I got this handsome little hardcover at this Little Free Library in Hull, MA while dropping off some books of my own. The life-lessons are framed in the form of garden-related anecdotes, and while they're fairly obvious philosophical points, I did find some of them pertinent. Example: "transplants take time", which compares the way transplanted flowers may sulk or even wilt for a bit before the new root systems kick in to the way people react upon having their lives uprooted by new jobs, different homes, etc. But if you stick to it, one day you'll realize the strangeness is gone and you're ready to grow again. (Well, with luck! Not *all* transplants take, after all.)

I also liked the one about not staying in one place for too long - which might sound like the opposite of the "transplant" story, but really refers to the ways plants might get potbound or might exhaust the space and nutrients of an existing location. People who let themselves get weighed down by the force of habit without ever reconsidering each responsibility may suffer from the failure to prune the roots... OK, maybe that's too garden-y a comparison, but it makes sense to me. I am a creature of habit, and once in a while I notice that something I used to do for fun has now become a habit that I do but without any particular enthusiasm or pleasure. Whether to stop that activity entirely or to revisit it and try to revitalize it is a case-by-case decision, but it's worth doing.

Lots more good ideas here, which I suspect will affect people differently depending on their personal situations; some might interpret specific advice in the opposite way that I did. But the point is to make you think about these things, and the book does a nice job of that.

I left this book, bagged against the elements, on the information board at the trailhead on this near-freezing day; hope the finder enjoys it!

[See other recent releases in NH here.]

*** Released for the 2018 April Showers/May Flowers release challenge. ***