Hoar Frost

Today even the most mundane weeds and sticks of stubble have been transformed into icy wonders by the hoar frost. I thought of bringing some twigs indoors but if you touch them the minute crystals melt away in an instant.

January walk and recent reading

My neighbour said oh you should have photographed the hoar frost on the trees down the road, but I was too busy rushing around this morning. Next time... I don't know why two of the photos are so black - possibly because I took them straight into the sun.

Reading -

During the Christmas period I read The Dive from Clausen’s Pier by Ann Packer. It’s one of the books I’d set aside some years ago because the subject matter sounded too depressing.

Here’s a blurb: “Carrie Bell has lived in Wisconsin all her life. She's had the same best friend, the same good relationship with her mother, the same boyfriend, Mike, now her fiancé, for as long as anyone can remember. It's with real surprise she finds that, at age twenty-three, her life has begun to feel suffocating. She longs for a change, an upheaval, for a chance to begin again.That chance is granted to her, terribly, when Mike is injured in an accident. Now Carrie has to question everything she thought she knew about herself and the meaning of home.”

I didn’t find Carrie a sympathetic character but, of course, one sympathises with her situation. She had been unsure about her engagement before Mike's accident and now wants to escape. This she does, and takes up with an unsuitable man in New York. It was all convincing and extremely well-written. Ann Packer is obviously talented. I must read her second book one day, though it, too, sounds depressing.

Late summer. Recent reading

Haven't had a chance to take any photos lately. When there has been a period of sunshine I've been otherwise occupied and the rest of the time it's cloudy or actually raining.
The garden is between seasons and, I have to admit, looking a little dull at the moment, though the geraniums (or pelargoniums) have done surprisingly well in the wet.
Anyway, here is the local Hampshire countryside this time last year. Photo credit Rory Vereker.

Recent reading. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - I was both interested and moved by the accounts of wartime on the island. If I have a criticism, it is that I felt the novel was too whimsical in parts. I couldn't quite believe in all the characters though I liked the main protagonist.

Old School by Tobias Wolff. Thought-provoking novel, same flavour as The Dead Poet's Society. I much enjoyed Wolff's excellent writing and the emotions of the bookish hero who spends his schooldays pretending to be rather grander than he actually is in order to keep up with the preppy Joneses, while his competitive literary aspirations were genuine, heartfelt and entirely convincing.