'Rose's Garden'

Just wanted to share a good fall read -- sweet, strange and melancholy, and filled with color, like the season: Amazon.com: Rose's Garden: Books: Carrie Brown. Love, loss, mystery ... and wings of many kinds.

I know a book is good when, part way through, I find myself torn between wanting to give it to someone who'd love it and wanting to keep it myself. This one got mailed to my mom.

I'm into another now that promises to be just as good: Amazon.com: Stigmata: Books: Phyllis Alesia Perry. Same dreamlike quality, completely different voice.

Enjoy.

Magic smoke

It's raining again. It's been raining for weeks. First the grass turned green, then it became uncharacteristically lush. Then the mushrooms came, popping up here and there where ancient oaks once stood. I didn't take much notice. Most were unremarkable, stocky little fellows.

But under the hickory tree there appeared a strange little cloud of smoke that proved to be a stand of impossibly fragile, translucent gray ghosts. Their wispy, cellophane stems bore caps, about half an inch across, that did not seem to have a solid skin on top; the gills appeared to go all the way through, made of nothing more than mist. Fully open and flat, they glowed silver in the grass like fairy coins by moonlight. They lasted only a few hours and vanished completely, as fairy coins will.

I love the rain.