So long oo long how long you gonna be gone?

I'm flying to Greece in a few hours. I'll be away from a computer for three weeks. When I return from Greece, I'll be back in England for just a couple of days before returning to the US and ordering myself a new computer set up, so expect that it might be a little while longer before I am back to full strength herein.

Birthday Wishes

Happy Birthday to me, and to all those who celebrate their birthday today!

May the dance go on and on and on....

Last day

Tomorrow afternoon I am flying to Greece with my parents, so tonight is almost my last night in England for the foreseeable future. I will have two more nights when we return from Greece, but I already have plans with friends for at least one of those two. So anyway, I decided to call a few old friends and use the opportunity to chat with them. It turns out that none of them are home on a Sunday evening. And I suppose some of them might not even live at the numbers I have for them anymore. But I continue to live in hope. It is rumoured that one close friend may have recently gotten married, but as I have not yet heard from the presumably happy couple, I can neither confirm nor deny this information.

Tomorrow it is my birthday (cue flashing lights, bells and whistles). I love all birthdays, but particularly my own. I have been feeling a little flummoxed lately because I'm sort of led to believe that this is an important one, age-wise. I clearly recall my cousins teasing me upon my arrival at the big One Oh. And now it's twenty years later and I find it hard to believe how fast time slips by. I've spent the better part of the last decade celebrating my birthday in the USA, without my family handy to share it with. This year I have my parents, but not my husband. It's a funny old world. As it turns out, Clyde will be arriving in Greece the afternoon after us, so that's a pretty decent present in itself.

(Although I'd like some more, too, please.)

Mary Wesley

Yesterday I read An Imaginative Experience by Mary Wesley. It was a re-read, because I have read it once or twice before. I like the book, but find a lot of it forgettable between reads. Perhaps the last couple of times I had read the first chapter only, and stopped.

My favourite of Wesley's is actually her last book, Part of the Furniture. Others will tell you that The Camomile Lawn is her best. Again, it was good once or twice, but I forgot it between readings and I came to find that I didn't really care for the characters. It was one of those been there, done that type books after a time. I feel sort of the same about Joanna Trollope novels. Although with those I now don't feel like reading new ones, either.

But Part of the Furniture has stuck in my mind. Last year I found a hardback copy, as new, in a used book shop and read it for probably the fourth or fifth time. Every time I find something new in it to understand or enjoy. I think those are probably the best novels. The ones you can read again as you age and understand better each time. Not that I didn't understand it the first time, in my late teens or early twenties, but now I have a better understanding in myself of all those emotional and physical yearnings.

It has been years since I've read the rest of Wesley's adult novels. The third of my favourites is Jumping the Queue. I have it on the pile of bedside reading to glance at while I'm here. I might not get to it this trip, but if not I have it at home in the US, too. There is one book of Wesley's that I have not read at all, yet. A Dubious Legacy. One of these times I'll get to it.

In the meantime, I recommend you look up the works of Mary Wesley. Chances are, you'll enjoy them.

Gas Price Check

Just a quick note, a little food for thought for those of you who have recently had a surprise with the rise of gas in the US:

Based on a Pennsylvania price of $2.85 per gallon over the weekend, Clyde and I calculated that the price in the UK right now is about $7.00 per gallon!

Everything is relative.

On the Life of Plum

I finished my second read of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince a few days ago. I have some theories, but I'm just going to keep sitting on them because I know there are people reading this blog that have not yet had the chance to read the book.

Since then, I caught up with Stephanie Plum, in the Janet Evanovich series about the chaotic New Jersey Bounty Hunter. I was going to say inept, but frankly she usually gets her man, even if there's frequently a close call with rubbish in the process. I read Ten Big Ones as a refresher, and followed it up with Eleven On Top. While I loved the sexy, flirty nature of Ten Big Ones, I didn't think it was the better books in the series. Evanovich pretty much ended the story as soon as the bad guy was caught - and yes, I realise that you can't go on and on with the story once you've completed the plot, but I thought it stopped rather suddenly. Eleven On Top, however, was much better. Much more a reminder of her original style of writing. She managed to develop several key characters and give the plotlines a little more substance. I was genuinely freaked out by some of the creepy stuff (I was reading in bed in the middle of the night in a house that creaks and rustles), and I figured out the twist around the same moment as Stephanie. I liked the very ending, too.

