Seedlings

 I started this blog purely to write about books, but I would like to add a personal note. After all: it's my blog and I'll do what I want! 

My windowsills were covered in seedlings until yesterday. They were big enough to go outside, but alas: the night temperature kept going down to zero. Now I put them outside during the day, to acclimatize. "Outside" is a large balcony (15 by 2 meters), very sunny and sometimes windy. Today all "non-essential" shops re-opened, so I will be able to visit gardening centres too. But maybe I'd better wait as the temptation to buy is always great and I already have too many seedlings (they will go to neighbours and friends). Also cafes and restaurants will be allowed to open (outside seating only), so we will celebrate at our favourite lunch place.

What to read where

 While looking for information on authors I came across this site:  https://www.mappit.net/bookmap/    It is a "Global Book Map"listing books about or situated in a particular location. There are more than 100,000 books on the map that can be searched by countries, regions, or by any of the thousands of specific places the books are set in or are about. So if you would like to read a book set in your home town or your holiday location this is the place to look.

For me it works the other way too: on a trip to Copenhagen I have visited the apartment block from Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow (Peter Hoeg), in Edinburgh I have used locations from Alexander McCall Smith's books as my guide, and I have cycled round northern France trying, and failing, to find the hotel from The Greengage Summer (Rumer Godden). How about you, have you visited places from your favourite books?

Wild Island, a Year in the Hebrides by Jane Smith (2016)

I read about this book in Country Living (oh, I miss being able to buy British Magazines!) and ordered it in January 2020. In her book, Jane mentions Colonsay's Spring Festival, so I looked it up.  It sounded so wonderful I was beginning to think how nice it would be to visit when the world changed and all foreign travel was off. Maybe next year ...

In paintings and words Jane portrays a year on Oronsay, a small Hebridean island farmed by the RSPB for the benefit of wildlife. She originally worked for the BBC and National Geographic as a wildlife film-maker, then changed direction, studying painting and printing. 

 

Apart from the pictures, which are wonderful, she also has a way with words, painting a picture of life on the island and of all the creatures living there.

Mike and Val are the RSPB-managers on Oronsay, living there with their helpers and their dogs. You get to Oronsay by driving across from Colonsay at low tide, a hazardous undertaking at all times, and especially in bad weather or at night.

"On Oronsay I set to work, trying to understand what makes this place so rich in wildlife. The main conservation workers on the farm are the cattle and sheep, which shape the wildlife habitat by their grazing. There are different mouths for different jobs. Black-face sheep crop the field grass short so that choughs can feed, while Hebridean sheep have narrower mouths, and graze the rough hill-ground. Luing cattle grab mouthfulls of long grass in the wetter fields. As they poach up the ground with their feet, they create nesting hummocks for lapwings" (I looked up Luing cattle: they are a breed originally developed on the island of Luing)

 

" At first I find them (the seals) impossible to draw. They look like enormous slugs, galumphing around the shore. Shapeless. I remind myself that they are mammals with the same number of arm and leg bones as me, but in different proportions. They're like humans in sleeping bags. I imagine a skeleton hidden under all that blubber, and it helps".

 

This is a beautiful book to cheer you up when spring won't come. A great gift for anyone with an interest in art, The Hebrides, birds etc. Jane's website can be found here

The Good Life, at a price!

 I always try to find out where the authors of my books lived and what happened to their houses. John Seymour wrote "The Fat of the Land" while living in a house near Woodbridge, Suffolk. He paid a peppercorn rent. Well, you can, or could (the information dates from 2019), rent it now for 1500 pounds per month! Details, including photo's can be found here