Longwood Gardens

Sunday was almost unbearably hot.  But I didn't know that it would be when I agreed to meet friends at Longwood Gardens, in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.  That was several weeks ago, and although I suspected that mid-July wouldn't be fun, I was hoping for cooler weather.  As it happened, the day was mostly overcast and there was a lovely intermittent breeze.  Without those, I would have melted, despite a wide-brimmed hat and my Ray Bans and a cool dress.

Longwood Gardens are what was once one of several old du Pont estates in the area.  It's over 1,000 acres set in rolling southeastern Pennsylvania countryside.  There are gorgeous formal gardens, but our focus this visit was the meadow.  It has recently been expanded and there are many new pieces of hardscaping  -  bridges and walkways and a nature center gallery.  With air conditioning, a bathroom, and two drinking fountains.  Just what was needed after hiking through the meadow.

There are so many flowers tucked into the meadow grasses.  Black-eyed susan, butterfly weed, blazing star, coneflower.  We admired the red-winged blackbirds balancing on the tops of the waving stems.  There was even a 'green roof' bluebird house!  How ecologically sound!

It was nice to get back to the lake at the bottom of the meadow and into the woods.  There's a tree house I'd kill for, and the Italian gardens with their fountains were so tempting!  I'm sorry I forgot to take photos of these.  You'll have to visit Longwood yourself, or at least look at their web site:  http://longwoodgardens.org .

Our friends were just coming home from a week long vacation at the Delaware shore, so we ended our visit with lunch at the 1906 Restaurant at Longwood Gardens.  Excellent!

This is cheating, but here are some photos I took when we were there in April 2013.  They always have such gorgeous borders.  In the spring, they're almost overwhelming.

Reading in June

Two of the books I finished in June were included in a previous post.  I read several books at one time, and sometimes it takes me a while to finish a book, especially a long one, so these aren't necessarily books I started and finished in June.  But I doubt you care about that.

Jamaica Inn  -  Daphne du Maurier

No Man's Nightingale  -  Ruth Rendell

Patricia Brent, Spinster  -  Herbert Jenkins

A Spoonful of Poison  -  M. C. Beaton

The Sign of the Twisted Candles  -  Carolyn Keene

Heaven's Prisoners  -  James Lee Burke

My friend Katrina (http://piningforthewest.co.uk) and I decided we would read Jamaica Inn together.  Not page by page together, but during the same month.  I'm not sure how we plan to discuss it, so I'll just say that I enjoyed it but it was predictable.  I first read this book in the 1960s, during my Gothic period.  Even then, though, my index card says that I didn't think it was one of du Maurier's best and 'definitely not one of her more suspenseful ones'.

No Man's Nightingale brought me back to the evil in modern times.  Retired Inspector Wexford is finding it difficult not to be a policeman.  He's consulting with the department now.  This time, a female vicar is strangled.  Not only do we need to know who did it, we need to know who her daughter's father is.  There is a kidnapping and more murder and the father is revealed.  The motive is simple, and I'm surprised it's not a more common murder motive.  (BTW, I'm interested in differences between American pronunciations and British.  I heard in an interview that Ruth Rendell pronounces her last name REN-dle.  The ex-governor of Pennsylvania has the same last name but pronounces it ren-DELL.)

I believe it was Simon at Stuck in a Book (http://stuck-in-a-book.blogspot.co.uk) who posted a blog about Patricia Brent, Spinster.  It's been a while, but I noticed it, was in the mood for a light, amusing book, and it was a free e-book download from Manybooks for Kindle (http://manybooks.net/help/devices/kindle.php), a site I find easier to use than Project Gutenberg.  Simon was right:  it is amusing and light.  Patricia Brent is a spinster, although a fairly young one.  She's tired of the people in her boarding house pitying her, wondering why an intelligent, attractive girl is STILL unmarried.  To shut them up, she announces that she is having dinner with her fiance.  She doesn't dream that some of them will follow her to see this mystery man.  Patricia has to ask a man at the restaurant to pretend he's her date.  He plays along and he likes her and he wants to continue to see her.  She's humiliated that she's picked up a strange man in a restaurant and thinks he's making fun of her.  There are interesting revelations about the man that only trouble her more  -  because they make him even more of a catch.  I enjoyed it, but, in retrospect, I'm annoyed that she felt so constrained by the social mores of the time.  How silly!

