I’ve been remiss in my obligation to my blog the past couple of months.  Hmmm….the rhetorical form of that sentence – and this one, really – seems to have been influenced by the book I am currently reading, which is the essence of Victorian long-drawn-out convoluted prose style – the antithesis of Hemingway, one of my stylistic heroes.  In any case, the book is The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins.  I’m reading the Penguin Classics edition of the book, which is cloth bound and beautiful (see link on title) and even has a ribbon to mark your page.  I’m in love with the feel of a beautiful book.  The book was extremely popular in its day and “created a new literary genre of suspense fiction, which profoundly shaped the course of English popular writing.”  Hence its status as a classic, I suppose.  It is a good mystery and it’s fun to wallow in the nineteenth-century prose style and social conventions – albeit somewhat laborious at times.  Mr. H. would not have approved.

Here it is May 4, and we are in our third month of incredibly beautiful spring weather.  It has been such a wonderful gift!!  We have had temperatures in the 60s and 70s most days beginning in March.  There were a few more seasonably cold days, but no hard frost.  The sun has been shining and the trees greened and the flowers bloomed early and in glorious abundance.  I’ve had the windows wide open and the screened-in porch in full use since the beginning of March.

Perhaps the most exciting aspect of spring’s glory for me is the fact that my peonies have finally bloomed for the first time.  I planted them about three years ago and was beginning to think that perhaps they weren’t getting enough sun, but they just needed time to acclimate and settle in, I guess.  I planted several different varieties and am at a loss to decide which is the most beautiful.

In addition, I finally put in the flower bed around my screened-in porch that I’ve been planning for the past couple of years.  It was very satisfying to get it in.  I still have to do the edging and the mulch and am planning to add plants to it from the Master Gardners’ plant sale that will take place this coming weekend.  It’s great to play in the dirt again.

Well, there’s more to report, and I will post additional news in the next few days.  Sometimes less is more, and while I love the sound of my own “voice”, I realize that the reader’s attention span for it may be somewhat more limited.

Happy spring!