I lost a pet a little over a week ago and did not want to get into any fictional drama in my reading. I needed something comforting and wise. A copy of  The Chicken Chronicles had been laying on my bedside table. I knew it was finally time to read it.

I spent a long afternoon reading The Chicken Chronicles. It began with the recollection of growing up with chickens on her parents’ sharecropper farm in rural Georgia. The memory came to the surface when Alice was startled by a hen and her chicks crossing her path. She remarks that she felt as though she had never seen a chicken before. But if you know anything about Alice, you know that it can’t be true. She writes:

Though I grew up in the South where we raised chickens every year, for meat and for eggs, and where, from the time I was eight or nine, my job was to chase down the Sunday dinner chicken and wring its neck. But had those chickens been like this one? Why I hadn’t I noticed? Had I noticed?

Recalling those childhood memories Alice slowly began to realize that she missed chickens, chickens as “A Nation” she writes. And considering how often she ate eggs, she decided that she should learn more about them by having a few of her own.

Naming them curious names like Gertrude Stein, Agnes of God and Glorious, you’ll experience the ups and downs of caring for a brood of chickens and wonder at the chickens who regularly nap on her lap. You’ll think differently about eating meat, if you do so. You’ll reconsider the love you have for your animal friends. And Alice does all of this in her characteristically gentle way.

I read on Alice’s website about the chicken on the cover of the book. She notes the missing toenail and how she thought about sticking on a little fake one. But she then thought better of it and reflects on how she starting writing this book and the unexpected lessons she learned from her chickens :

Life gives us broken toenails and worse to let us remember where we’ve been and the struggles we’ve overcome . . . this is the book that grew on this blog, as I sat with my chickens in the outback of Mendocino, California.  I sat with them expecting nothing and over the months they pecked open places I hadn’t been able to enter by myself.  All of my “girls” have their toenails but occasionally, and though it is shocking it is natural, they lose their  feathers. (Source: Alice Walker’s official website)

I suppose I felt like I had lost all my feathers when I lost my beloved animal friend. Reading about the blessings, the memories and sorrows she has had with her chickens, I took away an intention to be more mindful of the animals who bring us the miracle of unconditional love.

The Chicken Chronicles by Alice Walker (New Press, May 2011)

You should know that Milkland (where the tale of this simple day is set) is a “mysterious place where adventures are had (real and pretend) every day,” and this particular day in Hedgie’s life was no different.

On this day Hedgie met up with his best pals Ghostie and Onionhead in the forest of Milkland and they happened upon the mermaid Cora and her pet Ned the Narwhal (now how these two could exist so carefree outside of water I don’t know, perhaps that is another story for another time). They were both pleased to make the acquaintance of Hedgie, Ghostie, and Onionhead. Naturally they all became fast friends and explored the forest together until dusk.

Then they had to part ways, and Cora explained that she “lives in a tiny white house, in a place where the forest meets the sea,” and they all really must come to tea sometime soon. Plans were made, and Hedgie and his friends walked home.

“What an adventure, to meet new friends, and a land-dwelling mermaid and narwhal at that!” said Hedgie to his mom Rose that evening. (Just as a side note, in case you were wondering, Rose has her own bakery, but she had taken this particular day off to forage the flea markets for wind-up toys to surprise Hedgie). “That sounds delightful, darling,” said Rose, handing out freshly iced cupcakes to Hedgie and Onionhead because in Milkland children are allowed sweets before bedtime.

Soon after the sugary treat, Rose tucked Hedgie into bed. And he slept while mermaids and narwhals danced through his dreams.

And they all lived happily ever after, of course.

***Some details and all dolls from the imagination of Emily Winfield Martin and her book The Black Apple’s Paper Doll Primer.  Story from the minds of Kaycie Hall and Zita White.  Scenes conglomerated by Zita White.

Check out Kaycie and Zita’s last story starring The Black Apple’s Paper Doll Primer.

by Zita

Last week I went to see the new Woody Allen movie Midnight in Paris. It really is delightful, and I highly recommend you go see it. I’ve posted the trailer just below, but I’ll sum up the plot for you. An aspiring novelist (played by Owen Wilson) visits Paris with his fiancee and longs for Paris of the 1920s–the heyday of Ernest Hemingway, Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, Djuna Barnes, Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso, need I go on? Well, the twist of it all is that once the clock strikes midnight in Paris (hence the title of the film), our main character finds himself schmoozing with the Fitzgeralds while his novel in progress is being read by Stein and Hemingway.

What doesn’t sound delightful about that?

Seeing this film naturally lead me to wanting to read the expatriates, but I need a little bit of help with where to start.  Whenever I come to a classic genre of literature, I find it so difficult to just choose one novel or short story collection  and dive into it.  How can I choose one?  These are classics.  I want to read them all.  Things were much easier when I was in school and my professors did the choosing for me.

So now I’m turning to you blog readers, expatriate fanatics, lovers of all things Hemingway.  Please tell me where to start! I beg of you.  Here is what I’ve read thus far in the “Lost Generation” department: Nightwood by Djuna Barnes, A Farewell to Arms, The Sun Also Rises, and Garden of Eden (which I wrote about last summer here) by Ernest Hemingway, and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Any suggestions, comments on your favorite expat writer, artist, or even on Woody Allen’s new film are more than welcome. Merci beaucoup in advance for your input.  -Kaycie

I couldn’t resist running this picture or Ace in our print ads the last couple of weeks. It’s rare and cool to have an author who in his former life played SEC football.

We Mississippians are always looking for the next big writer to come out of our state – you know John Grisham and Greg Iles did it so who’s next? Well, if you haven’t caught onto the fact that Ace Atkins is the real deal then now is the perfect time.

The Ranger is the first of a new series for Ace. The protagonist comes home to Mississippi from Iraq and uncovers crime and mystery in his hometown. His uncle has died under mysterious circumstances and some unruly characters have taken over the town. The Washington Post has referred to The Ranger as redneck noir and compared Ace to Greg Iles – not a bad description and not bad company.

And in other news Ace’s wife just gave birth to their second child – so please come out and slap on the back, shake his hand, drink a beer and enjoy his reading from The Ranger.

As an avid gardener, I am always interested in the history of gardening, whether it be the immediate past history of my friends’ gardens, or the history of some of the first gardens of America.

As a teenager, I followed my mother around Williamsburg, Virginia, studying the formal English based gardens of the Virginia planters. She later used that research to plan her own formal Williamsburg garden with its four boxwood points focusing on a marble sundial, which I have been fortunate to inherit for my own cottage style garden.

In Founding Gardeners author Andrea Wulf explores the development and history of  George Washington’s Mount Vernon, Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, John Adams’ Peacefield (see below), and James Madison’s Montpelier. In the appendix, the reader can explore the actual maps of these great estates and locate the placement of all plants, trees, flowers, and vegetables.

Some of the interesting chapter titles, such as “Gardens, peculiarly worth the attention of  an American,” “A Nursery of American Statesmen,” “The Constitutional Convention in 1787 and a Garden Visit” as well as  “Political Plants Grow in the Shade,” get the reader’s attention immediately.

Wulf notes, “For the founding fathers, gardening, agriculture, and botany were elemental passions, as deeply ingrained in their characters as their belief in liberty for the nation they were creating.”

Founding Gardeners is a beautiful, as well as informative book off the beaten track. For gardeners and history lovers, this is a noteworthy book to have on a reference shelf in a home library.

Founding Gardeners: The Revolutionary Generation, Nature, and the Shaping of the American Nation by Andrea Wulf (Random House, 2011).

-Nan