About twenty-five years ago, a woman published a book by that title that was very popular at the time.  It contained her thoughts and suggestions for every day of the year.  It is a bit dated now.  Today, it would be a blog, and instead of listing phone numbers to call to order gardening books and such, the author would give websites, I’m sure.  At the very end, she actually prints not her email address but her P.O. box number, soliciting your own thoughts and suggestions.

About fifteen years ago, a favorite aunt sent me a very special edition of this publication.  It looks something like a prayer book with a lovely binding and ribbon page markers.  I still like to open it every month or so to see what the author has to say on a particular day.

Rosie seems to want to take look.

Or perhaps she knows that my books all have some tasty crumbs left in their pages.

It is true that some of the entries may seem a bit lame. Today’s date reads, “Plant it with the green side up.”  And sometimes they are very sad:  From Sara Teasdale for June 29, “My soul is a broken field, plowed by pain.”  Or trite: “All one really needs is a divinely attractive bed.”  Nevermind that I am typing this on my lap from my own divinely attractive bed. So poignantly true here in Oregon is Shakespeare’s “Summer’s lease hath all too short a date,” the entry for the last day of June.  We can’t waste a minute of summer here. (I am skipping my book group meeting on Thursday to kayak.)  I love this quote from Colette: “What a wonderful life I’ve had. I only wish I’d realized it sooner.”  Lucky for me, I did realize it in plenty of time.  Actually, I’m pretty sure she said,  “Quelle belle vie que j’ai eu. Je souhaite que j’avais réalisé plus tôt.”  Pretty much everything just sounds better in French.

There is a page of suggestions at the end of each month.  I remember reading there years ago the author’s suggestion to put red, white and blue flowers on your front porch on Memorial Day and keep them blooming until Labor Day.  I have always done this don’t much appreciate her usurping my idea!

She mentions catching an old mayonnaise jar full of lightning bugs on a summer night and releasing them before they become too distressed.  Sadly, we do not have lightning bugs in the Willamette Valley, but I surely remember catching them in Oklahoma where my aunt still lives.  I also remember one summer when I was visiting a lake in upstate New York for a large family gathering of my in-laws, trying to get the children there interested in doing this.  They just didn’t get it. (I never did fit into that family very well.  They just didn’t get me.)  I believe they called them fireflies there.  One summer, I lived in southern Virginia.  My neighbors there called them glow worms. The children in our Virginia neighborhood loved catching them with me.