Month: April 2014

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In Which We Visit the Buffalo Botanical Gardens Three Times, and Peanut Loves Ponds

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Continuing on our quest to ferret out all the best family-friendly activities in Buffalo, we’ve got a new winner: the Botanical Gardens!  I’d been wanting to poke around here for awhile, and hubby planned a special surprise visit as a treat for the night after Valentine’s Day: an evening exploring the Night Lights.  The Night Lights are a light show inside the Botanical Gardens (I believe they’re a seasonal special event, but it could be more frequent than that).

We arrived to find the dome all lit up and glowing green from within.  It was bitter cold, so I stood outside in line holding a place for our family while hubby kept Peanut warm and happy in the car.  When I got close to the door I called him and they darted up to join me right as I was about to make it through the entrance.  Once inside, we were immediately dazzled by the green, sparkling lights darting all over the central dome.

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(This picture does not do the dome justice.  It’s gorgeous.)  We drifted along with the crowd, checking out both the plants and the fun lighting.

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Peanut and I were both obsessed with this little rainbow waterfall.  I couldn’t help but think of Fancy Nancy; I think this is exactly the sort of event she’d adore. (Adore is fancy for love!)  And speaking of adoration, while at the Night Lights, Peanut discovered her new soulmate: the koi pond.  (Can a pond be your soulmate?  If not, please don’t tell Peanut.)  She was completely enamored of the fish swimming through the clear water and darting under and around the lily pads.  So much so, that she talked about the pond nonstop all the following week and we decided to make a return visit only seven days later.

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Two things: (1) the Botanical Gardens are even more beautiful in the sunlight than they are at night, and (2) darned if it wasn’t blissful to be SO. WARM.  We all stripped off our coats immediately and basked in the tropical heat – a nice change from the biting chill outside.

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The Botanical Gardens are set up as a series of greenhouses, each one dedicated to a different plant type or habitat.  There’s a room filled with ivy, another with dozens of Bonsais and miniature trees, and my favorite (other than the pond, of course!) was the desert room, where I drifted from plant stand to plant stand admiring the succulents and the cacti.  (I’d love to have a succulent garden one day, but I don’t know if it could withstand our Buffalo winters unless it was under glass like this one.)

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Naturally, we spent a bit of time playing in the “family garden,” which was a room filled with activities for the littles.  There was a sandbox, a few plants that the kids could touch, and a couple of tiny lawn mower push toys.  Peanut went straight for the lawn mower and set up a few spectacular crashes.

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After we spent some time in the family garden, Peanut was clamoring to head back to the pond, so we found our way back there.  Grandma and Grandpa had joined us for the outing, and Peanut spent some time showing them her favorite fish.

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Peanut and Daddy also befriended a giant ivy dinosaur, as one does, you know.

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It’s been a couple of months now, and Peanut still talks about the pond constantly.  We read her pond books (In My Pond and Who’s Hiding in the Pond?) daily, and every afternoon when I get her up from her nap, she greets me with the same description of her dreams: “A pond!  Fish!  Blub blub!”  It’s love, people.  It’s pond love, between a baby and her pond.  (Sung to the tune of “Guy Love” from Scrubs, natch.)

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We’ve since been back a third time, this time with Nana and Grandad, and Peanut had just as much fun communing with the koi and walking the little footbridge.  On our third visit, she also discovered the sand box in the family garden, and narrowly avoided filling her pants with sand, so that’s fun.  😉  I think it’s safe to say we’ll be going back for a fourth visit ASAP.

Do you have Botanical Gardens in your city?  Do you love koi ponds as much as Peanut does?

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Hark! It’s National Poetry Month!

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It’s April, which means rain showers (that’ll hopefully bring May flowers), Easter, warmer days, and… National Poetry Month!  Every year, I like to get in on the action by making an effort to read more poetry and share some of what I’m reading here.  Last year I celebrated by dedicating my month to reading a new-to-me poet, Anna Akhmatova, in what proved to be a very enriching experience.  Peanut also got in on the action, presenting When We Were Very Young, by A.A. Milne, in a special National Poetry Month edition of “Peanut’s Picks.”  The year before, I shared one of my favorite poems, by my very favorite poet, to celebrate both National Poetry Month and Easter, and I extended the celebrations a bit by using another poem to make a very special announcement.

This year, I have plenty of poetical fun planned to celebrate National Poetry Month!  You can expect another special edition of “Peanut’s Picks,” and of course, some e.e. cummings.  And since I enjoyed exploring the works of a new-to-me poet so much last year, I’ve decided to do the same thing this year.  For 2014, I’ve chosen:

Emily Bronte

Emily Bronte!

