Productive days, at least for some things

After promising my kids for weeks that we would tap our sugar maples this year, I finally bought taps for our biggest tree - just in time for what is likely to be the last weekend of the sugaring season. Neither Bryan or I had ever tapped trees before and were amazed at how quickly the sap started flowing - pretty much right away. The kids got a kick out of it too, Amelia especially. The boys quickly decided that playing in the mounds of mud in the yard was much more fun. By nightfall we'd already gotten quite a bit collected, which is good, since 10 gallons boils down to about 1 quart of maple syrup. I feel like a true New Englander - my Puritan forefathers would be proud. (Or maybe not, since this is pure frivolity on our part.)

It's amazing to me how different the areas of our country are and how attached we become to our places. I had the pleasure of reading a writing friend's recently published novel yesterday - I started it and was enjoying myself so much that I wanted to finish it. It wasn't a page-turner, OMG-I-have-to-find-out-what-happens kind of book. More a slow, easy read with characters that feel like old friends by the end. I even got attached to the dog in the book.

The book is called When the Ocotillo Bloom (by Linda LaRoque, published by Wings ePress - check it out) and the reason I mention it as I think about our regional differences is that Linda writes - beautifully, I might add - about an area of the country that is about as different from mine as night is from day. I've never been much interested in Texas (sorry, Linda) or reading scenery, for that matter, so reading scenery about Texas you might think would immediately turn me off. Linda's ability to describe her home region, in vivid, precise terms, weaving it into the story and helping the story move forward through those descriptions was amazing to me.

Made me even want to visit Texas sometime. But not in the summer. I got a kick out of the description of a mild May evening as not even being ninety degrees (or something like that - I'm sure I'm butchering her words). Here in the Upper Connecticut river valley, ninety degrees doesn't qualify as anything but downright hot.

Linda's way with words is exceptional, I think. I've had the pleasure of reading her next book and can't wait till I see it in print. I don't want anyone to think I go around praising every book I read. I started one a few months ago and never finished it because the first chapter made me want to throw it across the room. Maybe it's just me, but the only historical novels I think should have the word "shag"- as used the way Austin Powers would use it - should involve time travel and Austin Powers. Unless books that take place in the 1960s now qualify as historicals. Although apparently in the language during the Regency period in England, it was a very low, vulgar word, only found in underground and privately printed books. I'm just not buying "shag" as an appropriate word for a Regency hero - even one who starts off as a rake.