Weekly Bird in the Hand

This week's good things!:

Photo by Navicore

• Trying new healthy recipes, and/or taking not so healthy recipes and adjusting them to make them healthy - and enjoying the results including Goji berry power bars, oat and banana bars, and poached pear sorbet.  Yum!
• Book club - the people in my group and the joy of reading/listening to good books.
• Singing with a great conductor.
• Eating your own home grown produce.
• Easy, fun times with close friends.
• The sweetness of dogs.
• The beauty of roses.
• Drinking real coffee.  I've been drinking decaf for ages, but this week switched back to real coffee to see how it goes!
• My daily walk in nature.

Seems like lots of this week's list revolves around food and drink!  Guess that's not a bad thing.  What about you? Eaten anything good this week???

The Postmistress

We had bookclub at my house this morning, to discuss the book The Postmistress by Sarah Blake.  It wasn't my turn to choose the book and host, but sadly Olga, who had chosen it, is not well.  I'd have been happy if it was my choice of book, as I loved it!

It is the second novel written by Sarah Blake. 

The story follows radio reporter Frankie Baird as she reports on WWII in London and Europe, sending her reports back to the US via the radio.  In the US, it focuses on the lives of two women living in a small town in MA. 

We had a great discussion on the book - lasting more than two hours.

I had listened to the audiobook version on my iphone, as I was doing my daily morning walks. It made the radio reports all the more real, so is a perfect book for audiobook. At times, I could cry as I was walking along, hoping I didn't meet any neighbors who would see my tears......

One of my favorite things about the book was the title.  As I listened to the book, I kept thinking about the title "The Postmistress" and tried to make sense of it.  It doesn't make sense for a long while....there is a postmaster in the book - who is female - but that is not what the title refers to.  And suddenly, it all became clear and made so much sense.  It is very clever, but I won't reveal it all here.

If you haven't read it - I highly recommend it.

On my walk today, I started a new book recommended by a friend: "Major Pettigrew's Last Stand".  Another audiobook, and within 20 minutes, I'm already very taken with it.  It is very British with sweet humour, and very proper British narrator!  I know I'm going to enjoy it.  I'll tell you more when I've finished it.

Have you read anything good recently that you can recommend? 

The Secret (Cambridge) Garden

I've finished the bookmarks that I mentioned on Monday in my blog post, so time to tell you the story behind them.

A friend of mine, Fran, in San Francisco is having a reunion of friends she met when her husband was on sabbatical in Cambridge, UK. This group of American women formed a book club and also took a lot of guided walks around Cambridge, especially around the university area. They loved seeing all the gardens and Fran mentioned how much she liked the fact that so many of the gardens were initially hidden behind garden gates. Very English! Fran thought that she would like to give each of them a gift at their reunion, that symbolized something about their connection.

So the idea that came to mind was to make a bookmark for the bookclub part, and then form a garden gate with flowers on the back to suggest you had opened the gate and walked into the garden....and thus The Secret Garden

The group are reuniting in Chicago in October. There were 16 of them in the group and they've kept in touch and supported each other through email over the years. Twelve of them are managing to make it to the reunion, including the blue badge guide from Cambridge.

I chose roses for the flowers as they are very English.....and when I picture a garden gate, I often imagine a climbing rose trailing over the top of it. It's also a very feminine flower too.... I hope the ladies enjoy their roses and memories.

Thanks Fran. It was a nice project to do, and made me think of England too!