Blackbird House

Wild sweet peas are mentioned often in this "novel" by Alice Hoffman.  I know it's called a novel, but to me it's a series of short stories, which I love reading anyway.  I read the novel in one day, following the connected stories right to the conclusion.  Lost children, white blackbirds, witches - these stories read like fairy tales.  Each interconnected story mentions sweet peas at least once.
This brought to mind memories of my mother, who faithfully grew her annual sweet peas every year.  The current garden I have allows only for shade plants, but this book brought back the strong scent of a bouquet of sweet peas picked from her garden.  There is no other scent like it - the smell of a gentle summer wind, I think. I loved to have a vase full of the white blooms, (wrapped in wet paper towels, and taken home to set beside my bed), filling me with a calmness and serenity that I often  haven't had enough of in my daily life. I must remember to plant some this coming spring at the other house. No, not just some - many, in every colour.


I love this book cover, (Amazon.com)  which is the one that I have.  Red shoes - just the perfect pair for a witch, or other ethereal being, don't you think? I would love to own a pair of old-fashioned red shoes like these.  A field of wild sweet peas would have done just as well, I think, for the cover, but I do covet that pair of shoes.



The wild sweet peas seem to be magenta in colour.



Here are the white sweet peas I remember.  Sweet peas are April's flower, and my birthday is in September, which is the month of the aster.




Asters are beautiful, and they are a shade of my favourite colour, but their scent cannot compare to that of the sweet pea.


I found this clip art, and I think it rather captures the melancholy mood meant to be evoked by the novel.  Apparently there is a children's story called "The White Blackbird". I will have to find it and read it.

Blackbird House was a good book, although the stories did start to run together.  . The mood of melancholy became almost too much when the stories were read all together at once; rather like having not just one, but hundreds of vases of sweet peas in one room.  Maybe I will reread this book again with that goal in mind.  I will read each one separately and reflect on each, so as to make a good thing last longer.