Sunday Salon...April 7, 2013

Butchart Sunken Garden taken April 1, 2013 by Anne Bennett

Weather: Raining. Really hard rain, the kind that makes huge puddles and small lakes everywhere.

Today: is the last day of my Spring vacation.  A good day to stay inside, catch up on laundry, read a little, and enjoy the last of that vacation-feeling.

This past week: we spent the first part of the week in Victoria, BC. We rode the Victoria Clipper which is a boat not a ferry so we were carless. We purchased a Butchart Gardens package which left straight from the Clipper, after stowing our bags, did a small town tour, then left us to wander the gardens for several hours before depositing us at our hotel.  It was a perfect day. The weather was sunny and warm and the gardens were not swarming with people. Lovely.  Simply lovely.

Yesterday: we attended a promotion ceremony for a man that my husband works with in the National Guard and then his after-party.  All of the women and men that my husband serves with in this capacity are such good people. I mean really, really good people.

Last Sunday: Easter, was delightful.  Our pastor preached on the Trinity and had a piece of art displayed. He talked about how we are part of the trinity story. It was perhaps the most touching sermon I've ever heard. Afterwards we had a crew of folks over for dinner.  We roasted lamb, a first for us, and it was really delicious. After the company left and after we delivered our daughter back to college, we spent the night at the Edgewater Inn so we could be right near the Clipper docks for our morning sailing. Our room looked over the Elliott Bay with all the lights of West Seattle twinkling in the distance. It was so gorgeous and serene.

Books completed this week:

• The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman---a psychological drama with a perplexing situation. I found it very readable but also quite depressing.
• Prodigy by Marie Lu---after a month of dragging my heels and slowly inching along in this book I finally finished it and would actually give it a B or B+ grade. It is a YA Dystopian novel, the second in a trilogy.
• Jane Austen Ruined My Life by Beth Pattillo---Not high  literature to be sure, but a fun romp through the spots that Jane Austen frequented during her life and a look at how her books make today's gals pine unrealistically for happily-ever-after-endings.
• Ten Poems To Say Goodbye edited by Roger Housden---the second his poetry books that I consumed like a starving person, starving for poetry. The poems highlighted in this collection are about goodbyes because of death, the end of relationships, and family members moving on to new station in life. 
• Ten Poems to Set You Free edited by Roger Housden---I spent a bit of time perusing bookstores in Victoria for Housden's books and found three. After arriving back home I purchased another. Can you tell I'm obsessed right now?

Books I'm currently reading:

• The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh---a book club selection. I just got back to it yesterday and I'm intrigued by the Victorian notion that each flower carries with it a particular message. For example, yellow roses stand for jealousy.
• The Paris Wife by Paula McLain---another book club selection and the All-Pierce County Reads book of the year. This is about Hemingway's early life and his first wife.
• Twenty Poems to Bless Your Marriage by Roger Housden. See, more confirmations of my current obsession with poetry and the editorial comments of Roger Housden.
• Dancing with Joy: 99 poems edited by Roger Housden---all poems about the joys in life.

Food: This week of eating out a few favorites deserve a shout-out...the scones at Murchie's Tea Shop; the fish and chips and the bread pudding at the Irish pub our first meal in Victoria; and the bites of crab cakes I snuck off Don's plate our last dinner in Victoria. Yummy.

Poem for the day:
“What a strange thing!
to be alive
beneath cherry blossoms.” 
― Kobayashi Issa, Poems