And this is funny - for a long time, I, like Stephanie, seemed convinced that she should stick to Morelli because he seemed the most stable of the two men in her life. He's got a decent job, blah blah blah. But now I find that my opinion has swung much more in the direction of Ranger. Sure, he might work outside of the law and have a dark secret, but he loves her. He has more depth. And they seem to be able to communicate better than she does with Morelli. I don't know. It's just a book, some would say. These are made up characters. But I like make believe better than real life a lot of the time. Books make things so easy. Real life is more difficult because when faced with hard choices, we know that there's always a possibility of some one being hurt. So many variables.
And so, books and Buffy.

Windy Autumnal Days

I'm sitting in looking out a full wall of window, at an idyllic scene of English countryside. Lots of green trees and a meadow beyond the little stone wall. There are birds on the feeders. Usually squirrels eyeing the feeders, too. But not yet today.

When it's a blowy day, as it has been these last couple, I am reminded of the poem by Robert Louis Stevenson, from A Child's Garden of Verses:

Whenever the moon and stars are set,

Whenever the wind is high,

All night long in the dark and wet,

A man goes riding by.
Late in the night when the fires are out,

Why does he gallop and gallop about?

Whenever the trees are crying aloud,

And ships are tossed at sea,

By, on the highway, low and loud,

By at the gallop goes he.

By at the gallop he goes, and then

By he comes back at the gallop again.

I like blowy, windy autumnal days. I haven't been in England at this time of year for a full five years now, and it is my favourite time. Not least because it is my birthday next week. September and October feels like a time of renewal to me. Perhaps that's just because of the birthday aspect, and maybe everyone feels like that around their celebratory time. But somehow I think that it's just me.

Yesterday I stood in a field with pigs and horses, found myself nuzzled by a lovely dappled rose horse. He was seventeen hands. A big boy. He smelled me up and down, checking out the scent of outdoor cat, ducks, dogs and chickens. Then he blew into the hair at the top of my head. It made me giggle. But if I had more time that afternoon, I would have stood in the open field nuzzling with this lovely spirit and enjoying the wind as it blew through the trees.

Stat Check

Hey, this is really interesting:

Most of the people reading this blog, are, predictably, reading from within the USA. Some of them are reading from England, also predictable. I told my friends about it, and the idea was originally to be able to keep in touch with people I already knew, so obviously it's working to some extent. I have some who read regularly, and some who drop in once a month or so.

But this evening I looked up my stat counter and I learned that I have visitors from the Virgin Islands, Israel and Albania!

Someone in Albania found this site while searching the internet for information on beans. What an amazing thing this (the internet) is. We really are a World Wide Web.

If you're one of those people, please come back and tell me how you came across Literary Seeds. You can comment anonymously if you prefer.

I'm baaa-ck

I have not forgotten the blog. I'm back. Actually, I'm away, not back. But that's neither here nor there.

I'm posting from England, as those of you who have been paying attention will recall. I arrived yesterday morning and slept a good part of yesterday, although mostly through the night. It is now one a.m. again, and I was moved to send an email to a nearly teenage friend of mine, so I thought I'd pop on here and remind you all that I exist.

England, or at least, our little corner of it, was rainy today. It was a snuggle up in the house with an open fire sort of a day. I managed to keep the fire going for more than twelve hours, I'm pleased to report. Every time it thought it would die down, I threw another log on and it revived. We also spent a good bit of time dead-heading geraniums in the greenhouse, and I helped my Mum remove the tomatoes which had grown a lurgy of sorts and were covered in white fly.

