Category Archives: Reading

Breaking the Book Buying Habit

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So far, I have stuck with my resolution not to buy books.  The local library is tiny but has a great fiction selection.  I could have easily walked away with three or four when I visited earlier this week.  I limited myself to just two: The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff, a tale of Mormons and polygamy set in the time of Brigham Young, and A Lesson in Secrets by Jacqueline Winspear, which is part of her Maisie Dobbs mystery series.  It was the latter that caused the most temptation I’ve faced so far.

I have read the first two books in the series–Maisie Dobbs and Birds of a Feather.  But this one is the eighth book in the series and as I read the cover blurb, I realized I wanted to continue to read them in order since besides being great mysteries, they tell the story of Maisie’s life.  All the books are available on the Kindle; there is even a bundled set of the 3rd and 4th books for a mere $15.  And Kindle books don’t take up any shelf space at all.  But a resolution is a resolution so I headed to the library website and put in my request to have it brought from another branch.  Now, I wait patiently to get the email indicating it has arrived. In the mean time, I am immersed in I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb, which came form my own collection.

I also kept my resolution at the library itself which is selling a bag of books for just $2!  Truth be told, there wasn’t much of interest on the carts but that hasn’t ever stopped me before.

NB: I made it through a visit to Books A Million where I drank a latte, surfed the web and only browsed.  But they gave me a $5 coupon for online and I ended up with the second volume of Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon Chronicles, The Pale Horseman. The first book in the series–The Last Kingdom–is already on the shelf and the sixth volume–The Death of Kings–just came out.  LOTS more reading to look forward.

My New Library

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Despite having a wonderful library in Williamsburg, I rarely darkened the door in the past decade.  I am a book buyer rather than a borrower. It hasn’t always been that way.  I’ve been a library volunteer, and in my commuting days–pre-Audible and ipod–I often stopped by the library to check out audio books, but once I worked from home, it just seemed like a chore to drive downtown. And, frankly, I was something of a snob: I was not interested in being on a waiting list for a book when I could just order it from Amazon or download it from Audible.

But the local library in our small town has great appeal. It is within biking and even walking distance of the house.  It is small with somewhat odd hours.  It has taken me some 10 months to finally stop by.  But today, I pulled into the parking lot and headed in for my card.  I left with Geraldine Brooks’ Caleb’s Crossing, Norah Jones’ Seems Like Home CD and an indy film called Lebanon, Pa.  (My parents live about 10 minutes from Lebanon so it seemed like kismet.)

It is a small shop but they are part of a regional network so books can be ordered online and delivered to my branch.  There are comfortable sofas, racks of magazines, free wifi, and Internet connected computers.  I’m imagining pedaling over to drop off books and browse the shelves…once better weather arrives, of course, since it hardly made it above freezing today.  Meanwhile, I am looking forward to settling in with another Brooks novel, this one based on the life of a 17th century Wampanoag Indian.

There were a few folks there, using the computers, looking for new books, and it felt good to be part of the community in this way.  My only regret is that they don’t have a reading group. There is a book group at another branch in the larger town with a good grocery store.  They are reading State of Wonder by Ann Patchett for January.  Patchett’s been in the news recently with the opening of her book store in Nashville.  Maybe it’s a sign?

Book Review: March by Geraldine Brooks

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I haven’t read Little Women for at least a decade, maybe two, but I remember it being a heartwarming novel with plucky characters. Geraldine Brooks’ novel, March, takes its basic story from that beloved novel but does not offer the same heartwarming pluckiness. It is a dark book, but in it darkness, we learn about the depths of evil and despair to which the human spirit can descend.

The title character is the March patriarch who is largely absent from the original novel as he ministers to troops during the Civil War. The first person narrative moves from past to present, written in convincing 19th century prose and providing glimpses into the world of Concord, where luminaries like Emerson, Thoreau and Hawthorne debate the issues of the day while slaves huddle in hidey holes waiting to move along the Underground Railroad to Canada.

In March, Brooks has created a complex character whose good intentions lead to unintended consequences. As he surveys the violence and death around him, he is stunned by his own culpability and wonders how he can move back into the world of his loving family. And at points, I wondered the same thing, finding that I didn’t really like him all that much but then discovering that it was because I was pulled in by his own beliefs about himself. He is human being with all the conflicts and paradoxes that we each bring and unlike the sometimes flat characters that I remember from the original novel, here is a rich portrait of a man.

