Growing Green Things

I've been craving small town solitude lately. I think I have an internal voice telling me that the weather is supposed to be getting colder (even though it isn't actually getting colder) and I'm supposed to drink tea and curl up in an armchair with my cat and a book, while rain falls outside the window and green things grow. I have the cat, the tea, the armchair, and the book (actually, I don't really have the right book...any suggestions?), but I'm missing the rain and the green things growing. And I'm craving a place I've never been. Portland, Maine, is close, but it was too wide open for my purposes. I need a forest, and crashing waves, and pickup trucks, and dirt roads. I need a cottage, or a treehouse...something shingled with wood. Lots of steel grey, faded brown and deep mossy green. I've never had such an acute craving for a change of environment - I think I, like my plants, am languishing in too much sun. The traffic, the smog, the wide flat land, the endless lights of a city that has grown too large - it's all overwhelming me. So how do I slow it down? Without the resources or the vacation time to run off to a small town forest by the sea, I need to figure out a way to bring the idea of calm and solitude into my life.

Instead, I'm watching 90210. Which is kind of the opposite of the above. But I'll keep thinking about it until I figure out how to create small town solitude in the Valley.