The lazy days of summer and the snowy days of winter, when a bad storm has arrived, are two times when it is absolutely necessary to have a good book to read. Or two or three. Other things claim the spare moments in spring and autumn, when reading can be during a few hours here and there – but summer and winter times need a good book.

I cannot pass by a bookstore, or a book sale of any kind, or a tag sale where there might be a few books to browse through. And I rarely find the will power to not buy something – a book I don’t need or that looks like it might be interesting. So it wasn’t unusual for the slim little book to catch my attention at a recent sale of books I came upon. Something about the volume said quality. Something about the two branches of a tree or shrub caught my fancy. The title beckoned to me and I bought it. It has been near my chair in the reading corner for a couple of weeks, until the past weekend. I picked it up and leafed through it and after reading about five pages I thought, “Thank goodness I bought this book.”

So it was that I settled back and with great appreciation of the style, the rhythm of it and the lovely story, I began to read it!

The Inland Island by Josephine W. Johnson kept me up very late that first night. No wonder the author won a Pulitzer Prize for her first novel Now in November in 1934! This book takes you through a year of nature; of descriptions that are pleasing and as real as if the reader was there. She speaks of the “winter cold begins to deepen and tighten” – “the juncos who never fed off the ground before came to the bird feeder” – and “a visit to a cold, snow-covered favorite rock in the pasture.”

There is much more about nature – finding the jewelweed plants; the teasel growing as high as her head; a hummingbird that zooms and sizzles among the flowers. July is hot and humid.

The pages that tell of December are more solemn and pensive. A big snow arrives falling “slowly in soft, descending clusters like fairy snowballs.” This is a book which I deliberately read one chapter – one month, at a time, slowly and with enjoyment. I am certain it is probably out of print, but if you ever see it at a book sale, buy it and keep it on the nightstand by your bed, and read it one chapter at a time! It was published by Simon and Schuster.

Wendy and Megan and Michael came down Sunday to help me do a large grocery shopping trip. We went up to the Agway store in Woodbury so I could buy yet another hummingbird feeder.

I had bought a new one in April – a little larger, but the same style I have had for several years. Time after time, the “hummers” have come – checked it out and flown away. I washed it carefully, put new syrup in it, and waited. Same thing. I was very much disappointed; this is one of summer’s pleasures, to watch these tiny birds. So, I bought a new one, a little different shape, and Wendy filled it with syrup I had already made. Two hours later, the hummingbirds came to have supper! A very small one and one quite large. They have been here all day today, too. I’m anxious to hear whether the hummingbirds in Harwinton would use it!

A call from Laurie in Vermont sounded as if her garden is planted and there are more kinds of birds than ever at her place this year, including rose-breasted gross beaks, and a towhee out in the edge of the woods. I hope I will be able to go up to see some autumn in Vermont!

Last week’s quote was by Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Who said, “Housekeeping ain’t no joke”?