Frost feathers

When conditions favor, our trees grow feathers of frost overnight, delicate crystals lining each branch and twig all weathervaned by the breeze. Then the sun hits them in the morning, and they break and fall and glitter in the air like a flurry of tiny diamonds.

Strange feeling

Received copies of the French version of THE SUMMER COUNTRY this morning. Really, really weird, seeing my name on a book I wrote in a language I can't read*. I wonder why they used two translators? One made a draft and the other smoothed out prose and dealt with idioms? Or they worked in parallel on different parts of the book, to meet a deadline? Questions, questions.

*Oh, I can puzzle it out, all the root-words and thefts that English has performed over the centuries, but still....

And they added an "annex" for the translation of one of the songs, but not for others. I wonder how they chose.