26 May 2015

bestseller

since i've semi-retired, one thing i'm just not doing enough of is keeping up with new books. it's odd, i know, but it's true, and it bothers me a lot. so when folks started talking about the girl on the train and what a thriller it was, i thought- i must read it. since i didn't want to wait for it at the library, and because i didn't want to lose my resolve, i downloaded it to my kindle and began to read straight away. and, from the get-go, i did not like it - at all. i'd read rave reviews - so i kept on reading. friends gushed about it - so i kept on reading. i finished it friday night. and i hated it. yes, i did.

today at the library, i saw the print version at the desk, so i thumbed through it. inside, characters i didn't know, scenarios i didn't recognize, whole paragraphs i didn't recall. how could this have happened? did i fall asleep and miss large chunks of the story? am i really that poor a reader?

i went to the kindle app on my phone to check. and the cover (which i never look at on ebooks) was very different. so was the author's name. slowly it dawned on me - i read the wrong book

in hindsight, it's no wonder. just look at how many there are!  what am i reading now? station eleven...i think. 

24 May 2015

in the garden

for days, i've been here, in the garden. weeding, dividing, transplanting, planning. new growth is always so green and lush and promising, and volunteer plants so surprising. this is my favorite time to be in the garden, before anything even begins to bloom. 


21 May 2015

what's this?

this tree's been in my backyard for half my life, yet i have never seen it like this. it's all leafed out, but it has what i can only imagine to be tree "flowers" hanging from the branches. a strange and unusual sight out the back window, that i mostly just want to document here.


20 May 2015

purple lilac

since they began to bloom last weekend, i have taken at least a zillion photos of purple lilacs. i am hoping to capture just the right shot, and submit it to the state's lilac photo contest. i entered a few years ago with an adorable shot of the little girl wearing a red sox cap with a lilac pressed right up to her nose. maybe it was too cute - it didn't win. so this time i'm trying for a conventional shot. so far, no luck. i have only a few more days to shoot, then the florets will begin to turn brown and eventually shrivel up - along with my chances of winning.

15 May 2015