Magical Garden

I love to garden. This is not something I grew up loving, in fact when I was young I would watch my mom garden but would never ever think of getting my hands dirty. Yet when my husband and I bought our house it came with a very nice little garden in the front of our house. This little garden started me on my gardening adventure and to my love of planting and growing flowers and vegetables. I started with one small garden and now I have expanded to have a garden on the side of my house and in my back yard. This year I have extended my backyard garden, I'm hoping to plant a bunch of sunflowers. One part of my garden that I'm constantly fighting is the morning glory plants that my neighbor planted on her side of the yard but have tried to take over the whole back garden. Each day I have to go out and pull the baby vines out before they begin to overtake the garden. This brings me to my first book review.
(The photo is of the morning glory vines that I'm constantly out in my garden digging up.)









The book is "GARDEN SPELLS" By Sarah Addison Allen. In this book the main character lives in a magical house with a garden that also has magical plants. The main plant is an apple tree that if you eat the apples you find out what the biggest event in your life will be. The owner uses the plants in her cooking, and has a catering business. One of the sections of the book that I liked was about the "ivy" in her garden and I quote: " tiny leaves of ivy were sprouting. Ivy in the garden. Overnight. The garden was saying that something was trying to get in, something that was pretty and looked harmless but would take over everything if given the chance." Pg. 35. I have read this book a couple of years ago and this spring when I saw the Ivy (morning glories) starting to grow in my garden, I remembered this book and had to borrow it from the Library. I love the idea of a magical garden, and being able to use plants in your cooking to get a desired result such as making a person think about the past, or think you are special. I also like the idea that the plants growing in your garden could be telling you something about your future. This book is fun to read. I have to warn those of my friends who read it that it does have some curse words, and it does have some explicit love scenes. It is interesting to read of the family dynamics and the ideas about magic. I am enjoying reading it for the second time.







Two children's books about gardens I picked up this week at my work and had to bring home and read are "THE ROSE IN MY GARDEN" by Arnold Lobel and "THE PUMPKIN MAN AND THE CRAFTY CREEPER" By Margaret Mahy.


The Rose In My Garden is a great book to share with young children who want to learn about gardens. It starts with one small illustration of a rose and each page more flowers are added. Each is beautifully illustrated. On the rose is a bee, and at the end of the book a cat chasing a mouse and the bee all clash for a very interesting ending.


The Pumpkin Man and the Crafty Creeper caught my attention because of the illustration of the crafty creeper which to me looks a lot like the morning glories that I'm trying to get rid of in my garden. It starts with a man who is walking home with a wheelbarrow of potting mix for his pumpkins. The crafty creeper then convinces him to take it home, and life becomes very complicated fast for the quiet pumpkin man. The owner of the Crafty creeper ends up saving the day by coming and retrieving her plant that she calls a weed. It is a very fun book to read. Although in looking for a link for it you may find it hard to find this book if your library does not have it.
Well I have done my first book reviews and tried to link them to sites about the books. I hope this all works. Here is another site to check out about Garden Spells, it is a book club site I came across, if you read the book you may want to answer the questions.http://www.readinggroupguides.com/guides_G/garden_spells1.asp
I hope to do my next review soon.

A lot of Books to put away

These are photo's of the returned book cart. Due to TV turn off week, I have had a huge amount of books to put away this week. I sort the books by fiction, easy fiction and non-fiction. On a normal day on the front of the cart would be full, but this week both sides of the cart have been full. It takes me about an hour to put all the books back on the shelves. The children usually take out the same books, so it is actually very easy for me to put them away as I know the general area that each book belongs in. I have to say that I've been going home tired this week. I will miss putting books away next year. Usually this is the quietest time in the Library. There are no students in the library it is just me and the books. I often have time to look at some books and see if there are any I want to take home and read. I actually have a pile of children's books home right now. I'm hoping to put up my first book review this week. I don't want my reviews to the typical tell about the story and say I like it. I'd like to add how you could extend the reading into a project, or conversation with your child. So it is taking me awhile to actually get things put together. I hope to also do some adult books too, but it seems that I only have time to read picture books.

I had thought that I was over the fact that my job was over in June, then this morning I had a dream that I was crying about losing my job. I wonder am I repressing all these feelings?

This week at my church one of the people giving talks, talked about patients. I'm feeling that my job loss is a lesson in patients. I have always felt I was a patient person and wonder why I must learn to be more patient. I continually go back to feeling that I must only think of the day that I'm in, when I wonder too much about tomorrow then I get nervous. I'm not a backward thinker though, I rarely think about the past or even wish for the past. But I am a terrible wanting to know how it will all end type of person. What will my next job be? When will my husbands job end? Are we supposed to move? I want to know and yet unlike books that you can peek at the end to find out what happens, in life you have to wait. I feel as if I have been waiting a long, long time. Do any of you feel you have been waiting a long, long time for something?

A Library Assistant/Clerks Nightmare!

