April | 2013 | Wendy Welch: Books, Yarn, Cats, Opioids

Dear Regular Blog Readers: do not be alarmed. As Jack and I prepare for a two-week vacation in Istanbul, my friends the Guerrilla Grammar Girls (you can find them thanked in the back of Little Bookstore) are keeping the blog up to date. When Jack and I return we will have vacation stories galore and more fun from our shop floor, too. Meanwhile, let the girls’ high jinks entertain you. Starting with Elissa, who really enjoyed the recurring theme of “you’re nuts” in the opening chapters of Little Bookstore.

Today’s is a test post: the contract with the GGGs actually starts next Wednesday, but I urged Elissa yesterday to “just check the system out.” I regret this now. Rest assured the girls have promised not to do anything illegal. However, they never mentioned lewd–an oversight on my part when drawing up the contract…. and now, Elissa:

I like nuts. I cannot lie. My co-workers also cannot deny (this). But we like wet nuts.

As a matter of fact, the general consensus across the office is: We’d rather have NO nuts, than to only have dry nuts. Dry nuts are a disappointment to men and women alike. Dry nuts get stuck in your teeth. Wet nuts are smooth and extra sweet.

Vive Graines Humides!

This has been a post of the “Elissa has your login information Broadcasting System”

Jack’s Wednesday blog

I’ve always regarded gardening as a Calvinist punishment: namely, being rewarded for past or future sins.

Most of my life I lived in West Fife, an area of Scotland where you could dig up a lump of dirt from anywhere, shape it into something, leave it in the pale Scottish sun and whack it with a hammer the next day. It wouldn’t break. Solid clay, in fact. Weeds grew at amazing speeds, but nothing else would.

So, lots of backbreaking digging in the sure knowledge that it would result in nothing except more weeds means that I’ve never had much enthusiasm for gardening.

Fast forward to six plus years ago, when we moved in here at the bookstore and inherited an orchard out back: three apple trees, a peach tree and a pear tree. All heirlooms (which I’m told is ‘good’). We also inherited an enormous harvest of fruit. We still have some in the freezer.

But these trees GROW! And how!! In every direction!!!

Not being a confident gardener I’ve been nervous of pruning these trees. But last year we just couldn’t reach them all in the forest of branches, and the weight of the fruit was bending the side branches almost to the ground. And we couldn’t get in to cut the grass. The dogs loved it; who knows what unspeakable mischief they got up to in their secret playhouse?

So a few weeks ago, having finished the basement remodeling and looking around for something to do (HAH!) I decided to prune the apple trees.