blog updates!

Hi friends!

As you can see I am finally getting my bloggy up to speed with the times, and making it a bit user friendly and useful for you and me both! Hope you enjoy the new pages and find it easier to navigate through my recipes and reviews.

adventures in Jacksonville

Weekends are my favorite. 

I usually get a three day weekend by working four 10-hour days, but this week I worked Friday too so I can meet Ben for a mini-vacation in Austin next weekend (!!!) Fifty hours of fieldwork equals one exhausted Anna, but I still felt compelled to get outside today. I think I am addicted to hiking.

I've started a Saturday routine of taking mini-trips with myself to get to know this gorgeous part of the country I've dropped into, and also to simply kill time. {It takes serious effort to avoid feeling lonely when living by yourself in a brand new place}. Today was a visit to Jacksonville, an adorable historic town dating back to the gold mining days. Pretty trails, 19th century architecture, lush gardens, and blue skies. For the rest of my life when I think of Oregon I will think of oak and madrone woodlands and hot hot sun on the mountains.

book review: prodigal summer

(pic and book here)

I think that one of the best things about being done with school is the ability to read for fun, guilt free.  I don't have a TV and spent a few weeks without internet as well, so I have really been pounding out the books this summer! This book has been my favorite so far, by a long shot. Barbara Kingsolver is one of the rare authors who can write a compelling and juicy piece of fiction that completely sucks you in and entertains you without losing the quality or depth of the literature itself. Prodigal Summer, true to its name, is a perfect summer read. It is essentially three mini-novels-in-one, following the lives of three completely different characters throughout the course of one summer in southern Appalachia. 

There is the crotchety old man (ala Up) who is lost after the death of his wife, trying to navigate a modern and changing world while laboring on his life work of hybridizing a blight-resistant strain of American chestnut...and worrying about what will happen to the trees after he is gone.

There is the reclusive Forest Service woodswoman who lives alone up the mountain, looking after the wildlife and making an amazing discovery that is threatened by the (attractive and younger) wandering hunter who walks into her life and disrupts her solitude.

Finally, there is the young entomologist from "the city", who finds herself stranded on a farm and healing after a tragedy, struggling to fit in with the tight-knit family who has owned the farm for generations, and also trying to assert her own independence and realize her dreams. 

The stories of the three characters overlap, and you can see how their lives are beginning to merge towards the end. This book will probably change the way you look at the natural world, and is definitely worth a visit!