After dinner and during a haphazard discussion of Jason and the Argonauts (or Jason and the Chicken Nuggets as one two year old I know refers to it as) I was moved to Google exactly who the Furies, Muses, Graces and Harpies were. I could tell you, but someone would correct my pronunciation. And at this time of night, my transliterate-spelling.

I'm half way through the latest Harry Potter book again, for the second time in two months. At least this time I can skip the bits where Ron and Hermy are getting on one anothers nerves. I'm sort of looking for clues about what has happened and what's to come. I also started Word Freak, by Stefan Fatsis (you might have heard him on NPR), and Murder Plays House, by Ayelet Waldman. I'm reading Half Blood Prince as "comforting" jet lagged night time reading. Word Freak is good, and he's not kidding. I thought I was doing well by completing 300 point (Scrabble) games, but these people are making nearly 600 points per game! I obviously have a lot to learn, or memorise, if it comes to that. Not that I'm planning on competing. I play for fun. And I find doing a lot of crosswords has really helped me develop my Scrabble skills.

Yoga update

Just a quick note, as I have an appointment at 11am and it's a quarter to, now.

The yoga I'm doing is not Hatha yoga at all. It's yoga for strength, based on the work of Ana Forrest in California. I don't know her at all, but this is what I've garnered from going to yoga two to three times a week since my original post on the subject.

It's a real workout, put it that way.

Latest reads

I should admit that I'm reading the Harry Potter books again from the beginning, as I threatened I might, a few days ago. I started number three last night, and am having a great time going over the old stuff. I can't believe it's really six years since I read this one! It's good to go back in part because one gets to remember hints about the later part of the story. Piece together all the parts of the jigsaw. And of course it's a good way to get more Harry while waiting for the next one to come out, and the film of number four at Christmas. I saw a preview the other day and it looks good, even if Ron does have weird hippy hair.

I've also been reading a fair bit of health related non fiction. I picked up Patricia Cornwell's latest paperback, Trace, when someone gave it to me for free. I read the first paragraph and threw the book to the floor. Ugh. I just can't stomach the terrible writing anymore.

I've saving the more recent Ayelet Waldman mysteries for the plane journey and my holiday in the UK next month. I think I have three to catch up with and one of them is still in hardback, but that's fine. I know of two other people I can share it with after I get to enjoy it!

Goodness Me

Well, then. I'm sorry to have been away so long, but I am living between computers at the moment. I am writing now from my Fella's Linux OS in the basement, but even it cuts off my net connection every ten minutes or so that it deems I haven't been active (i.e. I'm composing a post and not loading another web page).

Last Monday night, the boy named R came to read with me. We got on swimmingly. He read to me, I read to him, he read to me, I read to him, he read to me. Selections included George's Marvelous Medicine and the first in the Magic Tree House series. R read three chapters of the latter to me, and I hope to knock out the rest of that book before I leave for the UK in mid-September. After that, I'll have him read the rest of the series (!) to me.

I admit that I didn't go to Cliveden Park this evening because Clyde went away on business, taking his keys to the House with him. Although frankly I'm not keen on driving in that part of Philadelphia alone anyhow. So I didn't go tonight. I feel guilty because there was really no way for me to tell the kids we weren't coming, except not to go...

We've been harvesting lots and lots of tomatoes, and yesterday I dug up four rows of potatoes. I have photos, but it's a drag having to fiddle about with two computers to load them up while I'm down here, so I'll hold off for a few more days. The good news on this front is that I will be buying a new computer in the next few days. A NEW computer! Wow, such extravagance. I'm very excited.

There's an interesting story in The Independent today about the medicine Vioxx. The company that manufactured the drug is one of the local big companies in our neighbourhood. We've been hearing a lot about Vioxx in recent months. As a matter of fact, when we lived back in California, a doctor gave me some samples to help combat back pain. After reading all the small print I decided against taking the pills, and now I'm rather glad I didn't.