But he is not alone in this novel: we meet his wife both through his own eyes and her own words. She is equally complex, struggling with her own demons as she tries to understand how her husband has been changed by his experiences in the South.

The portrait of Southern life is grittily real as slaves struggle to maintain some semblance of a life in the midst of the horrors of the plantation system. Small glimmers of hope are extinguished in brutal ways and yet they continue to hope and plan even as the war grinds on around them.

Brooks takes some license with history that may offend Civil War purists, but her resource section is full of first person narratives that help provide the human element of this historical novel. It doesn’t hurt that she is married to Tony Horwitz, a Civil War historian and once lived near the Ball’s Bluff battlefield that provides the opening scenes of the novel. She may not get the dates exactly right but her poignant story helps us understand the the humanity that makes the past so difficult to pin down.

A Year of Books If Not Reading

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According to Library Thing, I read 33 books this year. It’s definitely a low for me. I usually get closer to 50 and last year got close to 75 as part of a challenge. It’s a testament to two things: moving to the farm and getting stuck with a couple books.

While the move to the farm has been great for the books–they are breathing freely on the open shelves for the first time in at least a decade–it did not leave a lot of time for reading. I try to get a few pages in each night but am so tired, I usually fall asleep after a few paragraphs. I have found a few afternoons to curl up in the window seat as the sun sets across the front yard with the same result, dozing off in the rays that slip through the magnolia leaves and reflect on the silver roof.

As I look at the shortened list, I see that I got really bogged down in American history, maybe as a result of the move to an antebellum home. Biographies of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and George Washington go along with commentaries about both the American Revolution and the Civil War. It took me all summer to plow through McPherson’s one volume history of the latter, not learning that much more but somehow wanting to connect with the past.

I have been reading fiction as a backlash to all that history. I’m halfway through my second Franzen for the year and finding The Corrections a little less accessible than Freedom. I read two by Pat Conroy and enjoyed them although I often found them ponderous and over written even as I bathed in the lushness of the language. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union: A Novel was the best “found” book as well as the quirkiest. And then there were just fun books: Georgia Bottoms, which my mother has passed around to all her friends who have loved reading a “dirty” book, Must Love Dogs, A Red Herring Without Mustard.

I have the audio of the next Flavia deLuce just waiting for my road trip tomorrow. I’ll bet the rental (my husband was hit by a deer) has a connection for my iPod.

What’s on the reading horizon for 2012? Another attempt at not buying books. I have shelves of unread books that called to me at some point: Edwin Way Teale on the seasons, Wendell Berry on living an authentic life, and lots and lots of fiction. There are 43 books on the To Read list in Library Thing so maybe that’s a good starting point. A good friend recommended Gilead so perhaps I shall start with that once I endure Franzen’s angst and dysfunction. It can be wickedly funny and tragic all at the same time.

Falling Leaves, Flying Geese, Settling In

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As cool days and nights move in, we are able to get beyond the confines of the master suite with its window air conditioning unit. I set up the ironing board and my new sewing machine–more later–in the upstairs room and finished up a pillow that had been half done for several years. An honest to goodness sewing room! With its own bathroom.

I’ve had the WII in the den all summer but now it is much more pleasant to work out. I am having fun challenging myself but did finally break down and cheat a bit today, looking for advice or a walkthrough on a particular bicycle route that has me stumped.

We may move our bedroom upstairs and there’s a room that could just be for the treadmill I want to get. After years of 1300 square feet, I want to experience space…use rooms for one thing.

Obviously, getting heat is a priority but we have space heaters, an electric blanket and a pioneer spirit so we can get through the next month or two.

We submitted our application to be considered for state historic status and additional information was requested. They want more chronology of the house such as when additions and windows were added. We’re hoping the family may have some idea; I may have to tackle the two filing cabinets in the chicken coup. I know they hold file folders of family records so I might find some bills.

Meanwhile, I have been reading. I went from the Civil War to Look Homeward, Angel, by Thomas Wolfe. Thick, thick prose, some stream of consciousness, but held together with a compelling story of complex characters.

Just finished Olive Kitteredge and was so sorry to see it be done. The vignettes were poignant, loving portraits of human beings, who are held together by sometimes gossamer threads. I was stuck with the image of Olive in her vest made from drapes, a modern day Scarlett O’Hara somehow making it no matter what (“You have to have a schedule.”) Even when that schedule includes visiting her unresponsive husband at the nursing home every day. She was prickly and difficult, but aren’t we all? I found myself agreeing with her about her son and his therapist, whose need to find blame made it impossible for Christopher to see her love and concern and had to see a bit of Olive in myself as I grow older.

