The week began in a typical November fashion. Monday was gray, cold, and damp. When I went out to do the morning chores, the pigs were nestled deep in their bed of straw. I threw them a bucket of slop and as soon as they devoured it, they went right back to their bed. Down at the barn, only a few chickens were out in their yard. Most of them were inside where it was dry. After the chores, I came back to the house and sat by the furnace grate to warm my hands and feet. I could have very easily gone back to bed to read the morning away under warm blankets, but I didn't.
The Murrays were still here on Monday. By the time they were up and running, everyone else was gone for the day. Miriam was dog sitting at the Foster's. Stacey, Hannah, and Malachi had left for work. I was feeling the cold, gray, damp Monday morning schlumps and was probably not the most convivial host. Luckily, Miriam and Maverick arrived later in the morning. She's a better hostess than I am a host. And since Maverick is nervous around small children, he and I spent the rest of the morning sequestered in my room until the Murrays departed. I had a good book to keep me entertained and Maverick took a nice nap. The Murrays left at noon.
Several weeks ago I began drawing up my Winter Reading List. I began it with Lewis Carroll's two Alice books. After that, I had books of history, religion, classic fiction, and science fiction lined up. As I moved on to my next book after Alice, it didn't take. I just couldn't get into it. So I moved on to the next title. Same thing. My Winter Book List fell apart. I scrapped it and began again. But I was in one of those moods where I couldn't find any books that appealed to me. I hate it when that happens. During these long weeks of garden inactivity, I need mental adventures. I walked through the house scanning every bookshelf, examining the titles on the spines, waiting for one of them to jump out at me. I sat with Miriam and we talked books for an hour hoping that in the course of our discussion, something would click. We considered Dickens, Hardy, and Hemingway, authors that usually are a sure thing for me. No. Maybe some Zane Grey? No. Jules Verne? No. Perhaps something new from the public library? I wasn't up to trying that. I find most new literature to be unappealing with no new plots, too much vulgarity, poorly developed characters, and often riddled with bad grammar and even bad spelling. Does anyone proofread manuscripts before publication anymore? Finally, sitting in front of one of the bookcases in the living room, I found my gaze returning over and over again to my set of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories.
I've read Sherlock Holmes several times before, but not in the last decade or two. And although I own this Easton Press two volume leather bound edition, I'd never read it. In the past I've always read my paperback edition. This time the black leather bindings with their gold tooling beckoned to me. I took the books off the shelf and inhaled the leather, ink, and paper perfume -- an intoxicating fragrance. And then I discovered something shocking. I have an incomplete set! I've owned those books for almost forty years and, because I'd never opened them to read them, I didn't realize there was another volume. In fact, the volume I was missing was the one containing the earliest stories. I went online to see if I could find the missing book for sale somewhere.
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| The two volumes I had. |
You never really know what you're going to get when you buy books online. The descriptions are often vague and misleading. Some say things like "very good condition" or "near fine condition" or "a touch of foxing" and you end up with a worn out, marked up, sad book. As I looked for this book, some of the best ones I found were only available as part of the three volume set and were very expensive. Finally, I found one on Ebay that said "EXCELLENT condition (never been read - still stiff!)." At $39, I couldn't pass it up. I bought it, and then the wait began. In the meantime, I began reading the early stories in my battered Bantam Classics paperback edition until the new book arrived.
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| My old reliable paperback. |
The first Sherlock Holmes story, actually a short novel, A Study in Scarlet, appeared in 1887 in a magazine called Beeton's Christmas Annual. Holmes was immediately popular and there followed another three novels and fifty-six short stories. I love all of them, but I have my particular favorites. The first Sherlock Holmes adventure I ever read was when I was in seventh grade. It was in our English literature textbook, The Adventure of the Speckled Band. I love it because it was my first encounter with Holmes and Watson. Other favorites are The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, The Adventure of the Dancing Men, The Five Orange Pips, and of course, The Hound of the Baskervilles. Oddly, the story I like least is the very first one, A Study in Scarlet, because of its inaccurate and prejudiced depiction of Brigham Young and the Mormon pioneers. After his death, Conan Doyle's daughter stated that her father "would be the first to admit that his first Sherlock Holmes novel was full of errors about the Mormons." Historians believe that Conan Doyle probably had read books by popular authors of the time that portrayed the Church in an inaccurate and sensational manner. So I forgive Sir Arthur and, because I always start stories at their beginning, off I went into A Study in Scarlet. My new book is due to arrive on Tuesday. As soon as it's here, I will retire my old paperback to its resting place on the shelf. It is in a delicate condition and probably won't survive another reading intact.
On Tuesday morning we had our first snow of the season. It wasn't much and it didn't last long, but it was still snow. I had a brief flash of childish excitement about it. That lasted as long as it took me to reach the barn where the ramp was slick with it. As I've grown older, the treacherousness of snow has tended to outweigh its beauty.
