Violets

wood violets in bloom
Wood violets in bloom

Another return to the garden this week – the wood violets. So pretty. I am wandering around the yard saying “Hello” to all the emerging flowers – anything rather than finally get down to doing my taxes.

Books for 2014 Season

In a couple of weeks, the bookclub meets to choose its next season of books – seven of them. Several people have been suggesting titles. Bookclub members: you still have a few days to send me names and authors of the books you would like to read. Below are the books we are choosing from, listed in no particular order.

Fiction

Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish: A Novel
David Rakoff
The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Neil Gaiman
The Scarlet Letter
Nathaniel Hawthorne
All My Puny Sorrows
Miriam Toews
The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules
Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg
Stoner
John Williams
The Sea
John Banville
The Orphan Master’s Son
Adam Johnson
The Light Between Oceans
M.L. Stedman
Orenda
Joseph Boyden
Three Day Road
Joseph Boyden
The Collector of Dying Breaths: A Novel of Suspense
M.J. Rose
King Lear
William Shakespeare
I, Claudius
Robert Graves
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Confabulist
Steven Galloway
Longbourn
Jo Baker
The Return
Michael Gruber
Cutting for Stone
Abraham Verghese

Non-fiction

The Inconvenient Indian
Thomas King
Five Days at Memorial
Sheri Fink

The Thing with Feathers: The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human
Noah Strycker

Sparaxis in Bloom!

sparaxis_in_bloom

My Sparaxis is in bloom and looking blue as blue. I love these delicate early season flowers. They are always blooming by Mother’s Day and they remind me that life goes on. One of my neighbours has a huge swatch of lawn covered in sparaxis in bloom and it looks like blue snow. They spread so rapidly that if you didn’t like them, you would call them a weed. But they will be disappear a few weeks from now, as the plant dies down quickly after blooming and the corm lies dormant until the following spring.