Not everyone likes Agatha Raisin books, but those of us who do find ourselves returning again and again to find out what Agatha is doing.  She's frustrating and silly, but there's something endearing about her.  In A Spoonful of Poison, she's asked to do publicity for a village fete.  She's wildly successful, but someone puts LSD in the jam tasting samples.  Two old women die during their unplanned trips, and some people blame Agatha for luring so many outsiders to the fete.  It's Agatha all over again:  jealous of her lovely detective Tony, on the lookout for a lover, aware that she's getting older and worried about being less attractive.  The Agatha Raisin books are quick reads and I like the characters.  I consider them palate cleansers.

It was time for me to re-read a Nancy Drew book.  Belle, at Belle, Book and Candle (http://bellebookandcandle.blogspot.com), inspired me when she recently posted a blog about Nancy Drew.  I love Nancy Drew.  She colored and shaped my early reading years and she'll always have a place in my heart.  In The Sign of the Twisted Candles, Nancy and her friends Bess and George (a girl) take shelter at an inn, The Sign of the Twisted Candles, when caught in a violent rain storm.  Nancy notices the proprietor berating his foster daughter and attempts to comfort her.  She learns that a 100-year-old man, the owner of the property, lives as a recluse in the attic.  She and her friends have lunch with him and several days later, the girl asks Nancy's lawyer father to help the old man draw up a new will.  There's a fight between the man's distant relatives and they're livid when he dies and leaves almost all his money to the proprietor's foster daughter.  You'll probably guess why he left it to her, but I don't want to spoil it for you.

Last night, I finished Heaven's Prisoners by James Lee Burke.  I read this on my Kindle.  I have to tell you, I'm not sure why I keep reading this series.  The books are so evocative of what I think the deep south is like (hot, humid, lots of snakes, very shady characters), but I have trouble relating to the society he depicts.  It's just so far from anything I know.  The books are always very violent.  I can't always understand the Cajun lingo some of the characters speak.  I can usually follow the plot line.  So, there's a lot I don't like about them, but I keep reading them.  Dave Robicheaux and his wife are out in their boat when they see a plane crash into the water.  Dave dives to see if he can save anyone, but the only one alive is a little girl who doesn't speak English.  He takes her home with him, worried that she'll get lost in the system.  He's also worried because he saw four dead people in the plane but the authorities report that only three were killed.  Why?  Dave, a retired cop, can't leave well enough alone and it comes back to bite him big time.

I'm still reading The Count of Monte Cristo, which I hope to finish soon, Love Nancy, the letters of Nancy Mitford, Travels of William Bartram, and several others.

Are you reading anything interesting or amusing?

Nancy Drew and Mystery Muffins

At least once a summer, I read a Nancy Drew mystery.  The only reason I wanted to go to school was to learn to read so I could read Nancy Drew books all by myself and not have to depend on my sister to read them to me.

Nancy showed me how mysterious and exciting life could be and how great it was to help people in trouble (even if you often got chloroformed or kidnapped or knocked on the head).  The books taught me about a time already intriguingly out of date when I was reading them in the 1950s and 1960s.  Those 'roadsters'!  Those 'frocks'!  'Tea rooms'!  They weren't dumbed down, so there were words I had to look up, new words to learn.

For just a few hours, I can pretend I'm 12 again, sitting on the Virginia Creeper covered porch with a cold Coke and a bag of chips, whiling away a summer afternoon.  I spent a great deal of time sussing out non-existent mysteries in my neighborhood.  I eventually graduated to wanting to be Mrs. Emma Peel, from the TV series The Avengers.  Again, I fell sadly short of my ideal.

I only read and enjoy the older books, not the 1960's rewrites or the later yellow back editions.  I've been quietly collecting them over the years, but the values have been creeping up.  Here are two editions of The Sign of the Twisted Candles, the book I just read.  The contents are identical, but the editions are different.

If you really want to get into collecting Nancy Drew books, the reference book you need is Farah's Guide, a chunkster of a book by David Farah, who apparently has no life outside of Nancy Drew.  Nancy Drew books were reprinted frequently, but the publisher didn't list the print dates, only the original copyright date.  Other than physical differences, you can't tell when your book was printed.    Farah has researched hundreds, maybe thousands, of editions and put together this guide to unraveling the ages of your Nancy Drew books.  The section on The Sign of the Twisted Candles alone is eleven pages long!  Things like this confuse me, so I've never been able to tell with any certainty when my books were printed.

I also have both editions of the Nancy Drew board games, one from 1957 and one from 1959.  My sister and I had one while growing up, but it disappeared from the attic at some point.  I bought one and found another for my sister, I think one of the best presents I ever gave her.  Occasionally, I get mine out and my husband will trounce me  -  every time.  I still love moving the little metal cars around Moon Lake, The Haunted Bridge, The Moss-Covered Mansion, and other places from the books.