If you’ve been reading my blog for more than five minutes or so, you probably know that I’m a big fan of Charlotte and Anne Bronte.  Jane Eyre is my favorite book, and I love Anne’s works The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Agnes Grey as well.  Of the three readalongs in which I’ve participated, two have been devoted to Charlotte’s work.  In May of last year, I read Villette with Beth and Amal, and in September I participated in the Septemb-Eyre readalong hosted by Kerry.

So yes, I love me some Bronte sisters.  Except, I just can’t get behind Wuthering Heights.  I’ve tried, goodness knows I have.  I’ve read Wuthering Heights three times now and disliked it more each time.  So much so that when Maggie of An American in France announced that she was hosting a Wuthering Heights readalong, I begged off.  I knew I wouldn’t enjoy it and I didn’t want to spoil the readalong for others.

I really, really want to like Emily Bronte’s work.  I’m tired of giving the caveat “except for Emily,” when I share my Bronte love with fellow readers.  So I’m going to see if I get along better with her poetry.  I expect I will.  The only redeeming quality that I found in Wuthering Heights was its forbiddingly romantic (or romantically forbidding) descriptions of the wild natural world that surrounded the Heights.  Emily’s sensibilities and her attraction to the remote and desolate strike me as a perfect quality for some seriously intense, brooding poetry.  Basically, all of the Bronte, none of the Heathcliff?  That’s what I’m hoping for.  I’ve been flipping through the copy of her collected poems that I acquired for this month (the Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets, which is the same edition I picked up for Anna Akhmatova last year) and so far, I’m a big fan.  The challenge will be to read a little Emily Bronte each day this month and hope that by the end of the month, I’m a convert – if not to her one and only novel, then to her poetry.

Here’s a little taste:

The night is darkening round me
by Emily Bronte
(source: The Poetry Foundation)

The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow;
But a tyrant spell has bound me,
And I cannot, cannot go.

The giant trees are bending
Their bare boughs weighed with snow;
The storm is fast descending,
And yet I cannot go.

Clouds beyond clouds above me,
Wastes beyond wastes below;
But nothing drear can move me:
I will not, cannot go.

Whew!  What wild imagery!  Yep, so far, so good.  I love the rhythm and the compelling words.  I’ll share one Emily Bronte poem every Friday for the rest of the month, so check back next Friday for more from the most enigmatic of the Bronte sisters.
Are you planning to celebrate National Poetry Month this year?
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RILLA OF INGLESIDE

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Rilla of Ingleside marks the first time the outside world really intrudes on peaceful, idyllic Prince Edward Island.  When the novel opens, young Bertha Marilla Blythe – the youngest child of Gilbert and Anne Blythe, known to all as “Rilla” – is pondering impending womanhood.  What should she wear to an upcoming dance?  How will she get herself noticed by handsome Kenneth Ford?  And will she be able to keep herself from lisping if she does attract his attention?  These are Rilla’s worries.

But Rilla’s girlish stresses are soon chased out of the picture completely, by something much bigger: stormclouds of war, which have gathered over Europe and soon sweep Canada into the fray.  The Great War (or World War I, as we know it) is underway, and soon Four Winds and Glen St. Mary will be all but empty of their young menfolk.  Jem Blythe and Jerry Meredith are among the first to go, while Walter Blythe – disgusted by the horrors and atrocities of war – stays home for a time amidst growing criticism of his perceived “cowardice.”  (There’s a particularly sad scene in which Walter describes being given a white feather, which I didn’t remember at all.  I don’t think I knew the significance of the white feather when I read this book as a child; it was Maisy Dobbs in Birds of a Feather who explained that particularly cruel gesture.)  Of course, Walter does eventually go off to war too, like most of the youth of his time, and (hark! spoiler!) is killed in action, in the most tragic scene of the series, leaving Una Meredith to mourn all her days.

As all this goes on, Rilla is growing out of her self-centered, girlish ways, and into a more serious womanhood.  She brings a “war baby” home to Ingleside in a soup tureen – his father at the front, and his mother dead, little “Jims” has only Rilla to depend on.  Rilla determines to “bring Jims up by the book,” and embarks on a child-rearing adventure with as much rigidity and stress as any new mother.  She organizes a youth Red Cross, deals with a mean girl who seems determined to sabotage Rilla’s attempts to lead her band of volunteers, and wonders if Kenneth Ford will return home and, if he does, whether he’ll remember her.  (I won’t tell you that, nor will I tell you whether Rilla is able to keep her lisp out of any future conversations with the opposite sex.)

