End of Summer Musings

This morning I picked what I suspect are the last of the blackberries *sigh*. There are only seven and they are not the best looking, but still.

I also pulled every last thistle I could find. I like pulling weeds at the end of summer. Their roots are barely holding on and the plant is ready to die. I wonder if, at the end of our lives, we are like that with out sin, just barely holding on to it and ready to have it removed from our lives. 

The Battle of the Villa Fiorita

Well, it's book report time on Rumer Godden's _The Battle of the Villa Fiorita_, which I finished reading last night.

This is a fictional work about a woman (Fanny) who had an affair and was divorced by her husband. She went to live with the new man (Rob) in Italy and two of her children showed up to fetch her back where, in their opinion, she belonged.

So right from the set up you see that this is a book about sin, and that there is probably not going to be any way to have a happy ending. (No spoilers needed for that!) And, true to life, there wasn't. Everyone involved continued to receive ugly consequences and wounds from the sin that had occurred.

Unfortunately the author did not include any significant redemptive value to the story other than showing how the characters, especially the children, grew through their experiences. I found it a story well-told, but not a happy one, and am glad that these characters are not my real life friends, as my heart would hurt for all of them. This is in contrast to the same author's _In This House of Brede_, where I felt glad to know the characters as friends.