growing: books

I will be reigning in the garden this weekend: dividing some spring perennials and the grape hyacinths, composting the spent annuals, and perhaps planting some colorful mums. But in the meantime, I have been tending a different sort of garden: our collection of books. Like daffodils, our book collection has been quietly naturalizing to form great drifts in our home; multiplying, spreading runners, sending down deep tap roots. Okay, enough of the plant analogies, we had more than we knew what to do with, ok? Our fireplace bookshelf is already filled to bursting, so a couple of weekends ago, we built this addition to our bookshelf unit...which we are quite pleased with.

See all the extra space we have now? I predict it will fill up quickly.

We also moved my grandfather's collection to the living room.

Now that we are surrounded by books, it feels like we live in a library. Very cool.

Some of these are over several hundred years old. Most of the time, they remain in a glass barrister style bookcase.

This collection is what I draw from when looking for backgrounds for my product shots.

Eva wants to see what all the picture-taking fuss is about.

Bored, already.

I imagine I will be spending a lot of time in this room over the winter, dreaming of next year's garden whilst sipping a cup of tea and enjoying the indoor view.