While chatting with my friend Katrina (http://piningforthewest.co.uk), I mentioned that I'd just baked some Surprise Muffins.  They're masquerading as Mystery Muffins in the title of this post.  She asked for the recipe, so here it is Katrina.  (It's from an old Betty Crocker cookbook.)  Let me know if you can't read any of it.  I use the Popular Muffins version because I don't have much of a sweet tooth and the Sweet Muffins are too sweet for me.  I'm also a vegan, so I substitute soy milk for dairy milk and I use an egg substitute that I make myself.  It's noted in my barely legible handwriting on the recipe.  I just realized that I cut the 'surprise' part off the recipe.  The surprise is that you fill the muffin papers half full, put a teaspoon of your favorite jam or jelly in the center, and then fill with the rest of the batter.  Surprise! 

The Count and I, or Size Matters

I've been reading The Count of Monte Cristo for months.  It's a good story, but reading so slowly, I've forgotten who some of the people are, especially because they're called by different names at different points in the book, and I'm not sure if I remember all the plot details.  I know it's about love and revenge.  And it's exciting.

But what I've discovered is that I should not be reading this on my beloved Kindle.  I love my Kindle because it's easy on my arthritic thumbs.  I no longer have thumbs of steel, capable of holding open even the newest, unbroken-spine book.  But after reading 40 pages on my Kindle and only advancing 1%, I got discouraged.  Was this book 4,000 pages long?  Was the book getting longer?  There seemed no end in sight.  I need more encouragement than that.

So I went to my favorite used book store, The Book Trader, and found a wonderfully floppy Modern Library paperback of The Count of Monte Cristo.  The book lies in my lap like a happy cat.  No need to hold it open with my sad thumbs.  Better yet, after reading, I move my bookmark farther into the book.  Yes, I am actually making progress!  I'm clearly a donkey and carrot kind of person.  I'm now 989 pages into the 1,462 page book.

No longer will I torture myself reading chunksters on my Kindle.  My Kindle's great for normal size books, for reading in bed, for taking along on vacations or while waiting for appointments.

But, as far as reading on my Kindle, size matters.  At least for me.

What I've Read Recently

This is a quick rundown of the books I've finished since the beginning of May.  The titles and authors are:

Darkness Take My Hand  -  Lehane

Bon Courage  -  McAdams

The Preacher  -  Lackberg

India Black  -  Carr

Borderlines  -  Mayor

The Santa Klaus Murder  -  Hay

The Art Detective  -  Mould

Through the Evil Days  -  Spencer-Fleming

Major Benjy  -  Fraser-Sampson

By Its Cover  -  Leon

Wild  -  Strayed

I finished Wild about an hour ago.  I didn't like the detailed description of the author's mother's death from cancer, but it is an integral part of the book.  I've spent enough time in hospitals and nursing homes watching people die, so, forgive me, but I stay away from that subject matter in my reading.  However, the adventure that Cheryl Strayed had hiking the Pacific Crest Trail alone in 1995 is fascinating.  I couldn't put it down.

Bon Courage wasn't very satisfying.  The author and his second wife vacationed in France after a whirlwind courtship and marriage.  They buy a house in the village and have all the typical problems renovating it, plus some problems that aren't so typical.  I like books about living in foreign countries, but I didn't like this author very much.  He's grumpy and yells and drives off on his motorcycle after he and his wife have a fight.

I read Darkness Take My Hand while Jack and I were in Boston.  Dennis Lehane is from Boston and his six books about private detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro take place in the city.  I don't know Dorchester very well, the section of the city they live and work in, but I have fun recognizing other places when they venture out of the neighborhood.  The books are exciting and I like the main characters.  It seems that the pair are not very good at protecting people from being murdered, though.  My friend Dean says they must be read in order, so I'm doing that.  This one is number 2.

I've been waiting eagerly for the next Clare Fergusson / Russ Van Alstyne mystery and yet, somehow, Through the Evil Days slipped past me last year.  These mysteries should be read in order, too, otherwise it might be a bit difficult to follow the progression of the relationship between Clare, an ex-military helicopter pilot turned Episcopalian priest, and Russ, the police chief in a small upstate New York town.  In this one, Russ and Clare are trapped in an isolated area by a huge snow storm that's also trapped kidnappers and meth cookers.

