I borrowed Timothy Findley’s book From Stone Orchard from our local library.

 It seems that both Findley and his friend Bill Whitehead were looking for a place in the country— away from the big city of Toronto where their careers had been focused, Findley’s in acting and beginning to write, and Bill’s in research biology and in acting, an interesting combination in my mind at least.

Findley opens the book with “We found it because we had lost our way.” 

Lost? Who was lost? That made me want to read on. No longer was my research just research. It had become interesting reading.

Since Findley and Whitehead were starting new careers, they were looking for something “affordable” and found a real estate dealer whose definition of “affordable” met theirs.  Since they could write just about anywhere, they bought a small acreage with an old house on a small farm near Cannington, Ontario.

They named the place Stone Orchard, due to the prolific crop of stones they harvested at every turn.  As they tamed overgrown bushes, scythed the lawn down to a usual height, tore down old fences, they learned about the hard work of  pioneers and original settlers when they arrived in that place. They also learned to appreciate that there were muscles they had never used after taking scythe in hand to cut the long grass around the house.

Findley’s writing style is definitely literary, but it’s also entertaining and beautiful prose. He writes about the changes to the house and the landscape around it, and how they have grown with it. “After twenty years or so, we came to live in the splendour of “After”— and it’s hard to know which we loved most.”

I could tell you more, but that would spoil the reading for you. Why not borrow it from your library and find out for yourself? Meanwhile back to the book which I now must finish reading.