Fickle, fickle April

I would have stormed the nurseries of the county for mandevillas to no purpose, yesterday. They would have sailed away overnight. Such a storm. No lightening, but hard, hard rain and wind. I can hear it raining still, pounding on everything under it.

Others slept last night, I’m sure. I wonder if I did. I dreamed. I never dream, or I never remember. I don’t know which.

I was moving far away, and packing a bag. I carried it to the car. I came back in the house and found the bag at the front door again, accompanied by a great Samoyed, smiling and beating his tail on the floor.

It’s been forty years since I owned a dog, a standard Collie, easily as big as a Samoyed, with as much hair Every night I brushed out a grocery bag of hair. He was a smiling dog, too.

It did quit raining, almost, for a few minutes, and I went out to see the garden. Laura’s “dry creek” is very wet. Everything looked shiny wet. The rain gauge noted perhaps a quarter inch. I think it’s sadly mistaken.

I just finished reading Gilead. A quiet book that held my attention closely. I thought I would slide quietly out of it, but then a left field poser in the last forty or fifty pages. It is resolved as another sad family situation.  Not resolved, but placed in hope of future decent denouement.

The main character of the book often mentions a book his young wife is reading, and other characters have read. Gilead is set in the fifties, and the book, The Trail of the Lonesome Pines, sounds like one to be found in your mother’s trove of childhood books.

For fun, I tried out the title on Amazon, and found it in print. It’s found its way to my hand, and is a mystery waiting. There is no publishing information on the title page. The print is tiny, tiny. Eleven point, or more. Some of the pages have slightly tipsy margins, as if the original, 1908 book were sent through a copier to prepare the master.

On the back of the last page, a tiny clue. A small notation at the foot of the page:

Made in the USA

San Bernardino, CA

11 April 2018

11 April, 2018 sounds about the date I ordered the book. I’ll start it this afternoon, to accompany the rain.