This was my first book on the iPad and it was a very enjoyable reading experience. Just so clear and easy to navigate. I found I preferred to the two page book format rather than holding it vertically. I am going to transfer my New Yorker subscription to the iPad.

I picked up The Yiddish Policemen’s Union on vacation and found its quirkiness very interesting. Set in an alternative history where Jews were relocated to Sitka, Alaska, after the war, but are soon to be dispossessed, an alcoholic detective, his Tlingit/Jewish partner and his ex-wife investigate the murder of the Messiah. The sprinkling of Yiddish words gave it a gravely texture.

Last night, I started Freedom by Jonathan Franzen. I haven’t read The Corrections despite having a hardcover copy on the shelf. I think I bought it because he stood up to Oprah. While it averages a 4 something in LibraryThing, the written reviews vary widely and some people really hated it.

I forgot about the sewing machine but this post is already too long..

The Long War Is Over

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I think the irony of the Civil War is that there was rarely a time when people either North or South were very happy with their government.  The Confederacy tried to unite states who were seceding from the Union because they did not want to be united, a paradox that haunted them while in the North Lincoln had to walk a tightrope between the radical abolitionists who wanted to crush the South and its tradition of slavery and the Democrats who had no real interest in freeing slaves, but only wanted to bring the South back to the Union.

And in the midst of all the political wrangling on both sides, soldiers–mostly farm workers and shop clerks–slaughtered each other.  Americans all, yet so entrenched in their regional loyalties that they could imagine killing another person to protect those positions.  Did they ever wonder at the futility of killing another man much more like him than any politician or military strategist?

Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson is a one-volume powerhouse that manages to cover major battles, political events and home life in enough detail to bring the mid-19th century alive.  Famous people like John Brown, Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee are presented with sincere respect and empathy so we see beyond the stereotypes they have become.

It’s been a long time since I’ve read nearly 900 pages that wasn’t related to a boy wizard and his friends.  I’m sure there are details that have escaped me particularly related to particular battle movements, but I feel like I have a better overall understanding of the Civil War as well as larger political problems related to a failure to compromise.  Indeed, both sides rejected compromise on key issues, leading inexorably to war despite protests otherwise.  And, the final outcome was not predestined, the way hindsight might suggest.  McPherson suggests that all the explanations for why the North prevailed fail to take into account contingency, “the recognition that at numerous critical points during the war things might have gone altogether differently” (p. 858).  Understanding the Civil War, according to McPherson, requires the narrative approach that he adopted, and I agree.  In the midst of all his details and examinations of various arguments, he tells a great story complete with engaging characters and cliffhangers.

This volume is not for everyone…and a long winter might be a better time if you choose to tackle.  I struggled to find time to read in the midst of summer activities.  But now it lays beside me, complete, and I face the age old question: what should I read next?  But that question is for another blog post.

 

 

2011 Reading Review

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I claimed early in the year that I was taking a break from the competitive reading and photography that was part of 2010.  Instead, I was going slow.  I didn’t even keep up with posting an already taken picture every day.  The year just got away from me somehow and buying a house and moving ate up time and energy even when you weren’t aware of it.  Frankly, we’ve been working like heck since March!  There’s a lot to show for it but every so often, we just get tired.  That’s me tonight.  It is getting dark, Bob is tending a brush fire, and I am ready to curl up with a book although I know it means I will be asleep in about 15 minutes.

I finally managed to find time to update my LibraryThing reading list for the year, and I was a little disappointed to discover that I’ve only read 19 books in 2011, well 20 if you count the Arthur Conan Doyle romance I was reading as the year began.  I might get to 40 at this rate.  I haven’t bought that many books this year either–with the exception of the binge at The Book Escape in Baltimore in April and that was therapy book buying because I had a terrible headache and the minute he handed me the bags, it went away, really, true story–but I need to make a bigger dent in the books I own.  Three of the books I’ve read came from that binge.

