Thursday, July 5, 2012

Back from P.E.I - On My Way to India

And I'm time travelling too! I just finished the last book in Anne series, Rilla of Ingleside and even though my body might have been in 2012 in the Netherlands for the last week my mind was on Prince Edward Island in Canada during the first world war. Really got me thinking about how it shapes us on which era we are born in. I feel so sorry for the writer Lucy Maud Montgomery who died in 1942. She was born during peace and grew up pretty much without wars and then came the WW I that was devastating and then of course the second world war, but she got to never see the end of it.  I would like to shout to her where ever she is that we are all alright now and that I love your books. I hope she hears me.

In her books quilting is mentioned quite few times among many other details of every day life of that time. How wonderful that it is preserved for us to read. That is the stuff that really interests me - the everyday life of people. That is probably why I like blogs so much!

Maybe the reading is to blame, but on the garden front it hasn't been a great year. This spring I really tried to make a clean start with my flower bench working the ground and trying to eliminate all the weed. I sowed lots of different flowers and hoped for the best. Below you see the results.

Weed

Weed only, no flowers. And I was so hoping to have my own little Englih cottage garden. My problem is that I want the flowers to grow haphazardly but when I sow them like that I never know what is weed and what is not. In my kitchen garden I sowed two rows of coriander and only one coriander felt like showing up. So when everything else fails, I cheat. At least what it comes to gardening, I'm not sure that is a good rule to live by on other areas of life. So this is how it looks like now after a trip to a garden center.

DSC05733
Look, we have paprikas!

Garden taken care of I'm of to www.manybooks.net to download Kim by Rudyard Kipling to take my mind to India. Little tip for Kindle users - Amazon does only have a fraction of all free e-books available, but you can easily download them to your Kindle in the correct format from manybooks.net.

2 comments:

The Muse of The Day said...

I, too, like the concept of peeking into someone's "everyday" life vs. the more public events. I hadn't thought about it before, but maybe there is a link, there, no pun intended, to why I read blogs. I think that what makes a writer qualify in the "great" status, is one who can transport me to the little, everyday, actions of life in the most minute detail so that I can walk where the character walks, see what they see, and almost feel the air around them. I haven't seen the movie "How To Make An American Quilt", with Winona Ryder, but your post, here, just shook my brain and shot the image of the movie to the forefront. I am going to see if I can rent it on my iPad ( the rest of my family wouldn't be interested in seeing it.) As far as the garden goes - I really wish I was a good enough Gardner to grow grow chocolate covered strawberries!
Carolina

Minnado said...

I will have to show you some photos of my garden- it is awful... I would love a cottage garden and veg patch but have n't had time this year to get out there and do anything. We had so much rain this summer, my tomatoes and beans became waterlogged in their pots!