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| Our first snow of the season. |
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| The barn ramp can be treacherously slick when it snows. |
Late Tuesday afternoon we cleaned the Raymond Cemetery. We collected all the flags from the veterans' graves and gathered all the flowers. We've been putting up and taking down the flags there for over twenty years. My great grandparents, Theodorus and Anna May Howe and their children, my great aunts and uncle, Josiah, Sarah, Esther, and Eleanor, are all buried there along with other kin.
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| Gathering up the flags and flowers. |
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| Malachi at the grave of Amos Raymond, the only Revolutionary War veteran in the cemetery. |
Wednesday morning was bright and cold. It was 22 degrees when I went out to do the chores. There was a dazzling frost and ice on our lily pond and part of the beaver pond. The pigs were reluctant to leave their bed, but their appetite got the better of them. They breakfasted on leftover pizza, brownie scraps, and boiled barley. Sounds delicious, no? Later in the morning when the frost was gone, I finally succumbed and ran an electric line down to the barn to turn on the water heaters in the chicken coop. I didn't want to risk having the waterers freeze and crack. Now there will be an extension cord across the front yard until April.
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| Ice on the beaver pond. |
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| Ice on the lily pond. |
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| Electric line to the barn for the duration. |
The day didn't warm up much. When I went out to do the afternoon chores, I found that the hose to the pigpen was still frozen. I had Malachi help me carry buckets of water to fill their drinker. After that he helped me burn the brush pile. It seemed a good way to end a cold day with a blazing fire.
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| End of the day bonfire. |
Thursday was another drab November day. It was overcast. A cold wind blew all day. I didn't do much during the day. It began to rain at sundown, a cold sharp rain. As soon as Stacey got home from work, we went to Wellsville to run errands. We bought chicken feed. We shopped for groceries for a housebound sister in our branch and delivered them to her. The rain continued through the night.
All week long, Malachi worked for Wending Creek Farms, one of the entities of the Rigas family that Stacey and Hannah work for. On Monday they had him helping with landscaping around the Rigas house. The rest of the week he worked at the Christmas tree farm. They are cutting and baling trees to take to auction and transport to the big cities. I asked Malachi how he liked the work. He admitted it was strenuous, but he enjoyed it. They cut and baled over 400 trees. Friday was his last day working there.
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| Malachi working at the Christmas tree farm. |
Because we were going away for the weekend, I spent Friday morning preparing for it. I unloaded the chicken feed we bought on Thursday evening. I drove to the Amish feed store and bought one last sack of hog food. I made a run to the Amish bulk food store for some supplies. In the early afternoon I filled all the feeders, chicken and hog, to the top. I filled all their waterers to capacity. I collected the eggs early. Because the Shilligs are away, there was no one to mind things here. We phoned our neighbors up the road and asked them to keep an eye on things while we were gone. We left on Friday afternoon and drove down to the Thayn's. On our drive down, we listened to some of the adventures of Sherlock Holmes read by the British actor, Stephen Fry. It made the drive seem so much shorter. By the time we got there, there wasn't much to do but unpack and go to bed. The Fosters were there too.
Saturday was a busy day. We had three reasons for this trip. The first one was to take Malachi to the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. None of us had been to it before. We left the Thayn's house at 8:00 a.m. and drove an hour to the site. It was a very moving experience. We looked at the displays in the visitor's center that told about that sad day. We saw items recovered from the flight. One of the most moving things for me was listening to the messages sent by the passengers to their families before they died. We stood on the overlook and saw the crash site. It was a cold windy day and we didn't walk down to it. On our way out of the Memorial, we stopped at the Tower of Voices. Despite the wind, it did not make much sound while we were there.
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| The Tower of Voices. |
We drove straight from there to the next reason for our trip. Hazel and June were in another play, this time it was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. They were both oompa loompas. It was a great play and it was so fun seeing Hazel and June perform. We went to the 1:00 showing and then later Miriam and Hannah went with Rachel and Tabor to the 6:00 showing.
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| Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. |
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| With June and Hazel the oompa loompas. |
The third reason for our trip was to attend the Primary Children's Program at church today. Rachel is the Primary chorister and she did a wonderful job teaching the children the songs they sang. The children sang so beautifully, it moved me to tears at times. June, Mabel, Florence, and Russell were in the program. We left for home immediately after the program. We wanted to get home before dark so I could check on the chickens and pigs to see how they did in our absence. They were all fine.
So we are home, a bit fatigued from all the time spent in the car, but glad we made the trip. The week ahead holds some notable events. On Tuesday, the pigs will go to the butcher. That is going to be a messy job getting them into the trailer to take them. Their pen is pretty much a swamp of mud and manure. Then on Wednesday morning, very early, Malachi leaves to go back home. It was fun having him here and I hope he enjoyed his time with us. Looking at the weather, I see they are calling for snow at the end of week. I guess that's to be expected now that we are in the second half of November. The Thayns left this afternoon to go to Florida for a week to visit Universal Studios' The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. I look forward to hearing about that adventure. And on we'll go into the waning days of the year.