I remember being too restless to read in the spring, picking up and putting down books.  I never finished Mailer’s Oswald, it was intimate and sad and yet almost too much so.  I found myself wanting to just get on with it, put off sometimes by the minutiae. (Hmmm, that is my complaint about McPherson right now…maybe I am beginning to demand more economy from authors as I realize I probably won’t ever finish reading the books I currently own plus there’s a pretty good chance I’m going to buy a few more in the next couple decades). I abandoned Mailer for the Benjamin Franklin biography which seemed to move along nicely, sensible yet rich, using details to enhance rather than pummel, something like the man himself.  After that the pace picked up, and I am trying to find time to read every day.

Plus, I hope I get credit for reading thoughtful, lengthy volumes like McPherson’s single-volume Civil War history that I am working on right now.   My list for this year only has a couple guilty pleasures like Georgia Bottoms, about a woman surviving in a small town.  A wickedly funny, just almost unbelievable story. I loaned it to my mother who declared it dirty and then promptly lent it to all her friends.  I don’t count the Anne Perry mystery as fluff since its characters include real English royalty and her work can almost be considered historical fiction.

I did add a book to my library this week: a history of the Battle of Chickamauga by Glenn Tucker that was displayed at the local junk store across the highway from the farm.  I stop in now and then to see what they’ve got.  Besides the book, I found an oversized mug and saucer by Staffordshire with The Farmers Arms poem printed on both cup and saucer.  It seemed appropriate.  And it may even be worth more than I paid…Antiques Roadshow here I come! They gave me the $3 box for free. Good thing since it turned out that the hinge was broken.  But I like the place: a nice jumble of old and not so new, kind of organized but also not so much with the stuff that doesn’t sell getting pushed to the back as they fill up the front and spill over into the parking lot in front.

And now it’s back to McPherson…we’ve made it past Fort Sumter but not to Manassas….it’s going to be a long war.

 

Home

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I started drafting an entry on July 30 but only got a first paragraph done that blamed the craziness of July for my summer silence.  Three workshops in three different locations kept me on the road and busy, requiring that I take this past week to get caught up…and very much settled back in.  The solstice when I sat and wrote my last entry is just a fond, if distant, memory.

But now I am off the road and getting prepared for the semester.  And discovering that this is HOME.  And in ways that our house in the burg never was.  I loved that house and the neighbors but this place is just different, room to spread out both inside and outside, and I am busy rebuilding my routines to take advantage of that space despite the horrible heat that tends to keep us holed up in our master suite that has the window air conditioner.

There are multiple paths for our dog walks that vary with the time of day as we explore the property, and with space to really work out, I’ve made the Wii my afternoon habit.  For now, I’m using the paneled den off the kitchen because of the heat, but I may invest in a treadmill for winter and move the workout room upstairs where there are at least two rooms that would be perfect.  We did add a $35 inflatable pool with a floating chair that has been a blessing for both its cooling and relaxation.

We’ve had a break in the heat for the past two days, and I’m on the porch now as evening comes, hanging out with the hummingbirds who buzz around the feeders and warding off the mosquitoes with bug spray.  We’ve heard a bob white calling from various trees for the past two weeks or so. Right now, it is in the island of woods that push into the corn field.  I have yet to see it although I haven’t honestly tried that hard.

ChickensI DID discover which chicken has learned to crow like a rooster: it is Dottie, the silver wyandotte.  I had the dogs out quite early one morning and found her raising her chest, flapping her wings and letting out an honest-to-goodness Cock-A-Doodle-Doo. That’s her in front, the black and white one. She’s pretty old for a chicken, at least 6 or 7.  We have been battling a black snake who gobbles up the eggs faster than we can harvest them.  He seemed to have disappeared after we shared a few hard boiled eggs with him, but now he is back and we really need to deal with building a better hen house.  We want a bigger flock, some of whom will end up in the freezer, unlike our current group of ladies who are more pets with benefits than anything.

 

One thing I have been doing in all the craziness is reading.  Lots of American history, from Ben Franklin to the Civil War with a little World War I thrown in.  Right now, I’m plodding through James M. McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom, part of the Oxford University Press’s history of the United States.  I like his somewhat ironic tone but find the minutiae a bit dull and am still in the early chapters before the election of Lincoln.  I find them depressing: this government was even more dysfunctional than the current one with representatives beating each other and the Supreme Court making outlandish interpretations of the Constitution. Multiple parties sprang up, making the electoral process chaotic.

While it was worse, I can’t help but see parallels with slavery being replaced by taxes as the no-compromise issue with things like gay marriage and other cultural issues also being a factor.  The compromises in the 1850s were all made with the goal of preserving the Union, and I do sometimes wonder how long states like Texas, California, and New York will continue to be step children of the Federal government when they have their own trade deals and large economies.  It’s really a matter of passing a referendum, I would guess.

