Greetings All! Im so glad you all enjoyed reading this book together, a reading group of just regular non-gardening people may have not been able to identify so well with Dorothys triumphs and failures in the garden. Weve all been there one way or another. Martie, you bring up an interesting point on the money issue. I know many gardeners here who have seemingly no budgetary constraints, and can basically do whatever they wish, whenever they wish..since my garden is small I have the ability to budget for it , but only so far. I often dream up very grandiose plans I would execute if I had the funds. Instead I modify these plans to fit in with my budget. I was always a little envious of friends I knew as a child who had "playhouses". My vision of the perfect Little House now involves a porch-like Dorothys, windows, and a small greenhouse attached. My initial reaction to the Fred chapter was a bit different from some of you---I found Norah to be a wholly unsympathetic character- self-absorbed and unfriendly. I would never let one of my children talk me into planting something in the wrong location , and in any case I think they would defer to my experience and not insist on a bad plant decision. I guess Dorothy did not want to rock the boat. Having said that, Dorothy wrote the Fred chapter and must know how unflattering it was to Norah. Is this why you found it manipulative Woody ? One thing that I often lost sight of while reading is the fact that this garden was for the most part, a vacation home . This was not their primary residence , and this really makes Dorothy something of a part-time gardener. Could you ever envision yourself as apart-time gardener? Not me. If I had two houses, Id have two gardens. Maryglad you posted ! And you story of your Grandfather was wonderful, thanks for sharing it with us. As we continue to discuss this book I am pondering what we might like to read next. I have a couple of ideas, but am wondering if any of you would like to put forth a suggestion ? I am still favoring the idea of not starting our new book till after Christmas-I will have company and Im sure many of you will too-it gets pretty hectic and want this to be a leisurely read, not a stressful one . Be back tomorrow ! Kathy in Napa

You might want to check out Gerald Durrell's books, especially the memoirs/travel/animal collecting books. They are light nonfiction and most of them have a strong evocation of place. I especially recommend: My Family and Other Animals (about his childhood in Corfu, Greece) The Whispering Land (animal collecting in Argentina) Three Singles to Adventure (animal collecting in British Guiana) Beasts in My Belfry (working in a zoo in England) The Drunken Forest (animal collecting in Argentina and Paraguay) The Bafut Beagles and A Zoo in My Luggage (animal collecting in British Cameroon) Durrell wrote wonderfully (and often humorously) about places, people and animals. Other books that come to mind are Arnaldur Indridason's mysteries that take place in Iceland. At least three have been translated into English (Jar City won the Golden Dagger award). His descriptions of the people, land, weather and society are very true-to-life (although rather bleak, as the policeman protagonist sees a lot of the dark side of life).

In 1965 my husband to be and I stayed two weeks in the Hotel Royal Bretagne at 11bis rue de la Gaîté in Paris. Years after I read in Simone de Beauvoir's memoirs that she'd stayed in this hotel for several months in 1937, commuting from her teaching post in Passy. She describes it as a very decent hotel and it still was in 1965 and also in 2000 when my husband was given a room there purely by chance when he attended a conference. A room then cost much more than the 17 francs we paid and was much improved. On this same visit we looked at the nearby Hotel Orfila in rue d'Assas where the Swedish author August Strindberg experienced the psychosis he described in his book Inferno. Another literary place I've actively sought out was Jane Austen's Chawton in Hampshire, on our way from Mottisfont Abbey. We arrived too late to see the inside but the outside loo was open, to our relief. The greatest disappointment was the long detour we made to Little House in the Big Woods near Pepin, Wisconsin, where we had hoped to show our children Laura Ingalls Wilder's childhood home. It was a shiny new replica with hardly a tree in sight. 29 years later it looks more weathered in internet photos.

Just seeing this and thought maybe you were talking about "Press". I watched a couple of those and it is absolutely hateful. :) Not a single character worth liking. Afraid though, it is exactly like the real life of the nasty gossip papers. The only show that is awful, but hard to not watch, and where you wish that something terrible would happen to every character. LOL