Chloe and the book

Chloe is a high-maintenance cat. She wants my undivided attention for the four hours a day I'm spending with her, and when I read, she butts the book with her head, claws at it, bites it, and tries to push it out of my hands. When I put the book down and give her the attention she wants, she gazes into my eyes, purrs and drools, nuzzles, head-butts, and generally goes into an ecstasy of writhing affection which includes the occasional tender bite on my chin. She is one very passionate cat. (And rather exhausting.) Picture taken with the pocket Lumix, much easier to cart around than the Nikon; image not quite as sharp.

Despite Chloe's objections, I have finished the book about Mary Delany and her flower mosaicks.  It is a great old-fashioned pleasure to be unavailable by electronic means and without web access for four hours a day. I may make that a way of life when I am freed of Chloe-care, as I think being regularly unplugged is good for me, and I loved having time to read the book, which is a long hymn to friendship.

Peacock's frame for viewing Delany's life through the flowers as metaphor is a bit forced, but overall, it's a good read, and I would have been happy to have more of Peacock's life woven in and less of eighteenth-century aristocracy. The subtitle is a bit misleading, and Peacock is more truthful near the end, when she admits that "age is the sum of all we do." Delany spent all her life doing fine work with her hands: needle work, drawing, painting, studying botany, and scissoring. So when she started the paper-cutting collages at 72, she had a life of practice in the arts already, and the stroke of genius was bringing all her skills together into a new art form.

Peacock includes some lovely quotations about flowers. Such as this:

"The career of flowers differs from ours only inaudibleness. I feel more reverence as I grow for these mute creatures whose suspense or transport may surpass my own."--Emily Dickinson. One might say the same for cats.