Rilla of Ingleside is one of my top four (four favorites out of an eight-book series isn’t too bad, right?) amongst the Anne novels.  I find it fascinating – horrifying, yes, but fascinating – to watch foreign policy and faraway events encroach steadily upon the peaceful little world of Ingleside and its surrounding areas.  I cry when Walter dies, and I cry even more when Little Dog Monday is reunited with his master after waiting faithfully at the depot and meeting every train with tail hopefully wagging.  I cheer for Rilla in her efforts to serve Canada on the home front, and for Faith Meredith, who drives an ambulance in faraway France.  And I mourn with Anne at the loss of her children’s safe, protected world.  This is a strong, often heart-wrenching, ultimately uplifting end to one of my all-time favorite series.

I’m submitting this review to the Classics Club Blog as part of my challenge to read and blog 100 classic books in five years.

Rilla of Ingleside, by L.M. Montgomery: buy the book here, or support your local indie bookstore.  (These are not affiliate links.)

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Reading Round-Up: March 2014

Reading is my oldest and favorite hobby.  I literally can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t love to curl up with a good book.  Here are my reads for March, 2014…

Snobs, by Julian Fellowes – Edith Lavery is the daughter of an accountant, working at answering phones in a London office in the late 1990s, when she meets the Earl Broughton, heir to the Marquess of Uckfield, while touring his ancestral home.  Edith might have first encountered the Earl on the wrong side of the silk cord, but she soon hops across and becomes his Countess.  But Edith is honest enough with herself to admit that while she likes her new husband, Charles, she doesn’t feel passionately about anything except her new title and social position.  And it doesn’t help that her mother-in-law dislikes her, her brother-in-law is actively sabotaging her, and her husband’s friends are snobs who exclude her at every opportunity.  So it’s easy for her to be swept off her feet by a handsome actor filming a period drama at Broughton.  Will Edith’s marriage survive, or has she lost her position in the social order forever?  I found this book while browsing in the library as I waited for my literacy student to arrive for a tutoring session, and checked it out immediately.  I had no idea that Fellowes (writer of Gosford Park, and creator of Downton Abbey) had written a novel, but I figured it had to be good.  Oh, and it was.  Scathingly witty, perfectly detailed, and a nail-biter almost to the last page, Snobs is a perfect read for Downton fans.  Fellowes clearly knows both the worlds he portrays here – the world of theatre folk, and the upper-crust world of the British aristocracy – and his novel is just as good as his scripts.  Highly recommended.

Train Like a Mother: How to Get Across Any Finish Line and Not Lose Your Family, Job or Sanity, by Dimity McDowell and Sarah Bowen Shea – I read SBS and Dimity’s first book, Run Like a Mother, when it first came out – before I was even thinking about becoming a mother.  (I’d heard that even if you didn’t have kids, the Another Mother Runner girls were great at helping you find ways to work exercise into a busy schedule and, well, I’ve always had one of those.)  Now I am a mother, and a mother who happens to be looking down the barrel of a marathon in October, so I turned to SBS and Dimity again for motivation and help putting together a training plan.  (I’m not sure I’m going to use their plan, since I’ve always used Hal Higdon in the past and found he works for me, but it was still helpful to see how they recommend training for marathons, since they’re both veteran runners, and Dimity is actually an Ironman!)  I love the “practical motherly advice” they dole out, the hilarious quotes from other “mother runners,” and the down-to-earth wisdom they apply to training, nutrition, tapering, and race day.  If you’re a runner with a busy schedule (whether you’re a mom or dad, or not) let Sarah and Dimity help you get your racing act together!

Out to Canaan (Mitford Years #4), by Jan Karon – I checked this out from the library along with These High, Green Hills and was planning to return it unread, to wait for the next time I really needed some gentle fiction-style comfort reading, but it was there and I have a compulsion, so obviously I ended up reading it.  Father Tim has officially announced his retirement to his congregation, and as expected, they take it poorly.  (Ungrateful!)  Although his time leading a church is drawing to a close, he has plenty to occupy him: worrying over Dooley, who has a girlfriend; finding a buyer who will treat Fernbank (Miss Sadie’s home, which she left to Lord’s Chapel) kindly; helping baker Winnie Ivey figure out her future; searching out Pauline Barlowe’s remaining kids; and (unwisely, if you ask me) meddling in the local mayoral election keep him plenty busy.  A good read for stressful days, of which I did have a few this month.

