All The Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr

We know from the opening chapters of this book that St Malo in France is bombed by the allies in WW2 (August 1944) because it is believed that it is a German stronghold. We also know that a German soldier and a blind French girl are in St Malo at that time.  What we don't know yet is how they got there, and we don't know yet if they will ever meet.

And then we go backwards. To an orphanage in Germany before the war, and a small boy who finds out how to make a radio.  Werner will become the German Soldier, and his sister Jutta will remain in the orphanage until near the end of the war.  In Paris, Marie-Laurie has lost her sight, and her father has built her a model of the arondissement where they live, so that she has a map for her hands, to teach her to navigate her local streets.  The war comes, and each life is described, jumping backwards and forwards, so that we can see how these two arrived in St Malo, and how they both, in small ways, contributed to their country's war efforts. 

The cruelty of any dictator is shocking.  But it is the efficiency of Hitler and his ministers that shocks here.  How boy soldiers were trained and how the weakest were weeded out, the strongest pushed for greater glory.  Man's inhumanity to man is well described in the chapters concerning Werner at his training school, who has to get through training or there will be nothing for him.  I found every page worth reading, but every page had it's own heartbreak.  These two children.  Will they ever gain adulthood?  And after the war, what then?

Superb telling of a war we know a lot about but in a way that perhaps we never thought about.

The One-In-A-Million-Boy - Monica Wood

Monica Wood (author of We Were the Kennedys) dragged me straight in from the first page, and kept me reading until I put it down with a sigh of pleasure at the end. The premise of this book is that a father, estranged from his ex-wife and son, is going to finish up some odd jobs that his son couldn't. That's it. The characters are what make this a delight. The one in a million boy, a scout who on discovering how old Ona Vitkus is (104 and counting) realises that he may be able to get her into the Guinness Book of Records for something or other; Ona herself, who has a very interesting story to tell, and does so, on a tape recorder that the boy produces. Quinn, the boy's father, a session musician and "fill in" for groups, always dreaming of the bigtime; Belle, his twice ex-wife and father of the boy; and other, not quite so rounded but essential characters which pop up from time to time. This is really Quinn and Belle's story - although it is Ona that tells hers. I loved the chapters with Ona's voice on the tape, the recognition that old age does not come by itself (there is a passage at the beginning where Ona explains to the boy that the highest notes of bird songs are lost to her now, and a very moving couple of lines right at the end where the boy will ask his father to enable her to hear those songs). This was such a wonderful read, easy to say "just one more chapter" every time I stopped. Told in a quirky style which I loved, I hope that as many readers as possible will get to know and remember Ona and the others. I am certainly recommending it to the many readers I come across. Oh, and don't forget to read the last list at the end.

   

Death of Jo Cox MP

Not often that real life moves me to tears.  Yesterday and today, listening to people talking about this woman, mother and Member of Parliament, I just kept asking myself WHY?,  as I always do when something makes me question the power of the universe and your God. 

 I say yours, because I believe we are all entitled to live out our lives on this planet free of fear, and with love in our hearts. I believe we should be free to worship in any way we please too, whether the old Pagan way, or called to prayer by your Imam, or entering into your temple, your church, your synagogue.  I believe that different days of the week should be celebrated by people in the way that they choose, and I continue to believe that somewhere there is a good heart in most humans.  Not all, we know that, but most humans.

So sad that a bitter heart, full of spite for someone else's belief in their fellow man, can take away someone who cares about more than just themselves.  I am sending out karma here, looking for the good hearts.  There are more of them than the dark hearts;  we just have to gently make our views known.

Jo Cox knew that - this is the quote that is being used:  "“While we celebrate our diversity, what surprises me time and time again as I travel around the constituency is that we are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us”.

Just change the word constituency for world ............

Early June in the Garden - Part 2 of 2

So..... more of what's on offer at Pine Tree Cottage in early June.  This is Achillea millefolium or commonly, yarrow.   Lovely bright colour in my yellow and white border - one of the earlier things for early summer.  