But that’s all for another day.  My husband just arrived with the mail from the burg and it includes a long handwritten letter from an old friend to whom I wrote earlier this summer and I am going to settle into my wicker rocker and read it. The perfect lovely Friday evening…

 

Dear Mother Nature

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I am SO sorry about Spot!  He really is a good dog who takes his job of protecting me and the farm very seriously.  Well, maybe a little too seriously.  But how was I supposed to know that when he dove into the bush this morning, he was going to come up with a baby rabbit?  It was early, I was under-caffeinated, and it took me a split second too long to realize what was going on.  It was over quickly with nary a sound from the bunny.

Two days ago, it was a mole.  Really.  Those little denizens of the deep that most dogs find infuriating as they dig up the tunnels.  Not Spot.  He sat for a moment, cocked his head at the ground, dug–once, twice–and there was a big fat mole with it little light brown paws rolling out onto the ground.  I was more aware that time and able to pull him off before he did any damage.  And, of course, he has a track record.  Even before we adopted him, when he was just the new dog next door, he killed my pretty little Silver Spangled Hamburg when she dared to venture over the fence.  And his first night at the farm, despite being tied, he was close enough to grab Dotty, our silver Wyandotte, but all he got was a mouth full of feathers before Bob wrestled him to the ground.

Right now, he is tied out front watching the corn field across the drive way as it is full of furry creatures.  And I’m remembering reading Gary Paulsen’s Woodsong when I taught middle school.  It is book full of the sudden, brutal violence of nature.  Not my usual book–I haven’t ever made it through Old Yeller or The Red Pony–but the kids liked Paulsen and I was determined to try. Paulsen talks about how we are raised on a somewhat sanitized view of nature, that of Marlin Perkins’ Wild Kingdom, one of my favorite shows as a kid.  The lions stalk the gazelle, we see them running and then we see the lions eating something that might have been a gazelle. The actual death took place off camera so we didn’t have to watch the struggles, see the blood, experience the violence.  Spot killing a bunny was certainly not that graphic but it was brutal and unexpected and a reminder that, for all his domesticated qualities, he harbors the soul of a hunter and killer and no amount of human intervention will ever train that out of him.

And then he is also a big baby who is afraid of thunder storms.  The wind is kicking up, and he has retired to the front porch to be near me.  I don’t think this storm will hit us but there are some cells out to the west.  At least the breeze has brought some relief to the humid day we had.  I am planning to head upstairs to do some organizing now that we’ve got some more furniture in place.

And, Mother Nature, I promise I will be more vigilant.

Mostly Moved

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I am always surprised when I log in and discover it has been two weeks since I’ve posted.  I know I’ve been thinking about it, but life has really intruded.  I guess that’s what reality TV is all about: capture people as they move through their activities because they won’t have time to write about it during and after the fact they will do all sorts of interpretations.  Did I just provide justification for the Kardashians??  Cinema verite for the 21st century.

It is a divine late evening at the farm.  I tore myself away from unpacking…it seems like there are a million little things I could do to make things better and more livable.  The dining room is filled with boxes from out last few trips, but  I made a huge dent by getting all the Christmas stuff into a closet upstairs.  Where did I get all this stuff?  I barely decorated last year because I figured we were moving somewhere in 2011 and didn’t want to unpack.  I had also, over the past few years, been taking advantage of post-holiday container sales to buy big plastic tubs so at the least it was easy to transport the decorations. But what could possibly be in the six or seven tubs in the closet? I guess I’m glad I have a seeming excess since it is going to be a hoot to decorate this house with its 7 mantels, huge ceilings (can’t WAIT to put the tree in the library and hang all the nature and bird ornaments that I’ve collected, many treasured gifts, over the years), and front porch.  I’m guessing that wreaths at the windows are obligatory.

I’m sitting on the front porch right now.  I finally got around to filling the baskets I bought at Big Lots last week.  I bought an already cultivated “basket” mix from my local greenhouse, actually I bought four. Two for each of two baskets. They are basically plugs with three different flowers that will spread over the course of the summer.   Another basket that hangs in a pretty shady spot is sports a fuschia.  The fourth basket has a lovely foamy lavender flower, some thyme and some mint.

