s Deception Point, Peter Hoeg’s Smilla’s Sense of Snow, and Andrea Barrett’s Voyage of the Narwhal will have to do.

Painters add spirit and make a memory possible to many.

Harbor highlight:  Painter parked across Sea Street, set up easel and water-colored away. Either knew or was especially cordial to walkers and drivers-by, some of whom stopped to talk at him and watch.  He never slowed, but did respond sometimes.  Could he be the world’s first male multi-tasker?

It’s nearly that time of day when the boats are aglow with the light of the setting sun.It’s pizza-on-the-porch and try-a-new-wine night.  Maybe the General Store pizza lady will have the basil dough.  Yum.

This morning it was cloudy, still and waiting.  Now it is sunny and hot, with some leaves moving sometimes. (See webcam and refresh twice, even though, as Charlie pointed out, the horizon is tilting eastward.)  Apparently the waiting is over or begun again.  Maine weather is a changeable feast.

More certain is Maine’s gift of time to think about things.  Some think this is better done with others, which may be an allusion to conversation or among the more vigorous, argument.  But what if you love Maine’s gift of time to think about things alone?  Hark!  It’s another reason to visit RB and find the book-mind (or minds) with which to think about whatever matters most at the moment and probably lots of other things as you and the author meet — at the lighthouse.

Tide is out, boat's afloat. Rocks extend, island nears. I and book are here.

I “met” and learned a lot about spies in China from Charles Cumming’s Typhoon which began in Hong Kong and ended in Shanghai This reminds me that very big huzzahs (cheers?) need to go to the Roseledge Books Regular who called to say he was eating breakfast in Shanghai and WEARING HIS ROSELEDGE BOOKS T-SHIRT! I assured him the world was better for his effort and would be better still if he took a grand hike about town and exhibited his innate sandwich-board skills.  The phone hummed in silence.  RB is still waiting for two strangers to meet wearing RB t-shirts  and thus affirm that good people connect through good books.  How about that for thinking about things with others!

Now I am reading Lee Vance’s finiller, Restitution, and though my finance-through-fiction efforts have waned since the death of Paul Erdman, Iancial thr trust former Goldman-Sachs director Vance’s Wall Street activities. I hope Peter Spiegelman has a new story, sort-of-about the NYC family-owned bank adventures, out in paperback by next summer, too.

First books of this summer’s big order have arrived which is good.  Bad was failing to recommend Julia Spencer-Fleming to  returning visitors — thus, RBR’s — who wanted another of an 80’s, mystery series, set mostly in NYC, with a theater director and cop as detectives that we both knew but could not remember by author or title.  Aarghhh!  Think Episcopal Church instead of  theater and the Clare Ferguson/Russ VanAlstyne duo, and it could have been the start of a beautiful, multi-volume read.  Maybe next summer…

A collection of rocks, then books. Is there a pattern? Purpose? Thinking.

Here’s a list of some books sold at RB so far this summer.  What do you think?

Cod by Mark Kurlansky
Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay

The Windows of Brimnes by Bill Holm

Bad Luck and Trouble by Lee Child

C olony of Unrequited Dreams  by Wayne Johnston

The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
An Island Apart   by Lilian Beckwith
A Course Called Ireland by Tom Coyne
Away by Jane Urquhart
The Jane Austen Book Club by Joy Fowler
Frankie’s Place by Jim Sterba
Two Lives by Janet Malcolm
The Forgotten Garden by Elizabeth Morton
Abigail Adams  by Woody Horton
Bacardi  by Tom Gjelten
The  Zookeeper’s Garden by Diane Ackerman

Given the e-coli disaster scaring European salad lovers, Charlie has decided to revert to his favored diet of pizza and doughnuts.  I have failed as a mother.

This is a glorious day, even though the webcam still shows its nighttime image.  As soon as Charlie is likely not sleeping in Seattle, I’ll fix it.  Until then, know that the sun is almost too hot, the  lawn chair cushions have finally dried out, a big sailboat was at a rented mooring within webcam view, and walkers by are out in force.  High summer is nigh.

I love high summer. I love low summer. Either is better with you.