 And can we talk about hardy geraniums?  Two years ago, I bought "Zoe", a prizewinning (Best Perennial of the 20th century or something) and supposedly a ground covering geranium. No picture of her because she's pouting.  Now I know I have an odd garden, different soils in different places and very odd in what likes it where.  I also know that roses have been in the garden before, as some I have planted don't thrive until I move them.  But Zoe?  She sits in a moody little pile, doesn't smother weeds and gives me around 4 blooms each year.  Whereas these little fellas just bloom and bloom and spread and spread.  I have loads in different sizes and colours, and even though I didn't start them
out for ground cover, that's what I got.
They will bloom all summer if I give them a haircut after the first flowering and they are all different.  The hues range from white to purple, although for some reason I seem to like the pinker shades best (or was that what was on offer when I did the shopping?).  The garden here has been divided up into different themes.  I have three beds which were planted first - and for a specific purpose, because they are the three I can see from the living room window, and I got what I wanted - a sort of living water colour, a
 sort of three beds full, if you like. There are all
 sorts of things in those beds, but they are choc-a-block and with no colour theme, just a lovely cottage garden kind of tumble.    There are roses in there too, but at least one of them is due a move at the end of the season as they are unhappy.  Graham Thomas (yellow) has been in the same place for 13 years, but never performs as I feel he should, so he will get moved up the garden.  Chapeau de Napoleon (pink) is lovely, but hit and miss.  Some years only one blossom some years 4 or 5 on this moss rose.  But not enough, so he will have to move too.  Then I have Nuit de Young, a small flowered dark dark red which is usually the earliest to bloom but this year is way behind, although full of bud.  And the smell!  Perfumiers must have used this one in the past - it is so tiny but so fragrant.  Only one flowering per season though, so it is in a bed with lots of other things.  Then comes a rose that shouldn't be where it is (she loves a wall), and this is Zepherine Drouhin.  Again, full of perfume.  I have given her a nice wigwam, and that seems to work.  Sorry, this shot is sideways, my pc has thrown a wobbly!

And another smelly lady here - Gertrude Jekyll which is such a perfect bloom - and sits in a border with day lilies each side and scabious underneath.  I love flowers in the house, and once in a while I will cut a rose and bring one in, but they are never so beautiful as they are on the bush.

And finally, sisyrinchium striatum which is a plant every garden should have.  The reason for this is that it self seeds, loves a dry patch, doesn't need watering, and gives some height to a border.  I just pull out the seeded plants when I spot one in the wrong place.  The bloom colour is cream/pale yellow, and it's about two feet tall.  I have to confess that this is not my picture, but I'm sure you won't mind!  Again, my PC won't let me turn pictures.  

At the top of the garden are several roses that I will take pics of later, all different, all grown for different reasons. And next month we are having hard standing laid for parking .... for 14 years we have fought against this but last winter was so wet the area around the car was just a mud bath.  So we have taken the plunge.  But plant-wise it requires some thought.  I don't want just a huge slab of something, and in any case, non-porous surfaces not only need planning permission, but would be silly knowing how much rain could sit in that area.  So it's got to do the job, and it's got to look good afterwards.  More on that at another time.

Early June in the Garden - part 1 of 2

When we first moved to Pine Tree Cottage, 14 years ago, we had 100 feet of grass, ivy and weeds, plus some hedges.  At last it's now getting to the point where I can say "that's right!".  Not "that's done", because you never are, but It's looking like I think it should.  Above is a Huechera, Limeade, I think.

This is a new-ish rock rose (commonly) or Helianthemum, sorry no name, which I put in only last year.  Slow to spread, but got more flowers than last year, so I am pleased.  It's a vibrant red - this pic doesn't capture the colour so well.

