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.