Monday Monday

The Monday at the beginning of this week was worse than last week. No kids showed up at all - for math or reading. We gave them an hour - an hour in which I read half of Bunnicula - and then we drove home. I think the lack of kids is probably because it's August, and that night it was also stormy with lightning and rain showers. When school starts, they'll be back! With homework, I expect.

Bunnicula is fantasticly funny. I think it will be one of the books we give our soon to be seven year old niece for her birthday. Apparently she went all the way through Hooked On Phonics and is now "a reader", at least by her Dad's standards - though he is not a reader. I still can't always believe I married into a family of people who (mostly) don't read for pleasure. Which is why it's my goal to give the nieces lots and lots of books to use as jumping off points. Unfortunately six-nearly-seven loves Barbie above and beyond all else. Their house is full of pink plastic. So, if she's now "a reader", I need to foster that notion.

However I did note that he was reading a considerably longer chapter book to her - one about dogs by Bill Wallace - and I know that she loves all things Rabbits. I'm looking into the Animal Ark series, because so far that I'm up to date she wants to be a vet when she grows up. Pony Pals might be closer to her reading level but of course it's just about horses.

I also plan to look for some nice copies of the classic childrens books, something she can cherish. That way I can also ensure that I don't buy duplicates of books I've already given in the past.

By the by, Esme Codell's book, How to Get Your Child to Love Reading has lists and lists and lists of suggestions for children who like individual animals, or individual hobbies, et cetera. Niece loves rabbbits, and there's a list of ten or twelve books that feature rabbits. Which is great because other than Peter Rabbit and that Eric Rohmann book that won the Caldecott recently, I don't think I could have though of many off the top of my head.

Computer Hassles

Bleah. I've been having a nightmare of a time with my internet browsers. They crash and crash and crash. I think the computer is on it's last legs. So, if I don't post for a few days, that's why.

Harry Potter Hang Over

I'm bereft. I finished the last Harry Potter book this afternoon. I had tried to read it sparingly, so I wasn't done with it too quickly, but I still finished it. And now I don't know what to read. A house full of books, and nothing appeals to me.

I'm not going into spoilers because there's bound to be someone out there who hasn't read it yet but wants to.

I feel like I do when I get to the end of a Buffy DVD marathon: "Time to go back to the beginning." But I know the ending will come all over again. You see, I'm coming off books five and six, so 1100+ pages of Potter and friends in ten days.

What to do, what to do....

Yoga

I went to a yoga class on Friday afternoon. It was the first one in five years, so I was out of practice, to put it mildly. It was regular old Hatha yoga, I think. Fairly gentle by yoga enthusiast standpoints, but still moderately intense for someone out of shape. I enjoyed the class a great deal. I was one of only three students, which meant the teacher had time to come around and help us with our postures and poses where necessary. I felt fatigued and at the same time, happy, at the end of the hour.

It wasn't until evening that I felt the results kicking in. I slept like a log. On getting up yesterday, I felt like someone had given all those muscles I'd forgotten about a good hard poke with a sharp stick. I'm still stiff today, in part because of our activities in the garden yesterday.

I purchased a month's worth of unlimited classes for $69, which seems like a great deal (first timer's only, of course), which means I can take up to seven classes a week if I want. I'll probably take more like four or five. Some of them are twice a day with a few hours between. I can go hang out at the garden in between times as the studio is quite near the garden, and neither are very close to our house.

I have not exercised today. Unless watching four episodes of Dead Like Me on DVD counts.

Does an hour of yoga count towards cardio, do you think? It was sweaty work.

Garden Update

I'm exhausted. Yesterday we worked in the garden for four hours in temperatures upwards of 86 degrees. We kicked ass, watering the plants with 38 gallons of water we brought from home. I keep a rain barrel (water butt) outside the back door and have been filling up plastic gallon jugs everytime I collect them from the friend who buys them (full of milk). So after filling them and saving the excess water from the barrel, we took all the water over to the kitchen garden yesterday. And then carted a wheel barrow full of water jugs up and down to the garden two or three times. While I did this, Clyde set about installing the wooden stake-trellises we had made at home beforehand (here's some we made earlier). We banged the stakes into the earth and then tied the tomato and pepper plants to them. The plants we had staked previously had fallen over from the weight of the leaves.