 When I said nothing in the garden.... that's not strictly true.  This peony appears every year in two places.  I get two flowers on one, and one only on the other.  But it's such a lovely deep red, and one of the old fashioned kind, I don't have the heart to move it out - anyway, I have plenty of room.  You can see in the background some lily of the valley.  Didn't know I had them, either, they took about 5 years to show themselves, and now they are rampant - those I do have to dig a few out every year now.  Oh and a few old faithful tulips come up every spring, although I have added many more.

And here, amongst lovely lime green euphorbias are two alliums - the only two that ever appear out of a dozen planted!  But no matter, every early summer they are suddenly there, so delicate and every year a surprise!

Below, a little patch of common oxalis, showing their faces to the sun.  I love the little yellow one with the red leaves too, and though some regard it as a weed I do not.

 Finally the last picture for Part 1 of this June tour is a Geum (sorry no name) which I put in this spring, and which formed a huge clump very quickly and gave me so many flowers I thought it would make itself sick!!  The leaves you see are not from that, but from a perennial sunflower which I was given last autumn.  It stayed in its pot through a very wet winter here and frankly, I thought I had lost it.  Anyway, I planted out the root and hoped for the best and here it is, growing like a mad thing.  It goes up to about 7 foot tall when in flower, so I am rather looking forward to that.  it is in a small area which will have yellow, orange and white flowers mostly, including the blossom on the Amelanchier which went in in March.

You may have noticed as you scrolled down that most of these plants have small flowers.  I love bigger stuff too, and my roses look as though we'll have a decent show this summer, but somehow I am softhearted when it comes to small flowers.... My Mum loved alpines, and if she had to look at the flower through a magnifying glass, that was so much the better!  That's a bit too small for me, but I do love the smaller flowers, and so do the bees. 

The Birth House - Ami McKay

Not to be mistaken under any circumstances with The Birthing House by Christopher Ransom (Please!), I can recommend this one wholeheartedly.  This is a book of the kind I love - a lot of facts woven in with the fiction.  Good research of the real stuff always makes a better read, I find.

Miss B. is an elderly woman, a descendent of an Acadian - that is, one of the French settlers that lived in the northern part of Nova Scotia until the British removed them, put them on ships and sent them down the Atlantic coast of America. They resettled in Louisiana, and from Acadia, we get Cajun, the music and the food.  Miss B's forebears came back to Nova Scotia and settled on the Bay of Fundy coast.  She's a midwife - of the old fashioned kind.  She has lots of old fashioned remedies, she brings babies into the world, she nurses sick people and brings them back to health if she can.  And she is close friends with Dora, who at the beginning of the book is a young child, and by the end is a midwife herself, a widow at 19, and with an adopted child. Miss B. has taught Dora everything she knows, but Dora is not sure she wants this kind of responsibility.  Like witches of folklore, everyone loves a midwife until something goes wrong, and then she's spurned.

The majority of this story has for it's background WW1.  No-one Dora cares for is lost, and there is little about the war itself although there are some nice details here, including the Newfoundland socks that men on the front would barter for, as they were warmer than any other.  During the course of Dora's story, the Halifax Explosion occurs.  This was a huge and dreadful even in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1917 when 2,000 were killed, 9,000 injured, and 6,000 left homeless.  The Spanish Flu is also touched upon whilst Dora is living in Boston, Mass.

Descriptions of births are explicit, but why should they not be?  This is a story of rural midwifery, and the fight to make medical practitioners understand that sometimes women did know best..  From time to time an advert from a newspaper of the time is included in the book's pages, and also reports from the newspaper of deaths, perhaps murders, and of course, all the news that's fit to print.  A curl up and read to the end without stopping kind of book, but anyway you choose to read it, it's a good one.

John Prine and Iris DeMent - In Spite of Ourselves: Mrs Mac's Tune Choice

Nan at Letters from a Hill Farm puts a song up from time to time, and, imitation being the best form of flattery, I am following her lead.  So when I found a favourite on YouTube, I thought you might enjoy it too.  Love the thinking behind the words.... listen carefully!