Never having heard of him until he died last year (well, surely I heard of Riddley Walker, but I paid it no mind) and I read his obits in the literary news, I ordered a sampler of Russell Hoban's writing--A Russell Hoban Omnibus--and it arrived via UPS at 9 a.m. today. I opened it at the first page of the first novel, The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz, and read the first sentences and swooned.

There were no lions any more. There had been lions once. Sometimes in the shimmer of the heat on the plains the motion of their running still flickered on the dry wind--tawny, great, and quickly gone. Sometimes the honey-colored moon shivered to the silence of a ghost-roar on the rising air.

Russell Hoban where were you all my life and why did I not know you until after you were dead?

***

Drought continues hereabouts. We have a fraction of the precipitation we normally get--a fraction of a very small amount, in other words--and it is alarming to look around at our mountain surround, usually white-blanketed since November, and see not even a spot of snow, only brown. If we do not make up for the shortfall in February-March we are in for a fiery 2012, and that's for certain.

Our January continues warm during the day, 40s and 50s F., dropping to 10 or 15 at night.

Little packets of seeds keep arriving in the mail and one afternoon I will plant the cold frame I readied last fall. I bought big hot Christmas lights half-off at the hardware store last week, and I'll suspend them in the cold frame and cover it with the otherwise useless rat-gnawed pads from the trailer to keep it warmish overnight, and we'll see if we can't grow mesclun and radishes.

My step-grandmother's favorite breakfast--fresh red radishes with brown bread and butter.

Here comes the sun.