India Black was a fun romp through politics and prostitution (wait, aren't they one and the same?) in 19th century England.  A politician dies in India Black's bordello and some very important papers disappear.  An agent of the government is trying to find them before they harm the country.  He enlists India's help.  They embark on a sometimes ludicrous chase, getting the papers, losing the papers, getting the papers, and losing them again!  There are more books in the series but I doubt that I'll read them.

The Preacher was a decent mystery that kept me guessing until the end.  Girls disappear and their remains are found, just like years ago.  But that murderer is dead, so who's killing them now?

Borderlines takes place in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, a place with lots of trees and not a lot of people.  As a former New Englander, I like books that take place in my old stomping grounds.  Joe Gunther, acting chief of the Brattleboro, VT, police, goes north on a temporary assignment and finds himself searching for a killer.  Or two.

The Santa Klaus Murder is a reprint of a 1930s mystery.  I wanted to like it, but it was very slow.  I suppose I'm used to the faster, more complicated murder mysteries of today.  The solution to this one had everything to do with who was where at the time of the murder and who benefitted from the will.  Most of the book was spent tediously discovering and verifying where people were, like a very long and uninteresting game of clue.

Major Benjy continues the wonderful Lucia and Mapp series by E. F. Benson, this one being written by contemporary author Guy Fraser-Sampson.  I adore the Lucia and Mapp books.  Although this one captured some of their flavor, it fell short for me.  All Mapp, no Lucia.  I also have Lucia on Holiday by the same author and I still plan to read that.

I love art mysteries, so I enjoyed The Art Detective.  I was a little put off at first because it's mostly about paintings hidden beneath other paintings rather than art hidden in someone's attic or in a cave (yes, I loved The Monuments Men).  But the detection involved in sussing out masterpieces that have been painted over or altered to the extent that the original artist can't be determined is very interesting.

And last but not least, the newest Donna Leon Inspector Brunetti book, By Its Cover.  Brunetti is contacted when rare books and pages from rare books are stolen from a private library in Venice.  And then someone is murdered.  Brunetti figures it all out.  I was holding my breath when I started this book because I haven't really liked the last few Brunetti books.  I like his wife Paola and what they read and their meals and when they sit together on their balcony drinking ice cold wine or grappa, so I'm disappointed when there's not a lot of that.  There's more in this book than in the previous couple, so I was happy about that.  Maybe Paola should have her own books!

I'll try to do updates more frequently so they aren't as long as this one.  Happy reading!

Sundaaaaay at Beautiful New England Dragway!

I was a wild child.  More of a wild young adult really.  I was about 18 when I stopped reading about life and started living it.  I never gave up reading and often showed up with a book at unusual or inappropriate places, like parties.  I wanted to taste as much as I could, but I was likely to be the one in the corner reading and keeping one eye on what was happening around me.  I got an eyeful.

I met another wild child.  More of a wild man, since he was eight years older than I was.  I had been warned about him.  He was an auto mechanic and loved going fast.  He had long hair and played the guitar and had a reputation.  He built drag racers, too.  I was fascinated and fell hard.

When he moved to Boston, I followed him.  We turned my 1966 Chevelle SuperSport into a C-Modifed Production drag racer.  Every Friday, we and our roommate Kevin towed the car to Epping, New Hampshire, to New England Dragway.  Here's a YouTube clip of a radio advertisement for N.E. Dragway from 1973, the time we were there racing:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cygj3MNMU-c  Here's a photo of me working on the car as we rebuilt it.

This is a photo of my car after we had taken it apart and put it back together, welded a roll bar in it, painted it, and installed the racing engine that Jack built (over 500 hp) and other racing parts (shifter, transmission).  We did everything possible ourselves.  We drew names from a hat and Audacity won.  Unfortunately, the track announcer pronounced it 'Auto City' until I set him straight.

And here's that wild man, now my husband of 40 years.  He was delighted when people told him he looked like Ginger Baker, the drummer from Cream, one of his favorite bands.

Yeah, I know, but it was the early 1970s.  And here I am, walking away from the car.  We slept in the car or on the ground or in the tow truck.  I had to share the public ladies room with other girls at the track.  How did I do that?!  How did I go three days without a shower?!  How did I manage to eat?!  I can't even imagine doing that now.  No clean sheets, no pillows, no vegan food, no private toilet, no bathtub and bubble bath, all that noise!