One day last week when I arrived at work my worst nightmare as a Library Assistant was realized. The children had attacked the bookshelves. They had pushed the books back, they had put books where they don't belong, and they had left the bookshelves an utter mess! This is the nightmare of all Library Assistants. We love order, we love neatness, we want to see books in their proper place, neatly pulled to the front of the shelves. When they are in disorder we feel like screaming. Something that you definitely should not do in a library. So what did I do? I of course went about, putting the books away and making all the shelves neat and tidy. The unfortunate thing is that soon this problem would happen again, as children just can't resist the urge to push books back, and they are not too good at cleaning up after themselves.

I have to admit that when I visit a public library I have a very strong urge to neaten the shelves. I work very hard to resist this. But sometimes I just have to neaten the shelves as I look for books.

Do you have a anything that you just have to keep looking one way despite the fact that others constantly try to make a mess of it?

All neat and tidy! Doesn't it look so much better!

My family survived TV turn off week!

On Monday we took part in TV turn off week. Yes that is right we stopped watching TV (actually the only thing we watch on TV are movies that we have bought or rented we do not have cable), playing Video games, computer games, and just took a break from electronics. It was nice to not have to do the continually nagging of the my children to get off of the games and do something that actually takes some use of your brain. I had gotten a bag of books from the library hoping to get some reading in but with all the activities we had planed I might have read a total of 12 pages of one of the books. I had also bought the Happiness Project book in hopes of reading more an being able to highlight my favorite parts, but I only got to read a few pages. One interesting fact I found out about TV turn off week is that it happens the same week as Earth day. And isn't that smart, we used less energy this week having every electronic turned off. I did get to read a ton of children's easy fiction books which I hope I get to start doing reviews on soon. As that is part of my reason for blogging, is to share my love of reading. Since right now I work in a children's library I will show case some of my favorite books and authors. I'm also on a journey to read books about cats or with cat characters. So that will be coming soon.

A PLACE OF REFUGE

Everyone has a place they like to go where they can relax and find renewal. My favorite place of refuge is the sea shore. The smell of the ocean, the sound of the waves crashing in help to take my mind away from all the worries of the world. My favorite thing to do is collect sea shells. I actual have made some fun names for them. Perhaps in a future blog I will put pictures of them up and my unusual shell names. Sometimes though I am attracted to the broken shells. I actually have a jar of them. Why? Because it is to me very much what life is. No person goes through this life with out being broken in some way. And when you walk by the ocean you realize that not many shells make it to the beach without being broken, either by the harshness of the ocean or the pecking of a birds beak. These shells represent the truth of life to me. That we all are beat upon by the world and come out a little broken. With some people you can see their brokenness, they have been in accidents that have changed them for life. Other people you see it in their eyes as they tell you their story. Their body may look complete and well but their eyes show their sadness and pain. Some shells are just pieces of what they once were, you cannot even imagine what they were at first, and others look whole from one angle but actually their damage is hidden. The broken shells remind me that nothing is perfect, but even something broken can be beautiful and cherished.

We tried to catch a sunrise at the shore this weekend. Got up way too early, and headed to the beach. We watched the fog rise, but saw no sun. But we still got to see the water, smell the air and find some great shells. My daughter got the best find a large sand dollar. It has some blemishes but don't we all.

My Papasan!

For the longest time I have wanted a Papasan chair. But I have always looked at the price and thought it seems so expensive. What if I buy it and then I don't like it as much as I think I'm going to like it. This past Friday was my lucky day. As I was driving home from grocery shopping one of the neighbors had a Papasan chair on their front lawn for sale. Once all the perishables were in the refrigerator I went and asked how much they wanted to sell it for. They Wanted $20.00. I ran home got the $20.00 and the chair was mine. Well when my cat or my daughter are not in it. It is going to be the perfect place to sit and relax and read. What a great blessing for me!

Shelf Markers

On my desk is a can that is filled with colored shelf markers. Each marker has either a letter or number. It seems such the simple thing, take one shelf marker and go find a book. It is never that simple. No each child has a special color they want, or number or letter. "I must have a blue, with the number 7. because I'm 7 or I must have the letter "L" because my name begins with "L"" . If children do not get their favorite marker it can be a very bad thing. Sometimes they start fighting over a marker and then I must take it away. I have to say I'm not sure which is more filled with germs the shelf markers or the "Germ Thing"! Every child in the school has touched these markers. One time I took a black marker and went over the numbers and letters and they thought that they were brand new shelf markers. I think it is probably time to do that again. The other week this can fell off the desk three times. The other end of the shelf marker is round. The Librarian needs these to always point down. The Librarian actually has many students trained to make sure they are all pointing down. I had wanted to get a picture with some of them up, but the Librarian changed them around before I got my camera out. I can connect this to "You've got mail" Think about the part where everyone is in line for coffee at Starbucks and each person has an important decision to make. The important decision here "I'll have a Blue Shelf Marker with a 7 please!."