Mimi’s nose began to run during our snowbound captivity earlier this week. I came down with it Friday, Sparks on Saturday. It is a vicious cold for which Sudafed is a placebo and Nyquil does nothing. Yesterday the neighbor, freshly returned from Florida and grateful for his shoveled driveway, brought us two bags of Florida juice oranges. I hadn’t ever juiced a real juice orange before, so you can imagine my delight. They are little capsules of liquid, practically no pulp to be found. Amazing. Sparks and I have decided that gin is medicinal, so we’re having a fine time today.
After hearing the recommendation last spring and receiving a copy of the book for Christmas, I am finally reading We Took To The Woods. If you like rustic, cabin-y escapism, please try it. Me personally, I am grateful for anything interesting enough to pry me away from an obsessive re-read of the Outlander novels. The first trailer for the Starz adaptation of Outlander went live yesterday, by the way. Gritty.
And I received my bookbinder’s awl and waxed linen thread and vellum, so I am working on the Coptic stitch. It turns out that you really need a stout cover for the Coptic stitch to work, but these notebooks will do. The yawning gap between folios is also disconcerting… as a reader, I would feel that I was about to fall out of the narrative.
I am going to jot down lots of very interesting notes in them. Just as soon as I have some very interesting notes to take.
Snapdragons 
I have wanted to read “We Took To The Woods” for a long time, so maybe now I’ll finally track down a copy.
“The Orchard: A Memoir” by Adele Crockett Robinson is a true-life account of a young woman running an orchard by herself in the 1930s and is quite lovely also. “Spoonhandle” by Ruth Moore is also a lovely escapist look at 1940s life in small-town, coastal Maine. I think you would like both of them.
I recently re-read Sarah Addison Allen’s “Garden Spells” and fell in love with it all over again – you might enjoy it. It’s Southern magical realism centered around gardens and food. Not earth-shaking, but tons of fun. Her other books are good, too.
Thank you for the recommendations!