And the nominee is...

Every now and again I see women's magazines having contests, such as "Canada's Best Husband," things like that. Well, in anticipation of some such event, I would like to go ahead and nominate my dear husband Daniel. There are multifarious ways in which I believe him to be the best husband ever, anywhere, but this recent happening nears the top of the list. Last night, innocently enough (I thought), I decided to unravel a center-pull ball of brown yarn that had its guts all hanging out most messily, with the intention of rewinding it. Well. It immediately became a most disconcertingly tangled mess, and my dear, sweet, longsuffering husband spend no less than one hour untangling it. No matter that said ball of yarn is being made into a scarf for him--he still gets full points for doing that.

That Eagle Scout knots badge sure comes in handy in most unexpected ways.

This one's for Linda

Best 2006 greetings to all. May the year be rich with God's joy and blessings for you & yours.

You can thank my mother-in-law's persistance for this post's finally coming to the light. Were it not for her, Weeds would be weeded for good. Surely I need not mention that all the excitement & busyness of 2005 has led to a serious dirth of blogging for yours truly. I did get a freak surge of enthusiasm for posting in November, which led to some premature promises, but I rapidly returned to my original position of, What the heck's the point?


You see, this blog was born a few days after Matthew Davidson said to me at the pub, I met the perfect guy for you. And as much as I hate to prove Matthew right, he indeed was, and now the perfect guy for me, for the benefit of whom Weeds was created, lives right here with me. Since I have successfully grabbed and held Daniel's attention, and we are now married, I figure Weeds has served its purpose. I can't seem to be bothered to make the time to do it: living with Daniel takes up a good deal more of my time than blogging, emailing and talking to him on the phone ever did--not to mention how he keeps the computer tied up with sudoku puzzles. And now I've gone and added a new obsession to my life, knitting, which I prefer to nearly any occupation--in fact, I'd rather be knitting right now, I've 16 inches left to go on my second legwarmer. But here I am anyway: I got that "it's now or never" feeling this morning, and went for it.

I make no promises this time. I may not ever be back. In one of Mary Oliver's essays she instructed her loved ones to rejoice if she showed up late, or didn't show up at all, to a meeting with them, because that would mean that she's working on a poem. If you find this blog continually devoid of new posts, you can rejoice that I am deep in my rich & blissful life, that I am knitting, reading, taking long walks on Panama Hill with the hummingbirds and red-winged blackbirds, cooking, and tickling Daniel.

For now, here is the reading list for 2005. Very short on fiction, which tempts me to ask: what are the two, three best fiction works you've read, recently or ever?




FICTION

**The Brothers K, David James Duncan

Atonement, Ian McEwan

*Angle of Repose, by Wallace Stegner

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, by Carson McCullers

Specimen Days, by Michael Cunningham

Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather

A Complicated Kindness, by Miriam Toews

A River Runs Through It, by Norman McLean

a few Chekhov short stories

Pale Horse, Pale Rider, Katherine Anne Porter


NON-FICTION

Another Beauty, Adam Zagajewski

On the Corner of East and Now, Frederica Mathewes-Greene

Two-Part Invention, Madeleine L'Engle

Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke

A Cook's Tour, Anthony Bourdain

La Plus Que Vive, Christian Bobin

Long Life, Mary Oliver

Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Lynne Truss

Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, Elizabeth Krouse Rosenthal

Plan B, Anne Lamott

Quotidian Mysteries, Kathleen Norris

*Life Work, Donald Hall

Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller

Home: Tales of a Heritage Farm, by Anny Scoones

The Best Day The Worst Day, Donald Hall

*Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen, by Larry McMurtry

In a Narrow Grave, by Larry McMurtry

My Life with Pablo Neruda, by Matilde Urrutia

The Orchid Thief, by Susan Orlean

The Polysyllabic Spree, by Nick Hornby

*A Place of My Own, by Michael Pollan

Celebration of Discipline, by Richard Foster

Anthropology of Turquoise, by Ellen Meloy

Second Nature, by Michael Pollan

Virgin Time, by Patricia Hampl

A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Rebecca Solnit

some Joan Didion essays

*Things Seen and Unseen, by Nora Gallagher

*The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion

Full Bloom: The Art and Life of Georgia O'Keeffe, by Hunter Drohojowska-Philp

Stitch & Bitch: the Knitter's Handbook, by Debbie Stoller

Weekend Knitting, by Melanie Fallick


POETRY

The Great Fires, by Jack Gilbert

Short Journey Upriver Toward Oishida, by Roo Borson

Twenty-Seven Small Songs and Thirteen Silences, by Jan Zwicky

Robinson's Crossing, by Jan Zwicky

Miraculous Hours, by Matt Rader

Ecstatic in the Poison, by Andrew Hudgins

The Never-Ending, by Andrew Hudgins

The Painted Bed, by Donald Hall

...but, mostly, as ever, Mary Oliver, Jane Kenyon, and some Billy Collins.