Friday, April 19, 2013

Flowers and Sticks


What a dispiriting week! Enough already with the bad news, you know? At least the FBI seems to have settled on a couple of suspects in the Boston bombing -- that's a glimmer of good news, I suppose. Well, good-ish. Slightly good.

Olga and I went for a long walk yesterday through Kensington. She was in rare form, grabbing sticks off the sidewalk and running while chomping them up. More than one person got a good laugh from her antics. We had a fierce rainstorm in the afternoon complete with pellets of hail.

Otherwise, I worked and read. I'm reading "The Golden Notebook" by Doris Lessing, which is supposed to be a classic book about women and their lives and social condition in the mid-1950s. So far, it is slow going. I looked up some reviews online yesterday to see what other people think of it, and everyone seems to laud it, so I'll press on.

I've only read one other Lessing book, "The Grass is Singing," an early novel about a woman living in British colonial Rhodesia, and that was years ago. I remember liking it, and getting a sense of how unbearably hot and dusty Africa seemed to the Brits who settled there. For example, the woman in the book desperately wanted a ceiling in her house, to prevent the heat from radiating inward from the metal roof. What a concept!

We may suffer from questionable weather in England, but not quite like that.

(Photo: Blooming trees means it's time for iPhone photos, yesterday in Notting Hill.)

8 comments:

Elizabeth said...

Oh, dear. I tried to read that Lessing novel numerous times, and I just never could! I found it boooooooring to the extreme.

Ms. Moon said...

Life is mighty short. You might want to close that book and move on.
Loved the tree. Thank you for it.

37paddington said...

haha, what ms moon said.

and what an amazing shot of that tree.

The Bug said...

If I were on foot I think I'd have about 10 pictures of blooming trees a day - ha!

I tend to want to finish books that I've started - I'm stubborn that way. But as I've gotten older I take Ms. Moon's philosophy - there are too many books out there for me to waste time on something that I'm not enjoying!

Lynne said...

Of course we both featured flowering trees on our blogs today! Aren't they gorgeous? Do you think that's a cherry? Here the only trees blooming are the magnolias and cherries, with the crab apples not too far behind. Welcome, Spring!

Reya Mellicker said...

I tried to read it too, but gave up. Was like slogging through mud.

e said...

Gorgeous blooms and I agree about that book...put me to sleep and became a door stop until fobbed off on the local Goodwill.

ellen abbott said...

Well, I haven't read it and doubt I will now but I couldn't agree more about the news coverage. I have not watched it and only read a few things about the perps. still haven't caught the brother I don't think.