FernFolio

The Girls’ Book Club read Anne of Green Gables, in this the 100th anniversary year of the publication of LM Montgomery’s Canadian children’s classic. We enjoyed Anne’s bursts of enthusiasm, her wildly romantic and fanciful imagination, her fierce love of Diana, Miss Stacey, Mrs. Allen and Matthew, her equally fierce hatred of Gilbert and anyone else insensitive enough to mention her red hair, and her bright, indomitable spirit. We sorrowed over Anne’s bleak and loveless early childhood. We rejoiced at her successes at Avonlea School, then at Queen’s.
It seemed only fitting to celebrate our year of reading, and Anne, by having an Anne of Green Gables picnic in High Park. Girls came dressed in long dresses with white aprons and pants with checkered shirts. They wore straw hats, some adorned with flowers, and brought straw baskets laden with all manner of sandwiches and baked goods and fruit.
We spread our picnic blankets under the low-hanging branches of some trees, and ate shortbread, scones, cucumber sandwiches, tiny muffins and lemon tarts, and drank lemonade.
Then each girl stood up in turn to recite a poem or tell a ghost story. There were stories about blighted love, lost children and motherly love, all of which Anne would have delighted in. One girl read a lovely poem by LM Montgomery, another girl recited The Charge of the Light Brigade, as she walked among us, and still another recited a poem of her own composition.
It was a magical afternoon there in that grove of trees celebrating Lucy Maud and Anne and the girls, each one so full of curiosity, determination, imagination and potential.
It has been a wonderful year filled with marvelous stories. I cannot wait to begin again in the Fall!
FernFolio Editor

The Seeker by LM Montgomery

I sought for my happiness over the world,
Oh, eager and far was my quest;
I sought it on mountain and desert and sea,
I asked it of east and of west.
I sought it in beautiful cities of men,
On shores that were sunny and blue,
And laughter and lyric and pleasure were mine
In palaces wondrous to view;
Oh, the world gave me much to my plea and my prayer
But never I found aught of happiness there!

Then I took my way back to a valley of old
And a little brown house by a rill,
Where the winds piped all day in the sentinel firs
That guarded the crest of the hill;
I went by the path that my childhood had known
Through the bracken and up by the glen,
And I paused at the gate of the garden to drink
The scent of sweet-briar again;
The homelight shone out through the dusk as of yore
And happiness waited for me at the door!

Lucy Maud Montgomery