They replaced some very scraggly Boston Ferns that should really have been declared DOA when they came out of the green house this Spring, but we just can’t seem to kill things outright if they show any signs of life.  To the end, I filled two pots with a few tomatillos and basil plants that were languishing in pots.  My husband believes that if you get 50 seeds in a packet, you are expecting to get 50 plants.  And, he usually does, which means we have plenty of extra plants.  We put a long row of tomatoes along the front of the property for the neighbors to share.  I have a salsa pot (tomato, pepper, onions, basil, and parsley) that I planted some time ago.  The tomato is gorgeous but wasn’t meant for a pot and is shading out everything else.

The good news is that we have renters for the house who want to move in on July 1.  Husband and nephew have been painting feverishly and there is the ceiling in the bathroom to fix.  But with the exception of a few pieces of furniture including the piano, we are mostly out.  The attic and garage are even mostly empty.  A few more car/truck loads and we will be here.

I AM here.  I work on unpacking around my other work so we have both empty boxes, which we really don’t need since stuff in the attic and garage were mostly packed.  We found a couple surprising boxes of books in the garage: mostly first editions.  I also found my old book spinner from my middle school classroom.  It sits quite nicely on a round table, and I may add some of the firsts to it, but I am also realizing I am going to have to put books in other rooms of the house.  The handyman books that my husband inherited from someone went on the pantry bookshelf, and I will have a nice selection in the guest room and my room.

I find myself defining pieces of furniture I need.  In the library, I need a book display rack for some of my bigger volumes; my Audobon is open to orchard orioles, of which we have several pairs around the farm, but I may flip to bobwhite since I listened to one call at dusk as I trudged up and down the steps with boxes.  I also need a cabinet for sheet music and musical instruments as well as a way to display some of them.  I have a beautiful dulcimer with hummingbird cutouts that I bought from the maker in eastern Kentucky when I went on a work week there more than 20 years ago.  I know how to play a bit.

But that is all in the future.  Right now, it is about getting furniture into rooms and putting things away.  We are blessed with closets in most rooms and an amazing built in china cabinet in the den.  We are also using the milking parlor for more long term storage.  Suddenly, we have space!

I have been trying to outwit nature a bit.  We have a honey bee hive in the front part of the house where the decorative wood has broken away from the house.  They discovered my hummingbird feeders and quickly became a nuisance.  I got stung trying to refill a feeder and they were chasing away the hummers as they piled around the openings of the small hanging feeders.  We played around with some bee guard designs but none of them worked.  I did a little research and decided the best course was compromise.  I moved the feeders they liked off the porch and nearer the hive.  I put the two feeders they didn’t use on or near the porch.  I have seen a hummer at one of them and the bees seemed to have moved on so perhaps I have succeeded.  We would very much like to figure out how to relocate the hive to the hives we have but they still need work and we just haven’t had time to pursue it.  They need painted and we need to get the beeswax foundation in place.  Then, it’s a matter of somehow capturing the hive and the queen.  So, maybe it isn’t a priority.  They aren’t a problem in the house and I like thinking that somewhere under the floor boards upstairs there is honey.  We should have sweet dreams 😉

I have been reading.  I finally settled on an odd choice: Norman Mailer’s story of Lee Harvey Oswald called Oswald’s Tale.  It is this odd third person/first person, narrator/primary source narrative interwoven with statements from the Warren Commission, interview transcripts, KGB and CIA reports, and Oswald’s diary.

NB: I lost my network connection when the battery died on the wireless device.  I took a break and managed to unpack another box or two, discovering my collection of old fashioned table cloths in one of the tubs.  For now, linens go on the shelves between the den and the dining room so that box was easy to unpack. There is a wide passageway created by the chimney that services the fireplace in both rooms and it is great storage.  For now it is a staging ground, first for the candles which are now back in their cupboard, now for linens that I think will end up in the marble top. I also found the doorway curtains I made for our old house. They could be used to cover the doors and keep the air conditioning in the living room.  One panel will make a nice curtain to cover the open shelving in the passageway.  And so it goes…I could walk a few more things upstairs before heading to bed.  Every thing that moves gets me one step closer to being done or at least as far along as I can get as I wait for the rest of the furniture to get moved upstairs. And walking up the stairs is good exercise.

If you have read this far, congratulations…you are up to date on the world of the farm!  The weather has cooled off so we can keep the windows open to catch the breezes and the cool night air.  A train is going past, its whistle warning of its approach, and I feel at home.