“What are you reading?” you ask.  Well, one of you asked.  Mostly, I’ve been reading about books because big-order time is here.  This means I’ve noticed and ordered Paul Doiron’s The Poacher’s Son because his newest one in the series, The Trespasser, just came out in hard cover so the earlier one is out in paperback.  This is very good news because he comes well-blurbed (Julia Spencer-Fleming, likened to C.J. Box) knows Maine (is a licensed Maine Guide and editor of Down East Magazine) and, maybe most importantly, has kayaked to TH within full view of RB, though he failed to mention it in the article about his kayaking from inn to inn adventure that appeared in the old Travel Section of the NYT. Oops.  The kayaker in question was Wayne Curtis, but I’ll bet Paul Doiron could have done it and wouldn’t have nmissed Roseledge Books.  My  apologies to Mr. Doiron

Also Tomi Ungerer’s book, Far Out Isn’t Far Enough, about his time as a pig farmer in Nova Scotia, has been re-issued — but only in hard cover!  This makes me crazy because RB had it years ago in paperback.  RB may have to think about having ONE hard cover offering, even with no insulation, because this is  a multi-faceted joy,  a change-of-life adventure that is fun to read and to look at, almost a picture book with his many gorgeous illustrations of daily living.

Otherwise, I’m reading and liking a lot Typhoon by Charles Cumming.  It is set in China, which is good because I know too little about China.  This, too, was the paperback available when I read about author Cumming’s newest (in hard cover), The Trinity Six, which I will have for sure when it comes out in paperback.  It is a spy thriller and an archival search novel, both of which are big plusses.  Typhoon’s William Lasker apparently does not  appear in this one,  so a spot on the Series shelf is out, but there is always other room for an engaging spy novel, which this is.

By the by, if you or any of yours have reason to be at the U of Minnesota next year, have I got a nifty house for you to rent. It is filled with forty years of mostly good times and some furniture.  For pictures plus, see www.roseledgebooks.com/mplsrental

Roseledge Books is open. Dry porch chairs and I are waiting. Where are you?

With you, o webcam, I am practically one with Tenants Harbor.

The harbor is alive — with 10 second refreshes — on the webcam. And the harbor is very big — with a click on the picture –on the webcam . Note especially that the neighbor’s tree with “too-big, right-sided branchitis” has been cut back and another neighbor’s wharf is more visible. Note to the RB visitor who complained that he could not see his boat on the left, take another look. The euonymus is gone, so the handsome rock wall on the right is more visible. As always, there are a few changes, but mostly, things stay the same. Perfect.

We made it, Charlie and I, just in time for a thunderstorm — virtually inside curtainless Roseledge. It’s been a wet, cool spring, so the greens are lush, the lilacs opening, and the forsythia still a promise. The snow in summer colors the granite rocks, the tide comes and goes no matter what, and the lobster boats are more discerning. Coffee on the front porch and all is right with the world.  But we just ran out of last year’s supply, kept supple in the freezer over winter, so Charlie is heading to the Produce Lady who opens Harborside Market at 5:30 a.m., thank heavens, and has started carrying and grinding Rock City Roasters; “midnight sun.”  Just so you know, the perfectly-sited East Wind Inn — immediately behind the last protrusion to the water-right of the webcam — is for sale.

It’s time to unbox books and hang the weathered “BOOKS” sign, but that shouldn’t stop you from coming. And any more rain in the forecast just means it’s reading time.  ROSELEDGE BOOKS is alive and well, if a bit slower. See you soon.

and Roseledge Books is an aggregation.  Who knew?   This news dawned as I read about Matt Drudge’s staying on top with his Drudge Report because “[h]e can look into a huge stream of news, find the hot story and put an irresistible headline on it….Everyone goes to [the Drudge Report] because, well, everyone else goes there.“ (David Carr’s column, “The Media Equation,” NYT 5/1/11) He is not just an aggregator, but a good AND “effective” aggregator. How is this relevant? you ask warily.

Aggregated aggrevator, what is the pattern? What is the cause?

Well, I choose specific books from a “huge stream” of published-in-paperback options, and then highlight them somehow so that you are drawn to that which catches your mind’s eye. Okay, having a shelf for unusual mystery series may not be as catchy as an oh-boy-headline, but the goal is similar. I don’t claim to be an aggregator with laudatory adjectives, but if you end up finding a book and reading something that somehow clears away a bit of the dust of the world, I just might. “Good” or “effective” work for me, especially if you come again to Roseledge Books.

