Life Lately

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Happy Tuesday, dear friends! I hope your week is off to a great start. After an unusually capricious month of April, we’ve had a string of gorgeous days here Western Mass. Summer temperatures and sunshine, day after day, and gentle breezes, have coaxed us all out of the comforts of our favorite armchairs and into the garden. 

There’s a new project underway that I’m vey excited about, and it involves the creation of a new outdoor space in our backyard. I’ll let you know more about it after we’ve finalized the details and work is well under way. In the meantime – like many of you gardeners, I’m sure – I’ve been slowly updating old garden beds, digging up and dividing overgrown plants, mostly lilies and hosta, and relocating them to the more neglected parts of the garden. 

But most of my free moments, rare and far in between these days as the end of the school year is approaching, have been absorbed by a new (to me) series of books by the Canadian author Louise Penny, whom I’ve only recently discovered and have quickly become a die-hard fan of.  If you, too, enjoy puzzles, good writing and cozy village mysteries, then I wholeheartedly recommend Louise Penny’s work.

Starting with Still Life, which launched her incredibly successful career as an author, Penny explores humanity’s most complex themes, through characters that are layered and interesting (and always ready for a warm chocolate croissant), all the while satisfying our need for a good old-fashioned murder mystery, Rich in references to Canadian history, vernacular architecture and interiors, philosophy and poetry (some of the poems featured borrowed from Margaret Atwood’s books of poems), her stories feel light, but are deeply insightful and moving. I just finished the first two books in the series, Still Life and A Fatal Grace, and I feel like I do not wish to read any other crime author except Penny, for a really, really long time.