Rocket fuel

A lot of rotavating today as the land is relatively dry and farmers hereabouts have been ploughing the shiny soil. What pleasure there is in the dark crumbly loam that come July will be a dried-out sickly wan colour and hard as mahogany. Rocket from autumn sowing is blossoming and big glossy blue black wood bees scurry about for early nectar.

Sarah Orne Jewett lived in South Berwick her early life on the Maine coast. Latterly she lived in a ‘Boston marriage’ ( a 19th century term I’d not come across before) with another woman in Boston.

Her style is classed as ‘American regionalist’ which seems a bit snooty to me.