According to Cicero, I have everything I need! It makes perfect sense because gardens fill up spring and summer while books take you through autumn and the dark, cold days of winter.
My gardens are ready for their winter sleep. The corn field next to the vegetable garden will be chisel plowed soon, and they will also run the chisel plow over the garden. Memo to me: put stakes around the asparagus plants so they don’t get dug up!
My flowers are so darn hardy that they are still blooming in their containers despite the fact that I have completely ignored them since the end of August. I haven’t watered them or weeded them, and they are actually thriving. Some got dinged by that frost we had a couple weeks back, but the petunias are still going great guns!
We do want to plant a couple of apple trees yet this fall. Still, I am ready to be done with gardens so I can move on to books.
There is nothing better, in my mind, than curling up on the couch under a cozy blanket and losing myself in a book. I can travel without leaving my nest, I get to meet exciting new people, and I always learn something new in a book. Even the romantic suspense novels that I favor have some nugget of knowledge in them I didn’t know before.
I started out my “library” when I was a teenager with the Trixie Belden series. Hunt Drug in Rochester carried them, and with my $5 allowance, I could buy four books. Eventually I had the entire 31-book series which, unfortunately, went up in smoke when the house burned. I thought about restarting the collection, but they are no longer $1.25 per book!
I went through the stage as a young adult of reading all the romance books by Harlequin, Sillouhette, and Putnam. That’s when I discovered my all time favorite author: Nora Roberts.
While I love to read, Nora Roberts is the only author whose books I will buy the day they are released. I don’t wait for a paperback or check them out at the library. I must own them. I do believe I own every Nora book that has ever been published. Furthermore, I have read and reread every one of them at least a half dozen times.
I also own every book she has written under the pen name J. D. Robb which is sort of a sci-fi, futuristic crime drama series. In fact, I have so many of her books that I have run out of room on my bookshelves for them.
My kids got me hooked on the Harry Potter series, so I have that entire set as well. Captain, he likes the James Herriott books: All Creatures Great And Small, etc. Those are floating around here someplace, too. Young Man likes Louis L’Amour stories. Most of L’Amour’s book are about western men...cowboys, gunslingers, law men. One, however, has a female lead role...The Cherokee Trail. That’s one that I have also read a half a dozen times.
In my fantasy world, I would actually have a library in my house with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on every wall, cozy reading chairs, soft lighting, and a monster coffee machine. I’d live there.
When I was a kid, my mom built us each a bookcase for Christmas one year...also went up in smoke. Maybe I’ll give making my own book case a shot, except I suck at carpentry projects and Captain won’t teach me how to use a circular saw. Hmmmm…
I have started a little library for Cubby with some Dr. Seuss classics, the Poky Little Puppy and other Golden Books, and one Dick and Jane antique book I found in a little shop in Duluth.
Fantasy library or not, I can always find a few moments, or hours, of enjoyment when I open a book. I invite you to go back and read your favorite book on one of the long winter days ahead!
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