It looks as though we will have a good crop of both peppers and tomatoes, but will have to wait a little while. Neither group has turned red yet. Lots of green fruit. Speaking of which, I harvested our first three cucumbers on Friday night.

Exercise much?

One of the books I'm reading as part of my coursework is The Energy Balance Diet, by Joshua Rosenthal. Rosenthal is the founder of the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, so my assumption is that this is a fairly important text in the coursework.

Reading chapter five this afternoon - I haven't read the whole thing in once piece - our warm up call homework has usually asked us to read a particular chapter at a time, but not necessarily in order. The point which was made about that is that sometimes you only "get" what is being said when you read a solitary chapter at a time. Thus, last month it was chapter five, this month, chapters nine and ten. Anyway, today - chapter five - I stopped dead in my sitting-in-an-armchair-tracks when I read the following:

"Moderate exercise has been shown again and again to produce remarkable health benefits. The Journal of the American Medical Association (Dec. 18, 1991) reported a study that showed that a leisurely walk at three miles per hour can significantly reduce a women's risk of heart attack. One of the ways it does this, scientists have found, is by increasing HDL levels, the cholesterol that protects you from heart attack and stroke.

But even less than 30 minutes, four to five times a week, can produce a benefit. Women who walked for just an hour a week had half the risk of suffering a heart attack as women who did not walk at all, according to Harvard University's Women's Health Study. "

Rosenthal goes on to describe a study of 13,000 people which takes place over an eight year time frame, in which the subjects are divided into five groups, depending on their rate of exercise. The greatest difference between the groups is the one between the first group, who are sedentary, and the second group, who walk for 30 minutes three to four times a week. The difference between these two groups is larger than the differences between the second group and the third, fourth and fifth groups - who range from people who exercise four to five times a week on up to athletes and marathon runners. The difference between the first and second groups is illustrated with the point that the people walking 30 minutes, three to four times a week cut their chances of suffering a heart attack or cancer in half, over the couch potatoes in group one.

He also reports that the study, also published in the Journal of the American Health Association, states "that cancer rates differed dramatically among the five groups. The men who didn't exercise had 4 times more incidences of cancer than those who were physically fit. Women who were sedentary had 16 times the cancer rate than those who were physically fit."

***

Makes me glad I walked a mile on my treadmill this morning.

Isn't it amazing that people can tell you stuff all your life and you don't hear it until you're ready?

First Beans

This is the sum of our first harvest of beans. I've been picking them as they were ready, because it seems like the green beans are especially enticing to some of our bird (I assume) population. The yellow ones, not so much. Actually, mostly whoever it is eats the leaves and not the beans themselves, or at least, not yet. I try to beat them to it by harvesting as the crop is ripe. Anyway, I picked these and we ate them lightly steamed with basil dressed chicken pieces one evening last week.

Yum.

August 1st

At the beginning of August, nobody came. Two students for maths (T & R), and no one for reading. Which ended up suiting me fine, as I was only 150 pages from the end of Harry Potter & The Order of the Phoenix, and I ended up reading almost to the end of the book in the two and a half hours I sat in the air conditioned room in a squashy armchair.

I imagine people were taking holidays and getting over the end of Summer Camp. I know the most important thing that I can do is show up when I say I will, so that the kids begin to understand that I'm an adult they can rely upon. Hopefully in time, more people will show up for reading. I assume things will pick up when school starts, as the children will likely have homework.

In the meanwhile, I'll get a fair bit of reading done!

I finished my re-read of HP5 late last night - I saved it until the dinner was done, the husband was in bed, the dishes were washed, etc. and I could curl up in my chair and finish that book, while the next one sat on the table nearby, waiting. I think I read about a page and a half of the new one before finally calling it a night.