And now for the really exciting news: IT’S THAT TIME AGAIN. Roseledge Books will open on Memorial Day, even if the boxes of winter are still unpacked. More important for some, the webcam will be picturing the harbor’s boats and the walkers of Sea Street on their way to the Tenants Harbor Memorial Day parade. At least I hope so. I can hardly wait.

Snow in summer and protruding green reframe the aggregated scene.

Now, midst packing layers for Maine’s ten-minute weather shifts and reinvigorating wireless service, plumbing, and wine and cheese supply, I have to decide what book to read en route. Lee Child said once that if he has only minutes to choose in the airport, he’ll pick up a David Baldacci. And there always seems to be at least one. I think I’ll settle for the latest Jack Reacher in paperback, Lee Child’s Worth Dying For. We were just discussing how Reacher might have prepared to capture Osama bin Laden. One doesn’t want to lose touch with what Reacher knows.

Few things in life are better than the morning paper, a cup of coffee, and a long look out the window, especially when the paper holds a RB treasure as it did last week: an almost hidden reference to Lincoln Kirstein anecdotes in a review (ST 4/18/11) by the local restaurant reviewer of Jacques d’Amboise’s I Was A Dancer which matters because a Roseledge Books neighbor has ties to Lincoln Kirstein. So RB will definitely have the book as soon as it is out in paperback and hope the neighbor waits.

Green and blue and forsythia, too; ideas hover. Where are you?

Morning browsers (clearly) are superior people. Their favored content and format may vary, but not the with-it-ness they almost certainly have. Some Washington aides browse for others (NYT 1/18/11) which insures the others’ up-to-dateness and the aides’ importance, but I always hate it when I can’t browse myself, as I couldn’t when library stacks were closed. So much learning goes on as the browser decides what to look at more closely and what to skip over. John Kennedy used to scan dozens of newspapers folded back to editorial pages. I can’t remember — if I ever knew — if the papers were arranged geographically, alphabetically, by subject or perspective, but what a good way for a pre-Internetter to stay in touch.

Paul Krugman writes of “systematically” reading mostly economic newspapers and blogs and no conservative sites because, as he explained to his readers who asked, he knew of none that “regularly provide analysis or information I need to take seriously.” (NYT 3/8/11) Charlie checks online sources –he won’t say which ones, even though I am his mother — but he is usually on top of things that matter. Surely RB readers are browsers. Now I have to figure out what they look at and what just-right book mentions might crop up.

If you don't remember this nifty new sign, you've been too long away.

Marilyn Stasio reviewed (NYTBR 4/24/11) the latest Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne adventure, (Julia Spencer-Fleming’s One Was A Soldier) so its available, but not to RB readers until the paperback arrives for summer 2012. I’m hoping the early eager readers who are also RB Regulars will have missed enough details to make a reread part of their next summer. Meanwhile, I’m thinking mightily and trickily to come up with a must read for them this summer.

Four weeks from now, RB will be open and waiting for you to come. I know the time is nigh when I’m watching the PBS show New Scandinavian Cooking almos nightly, more for the ocean views than the food. They use too much butter, but the scenery is spectacular. Reminds me of Tenants Harbor and environs.

Note from breakfast: surely someone eating a wedge of pink grapefruit is one of the least attractive sights possible, but oh my it’s good and accessible to those of us who struggle with the serrated spoons. Now I am hungry for a TH Schoolhouse Bakery cinnamon roll. See you soon.

Today, especially, I miss my old neighbors. Every St. Patrick’s Day the mostly Scandinavian-surnamed lot of them would “drop in” after work, sure of their Irish coffee and soda bread, to argue the important question: were the Irish here before the Vikings?

They were to bring new evidence, which sometimes had something to do with the question, and prepare for the “spirited” argument the Irish call conversation. With Tim Severin’s The Brendan Voyage and Yrsa Sigurdardottir’s Last Rituals, I consider the Irish reaching Iceland first settled, but their reaching points further south (even to Cape Cod?) iffier. My old neighbors may differ, but it’s hard to know how a CD of U2 at full volume or a reading of too many verses of a Yeats poem makes their point.  The priest acquaintance who suggested checking the Vatican tax records from the time was spot on.   What fun.

