Time for... "Night Moves" 📚

 I don't know about you but I have "just the right time" with some (re) readings of Nora Roberts' Books.

At this time of the year - I find myself tired of people (hence wanting to move to the country; to that almost off-the-grid country), wishful of Summer days (while enjoying these first hints of Spring), craving gardening like crazy (but in that creator-like role) - I see myself pulled for "Night Moves". And Dream...

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If she stood very still, if she closed her eyes and didn’t move, she could hear the music all around her. Not birdsong but the ruffle of air through branches and tiny leaves. If she concentrated, she could hear the faint trickle of the narrow creek that ran along the other side of the lane. The quality of silence was rich, flowing over her like a symphony.

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There was just enough breeze to carry a hint of spring to her. Far back in the woods a bird she couldn’t see sang out as though it would never stop.

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Louella ran a hand over the front of her purse as if she were wiping something away. “I used to have a rock garden. Sweet William and azure Adams. There was wisteria beneath my bedroom window, and roses, red roses, climbing on a trellis.”

Night Moves

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Garden Overhaul: Which Plants Should Stay, Which Should Go?

Photo by Richard Clayton Barrett - Search landscaping pictures

HOUZZ

Why Gardeners Need to Be Outward-Looking

 

“Gardening’s good for you. It gets you back in touch with nature.”

Night Moves

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Diliff, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Gardening is solitary work, but it's beneficial to think beyond one's own borders.

Tree Hugger

Dreaming of a rural idyll? Make sure you’re well prepared…

Staring up at the ceiling, she listened to the quiet. 
At times like this, it struck her how alone she was. 
There were no servants sleeping downstairs, as there had been all her life. 
Her closest neighbor was perhaps a quarter of a mile away through the woods. 
No all-night clubs or drugstores, she mused.


Night Moves 

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Colin Smith [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], 
via Wikimedia Commons

Things we wish we’d known before moving to the country

HOUSE TO HOME

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“Best to wear boots around here next time.”
“Yes.” Nonplussed, Kelsey looked down at her soft Italian flats. “You’re right.”


True Betrayals

How Smell Works

The scent of coffee woke her. Tess turned from her side to her back and lay dozing with

the homey, comforting smell. 

How many years had it been since she’d woken to the scent of coffee already brewing? 

When she’d lived in her grandfather’s house with its high ceilings and tiled foyer, she would come down the arching staircase in the mornings to find her grandfather already behind a huge plate of eggs or hotcakes, the newspaper open, and the coffee already poured.

Miss Bette, the housekeeper, would have set the table with the everyday dishes, the ones with the little violets around the edges. Flowers would have depended on the season, but they would always be there, jonquils or roses or mums in the blue porcelain vase that had been her great-grandmother’s.

There would have been the quiet whoosh of Trooper’s tail, her grandfather’s old golden retriever, as he sat beneath the table hoping for a windfall. 

Those had been the mornings of her youth—steady, secure, and familiar—of her young womanhood, just as her grandfather had been the strong central figure in her life.

Sacred Sins

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The sense of smell is closely linked with memory, probably more so than any of our other senses.

FIFTH SENSE

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Stan bent down over her, close enough that she could smell the simple department-store aftershave he wore. 

She recognized it and, on a wave of nostalgia, remembered her mother's driver had worn it, too.

For no other reason, her sense of trust in him was confirmed.

Night Moves

I Ditched the City and Moved to the Country

“Maggie, just how long are you going to go on this way?”

“What way is that, C.J.?” Her voice was low, husky, as if she'd just been awakened. It was a voice that made most men wish they'd awakened her.

The woman was infuriating. C.J. tugged a hand through his carefully styled, blow-dried hair. What was she doing three thousand miles from L.A., wasting herself on this dirty work? He had a responsibility to her and, damn it, to himself. C.J. blew out a long breath, an old habit he had whenever he met with opposition. 

Negotiations were, after all, his business. It was up to him to talk some sense into her. 

He shifted his feet, careful to keep his polished loafers out of the dirt. “Babe, I love you. You know I do. Come home.”

Night Moves

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When I burnt up my LA life out in the desert, (headshots, resumes, lingerie, lint--a flaming rainbow) and moved up here, friends and family were bewildered. Often they still are.

SHINE

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“Gardening's good for you. It gets you back in touch with nature.”

“I've no desire to touch nature.”

This time she laughed and lifted her face to the sky. No, the closest C.J. would come to nature would be a chlorinated pool—solar-heated. 

Up to a few months ago she'd barely gotten much closer herself. She'd certainly never attempted to. But now she'd found something—something she hadn't even been looking for. If she hadn't come to the East Coast to collaborate on the score for a new musical, if she hadn't taken an impulsive drive south after the long, grueling sessions had ended, she never would've happened on the sleepy little town tucked into the Blue Ridge.

Do we ever know where we belong, Maggie wondered, unless we're lucky enough to stumble onto our own personal space? She only knew that she'd been heading nowhere in particular and she'd come home.

Night Moves