MinxterBLOOM

Penguin paperbacks!  Oh the covers. And, oh the perfect orange. Ah!  Even though this "cover" is lavender.  What will you read in your garden this summer?  Time travel back with a Penguin science fiction book.  See a click list here (also a bit of a design lesson on the evolution of sci fi covers).  I will read this 1962 classic: 

Barbara Pym mentions rhubarb in at least two of her novels.  I shall make a study of this and inform you, gentle reader, should I find more. First!  Catherine Oliphant, our heroine in Less than Angels, carries rhubarb in her arms, much as a goddess of the harvest would. She is helping, as always, Alacic Lydgate: this time, in his garden.

Wilmet, the lightly anti-heroine-ic character in A Glass of Blessings, notes a dinner conversation.  Her husband's bland and proper colleague James discusses the merits of their dessert wine.  He mentions an obscure sweet wine -- a Samoa -- saying this:

"...the kind of thing that seems otherwise to have no raison d'etre -- to be drunk with gooseberries or rhubarb!"

ME AGAIN! Rodney Forsyth, the sturdy Mr. Wilmet, notes that both his wife and mother like gooseberries and such astringent treats.  He must defend them against the moral lapse of liking tarty foods. But Sybil, Rodney's mother can defend herself quite well, thank you.  She parries back as BARBARA, AGAIN, WRITES:

"Perhaps they are more of a woman's fruit," said Sybil, "like rhubarb. Women are prepared to take trouble with sour and difficult things, whereas men would hardly think it worth while."

Convinced to read a Barbara Pym book?  'Rhubarb' alone, would invite me into these books. Listen to Kerry Clare's video plug for Barbara Pym. Kerry, who blogs at Pickle Me This, compares Pym to Muriel Spark!  (I want to be a mash-up of Muriel Spark and Barbara Pym in my next life).

Look at this odd but endearing pair from the Balcony Gardener in England.  My first gnome of memory is a chipped concrete Snow White gnome in my neighbor's yard.  Mrs. Brooks loved that chippy chappy.

A few years ago, my neighbor gave me a darling plastic garden gnome. as a birthday present.  The little darling reads a book, sporting removable glasses. The gnome, from Ebay, is very like the German brand Heissner.  Yes. Heissner the brewery! I think my gnome is a modern knockoff likely made in Eastern Europe or China, circa 1990s.  Will post a photo when I locate my usb cord.

Some see gnomes other than terracotta or concrete to be tacky. They would be right.  However, tacky is good.  Really.  Do we really want to live in the Sistine Chapel or watch only PBS?  Nah.

Odd and perhaps true facts:

The Chelsea Flower Show in England bans garden gnomes: the claim? The plastackic creatures detract from tony (my words) garden designs.

Garden gnomes are disallowed in graveyards in some British dioceses.  Why does this not mesh well with the country culture that Tolkien lived and wrote in?

TargetLowes

Vermont Country Store

BeachChair

 Mr. Pearl