I am Half-Sick of Shadows (Flavia de Luce #4), by Alan Bradley – Buckshaw continues to face financial difficulties, and to help them out, Flavia’s father has agreed to allow a London film company to use the premises as a movie set.  Soon hordes of actors and other film personnel descend upon the estate – including the famous Phyllis Wyvern, set to star in the movie.  When the vicar proposes that Phyllis and Desmond Duncan, her leading man, perform a scene for the benefit of the church funds, the actress surprisingly agrees.  The entire village turns up for the performance, which means there are no shortage of suspects for Flavia to question when one of the visitors is found strangled with a length of film.  These mysteries get more and more enthralling, and Flavia herself continues to charm.

Speaking From Among the Bones (Flavia de Luce #5), by Alan Bradley – Possibly the most exciting thing is about to happen to the village of Bishop’s Lacey since… well… ever – at least if you ask Flavia.  St. Tancred’s Church is about to dig up the body of its patron saint!  Of course, Flavia plans to be in the front row when the saint’s remains are exhumed, because how could she resist?  Despite the vicar’s attempts to keep her away, Flavia is the first one to see into the tomb – but it’s not St. Tancred she finds there; it’s the body of the church organist, wearing a gas mask but very much dead.  Flavia is determined to unmask the killer and finally get some recognition from Inspector Hewitt and his magnificent wife Antigone.  This was my favorite mystery yet, because I love the character of the vicar, and I just found the premise so intriguing.  The story ends with a bang (spoiler alert!): Flavia’s mother, Harriet, lost in a mountaineering accident ten years before, has been found.

The Dead in their Vaulted Arches (Flavia de Luce #6), by Alan Bradley – (caution, spoilers abound although I will try not to ruin everything) – A week has passed since the events of Speaking from Among the Bones, and Flavia is gathered with her father, sisters, Dogger, Mrs. Mullet and the entire village of Bishop’s Lacey to meet the train that is bringing her mother home.  As Flavia stands on the platform, Winston Churchill appears and asks her a cryptic question.  Then a strange man appears and requests that Flavia pass a cryptic message on to her father – and is immediately pushed under the oncoming train.  Flavia can’t really focus on these events, though, because she is dealing with some very intense emotions surrounding her mother’s return (gahhhhh, I’m trying SO hard not to give anything away) and so she doesn’t do much sleuthing.  She will learn a great deal, however, about Harriet’s history, including what exactly she was doing on that Tibetan mountain, and this information is going to change Flavia’s life forever.  I read this book in a day and was completely absorbed in it from start to finish.  Now I’m simultaneously excited to see where Bradley takes the series from here, and bummed that I have to wait – like everyone else – for the next book.  This series just keeps getting better and better.

Updated, because I’m a spazz and I forgot:

The Penelopiad, by Margaret Atwood – Back in October, when I was on a major Margaret Atwood kick (I read all three novels in the MaddAddam Trilogy, plus a collection of short stories, in short order), my mother-in-law suggested I check out Atwood’s retelling of The Odyssey from the perspective of Penelope, Odysseus’s faithful wife who waits in Ithaca for his delayed return.  Penelope, in Atwood’s hands, is far more than simply the patient wife of the myth.  She is a strong-willed, independent woman who is intensely troubled by events outside her control.  Helen of Troy, naturally, makes an appearance and is a fun character (when is Helen ever not a fun character?).  I enjoyed The Penelopiad immensely, although I know that it will color my impressions of The Odyssey when I finally get around to reading it.  (Team Penelope!)

Sorry to those of you who saw this post go up yesterday in incomplete form and were confused.  I started a new job last week and am still trying to figure out new routines, and a draft slipped through the cracks.  (I know, I know, this shouldn’t be challenging, since I’ve done the working mom thing before – but it’s been seven months and I have to adjust to having much less time on my hands than I did.)  Anyway, March was a slow, but good, month of reading.  As a big “Downton Abbey” fan (indeed, who isn’t) I loved Snobs, and I hope Julian Fellowes has more novels up his sleeves.  The other highlight of the month, of course, was Flavia.  I love a good mystery series, and the Flavia de Luce mysteries are destined for my “favorites” shelf.  That kid is just so endearing, the mysteries are absorbing, and the series is primed for a really fun new direction.  And now, on to April.  I have some library books out and I’m hoping to start a new (to me, although historically popular) mystery series, so stay tuned for more book thoughts to come next month.