Ellie@Home by Nicole Kapise-Perkins

Abundant Harvests : It is a beautifully cool, misty-rainy day for the last day of Beltane. Not a day to be out celebrating Tailtiu with games, but still perfect. We've been starved for rain this month, and today's rain feels like a benediction on the ripening tomatoes, squash and herbs. Later I will mix up bread dough and measure out rice for risotto. A touch of s...

I didn't intentionally read these back to back, but what a great coincidence. Peter Matthiessen and Susan Fox Rogers each present books that take readers away on adventures they may perhaps never go on. I hope to one day travel to Spain, and Ireland and Scotland, Germany and possibly Sweden, but South America? I doubt it. Ditto India. (He doesn't go to India). But the writing is so perfect, you feel as though you are on board ship with him. The stories Susan Fox Rogers collected and edited for Solo are so outstanding, either in the physical action (out-skiing an avalanche, hello!) or the emotional journey that those women experienced I wished I too, could throw it all in and just go . Go where my feet led me, go where my heart told me, go where my finger landed on the map. Perhaps it's selfishness, perhaps it's the onset on mid-life crisis, call it what you will, but I couldn't help but experience a pang of envy reading about these amazing adventures in places I w...