We spent the weekend racing, unless some important and unrepairable or replaceable part of the car broke.  It's amazing how generous other racers were.  Jack was a perfectionist and wouldn't race for money until everything about the car was right.  We won lots of trophies.  I can hear the engines, see the flames from the funny cars and fuel dragsters at night, and smell the gasoline and the nitromethane.  It was exciting and there were interesting people at the track, famous drag racers and other minor celebrities.  Google 'Jungle Pam' for a taste of those.  I saw Pam reading in their trailer one time and wondered what she was reading.  But she was famous, so I didn't have the nerve to ask.  

(As an historical aside, this was about the time of gas-rationing in the United States, 1973 and 1974.  Do you remember when you could only buy gas on even numbered days if your license ended in an even number?  I don't remember how we managed to have gas for racing, except that we lived and worked in Boston and didn't use much gas during the week.)

We did this for two or three years.  And then we got married.  Saving for a house seemed more important to me than plowing all our meagre money into replacing a $500.00 transmission or other expensive part.  So we sold the car.  But we have the photos and the memories and I still won't drive a car with an automatic transmission.  Three Corvettes later, we now drive a VW Jetta Clean Diesel standard shift.  But I can still hole shoot most people at red lights or drop a gear or two into corners.  It's second nature to me and it helps keep the reflexes sharp.

So, if the grey-haired woman next to you at the stop light is revving her engine, it's probably me!  Say hello  -  to my dust!!

Last Weekend in Boston

I've been busy reading and running back and forth to Boston.  Now that the driving back and forth (5+ hours each way, depending on traffic  -  and we ran into a lot of traffic on this last trip!) is over, I have many things to catch up on at 'home'.  I say 'home' because Philadelphia will never feel as much like 'home' as New England feels like 'home'.  I've had the house to clean, after a month of neglect, and tons of small things to do that could wait until our vacation was over.

This past weekend was our last in Boston for this trip.  The big tragedy was that my Kindle went into a coma just when I needed it.  I was almost finished with India Black and didn't take another book, figuring that I'd just use my Kindle.  I charged it on Thursday, but when I opened it on Saturday, it said the battery was completely dead.  I hadn't brought the charger either.  So much for packing lightly.  (It's been fine since I charged it when we got back and is still holding a charge.  No idea what happened.)

One of the first things I did when we got to Boston was go to Bromfield Pen Shop for more fountain pen ink.  I just can't resist it!  Baystate Concord Grape and Ottoman Azure.  So, this photo is for Stefanie:

I was FORCED to go to Commonwealth Books to look for something to read.  I looked for Jamaica Inn, which Katrina and I plan to read together in June, but no luck.  I had a copy in Philly, but I thought if I could find a copy in Boston, I'd get a little head start.  However, I found four more Phoebe Atwood Taylor Asey Mayo mysteries!  I found nine over the course of our vacation in Boston, a real treasure.  But I learned my lesson about relying solely on my Kindle!  I felt very anxious without a book.

On Saturday, we met our friend Jenny, our ex-veterinarian, on Cape Cod.  We had lunch at the Old Yarmouth Inn and then she and I walked across the street to Parnassus used book store while Jack napped in the car.  I bought a Gladys Taber book I didn't own, My Own Cape Cod, and Jenny bought a copy of Ferdinand the Bull for her grandson.

Then the three of us walked up the street to the Edward Gorey House Museum.  I had my camera with me, but, as usual, I forgot to take pictures!  The house is a lovely, typical, old Cape house.  The downstairs is the only part open to the public, but there's so much to see there that it was enough for us. Gorey was one of the most imaginative and creative people I can think of.  I wish I'd known him.  He adored cats and reading and smooth, round stones and the ballet and toy mice (maybe for his cats) and too many other things to list.  I bought a T-shirt with books, the word 'Read' all over it, and cats lazing on all the books.

The docent at the Gorey House suggested that we might like to drive to Gray's Beach, one of the loveliest on the Cape.  Jenny had to get back to take care of her dogs, so Jack and I went to take a look.  It was a marsh on an inlet rather than a ripping, crashing wave, ocean beach.  But it had a long boardwalk across the marsh.  We saw an osprey nest and there was an osprey on it!  If you look closely at the photo, I hope you can see it.  The sea air was refreshing and reminded us of one of the things we miss about living inland.  We felt healthy breathing the salt air instead of the gritty stuff that passes for air in Philly.

And now we're back in Philadelphia.  We had a wonderful month in New England and hope to go back next fall.  The condo we rent for a month at a time is now like a home away from home.

Turtle, our cat, is still not sure that we won't be packing up and leaving her this weekend.  I've assured her that we're here for the next four or five months, but I don't think she believes me.  It's hard to read or use my lap top with a large, insecure grey cat on my lap!