Sarah's Books - Used & Rare

Well, something new to get used to.  Blogger has finally changed my posting format for me and here I am flailing around like a fish out of water.  Attempting to post anyway!  (I know change is inevitable, but sometimes, lord, I dislike change.)  I hope the blog itself will remain the same.  I have resisted updating the format for years now, and I feel like gently continuing this resistance.  I do not usually favor "new and improved" in general.  But enough grousing.  I had a wonderfully unexpected mini-vacation last week and wanted to mention some of the details.  One detail:  


How I do love an urn and some shrubbery!  A bit of spring coming to Ipswich, Massachusetts.  I took a trip there with my younger sister and my mother, who recently turned 70.  She is (as am I) something of an Anglophile, and our plan to take a trip together to celebrate her birthday coincided with a lecture at the Crane Estate in Ipswich that she dearly wanted to hear:  Sir Simon Jenkins, current chairman of the National Trust, spoke for an hour to a sold-out room about country houses and why/how they remain relevant.  It was a charming respite from muddy, chilly Maine - the weather was divine, the beach close by, fruit trees were in full flower - overall a real idyll.  No time to buy books anywhere, we were too busy sitting on the porch of the Inn at Castle Hill, doing nothing in particular and talking about everything under the sun.  To heck with the new - thank goodness for the old and improved.