And now, as I read Steven Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From, I know what I was doing, always a good thing.  I was cultivating the “slow hunch” within a “liquid network“ of idea connectors and critics, both necessary characteristics of a good idea – which having the Irish on these shores before the Vikings clearly is. I love this book, and I am only on the third of, I think, seven factors.

Liquid networks of seaside friends may lead to best ideas ever.

With March temps in the 50’s promising spring but not soon enough, news of Tenants Harbor — well greater TH — is ever more welcome, as a Roseledge Books Founding Spirit understood when he forwarded this link.

Also local and noteworthy, the Herring Gut Learning Center newsletter (Herring Gut Learning Center’s News) is looking for suggested names, even as it announces and reports on new programs. Ann Boover’s work makes me think a Maine or even a coastal Maine equivalent of Leanne Shapton’s The Native Trees of Canada could be coming. Or maybe a local birds-with-drawings effort? The drawing of the flora in situ in Diane Smith’s Letters from Yellowstone is another possible book model and a good read no matter what.  Okay I’m a little lonesome for the gulls, et al.. I’m still working on book suggestions linked somehow to gardens for the proposed Herring Gut gardeners. How about the herbalist’s garden in Sarah Orne Jewett’s Country of the Pointed Firs? Scott thinks he knows where it was.  Other suggestions? And no, I am not sending in “Pickled” as a possible newsletter title, though it did come to mind.

I continue to experiment with knittings for porch events and varied temperatures. Roseledge Book Regulars may recall last year’s big woolly, the super sized, soft sweater with detached collar, warm enough for people with no neck to enjoy late fall’s last late nights. Now I am working on a shoulders only  “drop-on”, a not-scratchy, lightweight biggish collar, able to be dropped into place without getting up from my chair. So far, this third iteration looks good: not too big or loosely stitched (first try) and better pinned than knitted closed (second try). Time to see if the patio here will serve as a test location. I have found the perfect wine, surely named Kenwood for my new digs, and the chairs are in place.

David Baldacci’s latest paperback, Deliver Us From Evil, is keeping me company, but nothing beats seeing you all.

How do I go nuts? Let me count the ways.

1. Reading about plagiarists, most recently, the German Minister of Defense whose Ph.D. thesis he apparently plagiarized. This has hurt his credibility (yes!) which, in turn, may cost him the Chancellorship when Angela Merkel steps down, or so the NYT reports (3/2/11). He joins other unworthies who  cannot admit with an attribution that they built on the work of others and who do not understand how readily they will be found out. I don’t know which makes the plagiarist and his aiders and abettors the bigger dummies. He might want to read Steven Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation (which I have just started and, so far, love) and figure out how to have an idea he might legitimately call his own.

2. Hearing Michele Bachmann and “facts” in the same sentence, or maybe just hearing Michele Bachmann. A political fact-rating blog noted (on early morning MPR in late January) that of 13 facts she reported, 7 were false and 6 were ridiculously false, or vice versa or maybe they were absurdly false. Double aarrgghh!! A re-look at Farhad Manjoo’s True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post Fact Society (which I thoroughly recommend) could not right her wrongs, but his explanations helped the blood pressure, especially the chapter on questionable expertise. Down with ninnyness.

Rant, rant.

Breezes blow, ideas flow, the tide is out but will be in. All's well.

But then I find a nifty author with whom to share a cup of coffee and the world tilts back to tolerable, even pleasant and worthwhile. Currently I am enjoying every bit of Maira Kalman’s adventures with democracy and how it works in her NYT-blog-turned book, And the Pursuit of Happiness. With her, I have ideas. When I have figured it out, I will let you know how she fits into Steven Johnson’s good idea generators.

I, with other seniors, am learning the ropes in my new winter digs.  Here someone walks off with the wrong walker instead of the wrong jacket. And plans to map the best cinnamon roll locations shift to oatmeal sites. I don’t believe our silverware is dulled, but it would explain why I have trouble piercing a grape with a fork. Morning coffee on the patio starts with the first tulip, which I hope really means with the first blossom. I am searching for a potted pasque flower or wild gentian  to sneak beneath the leafless bush when the walk  is bare and declare the patio coffee-ready. Hurry up, spring. If the ground weren’t so well and truly frozen, I would try to plant a magnolia bush, upon which the blossoms come before the leaves.

About ten weeks and counting.