Miss Hickory

One of my favorite books as a child was Miss Hickory. Miss Hickory was a doll made from an apple tree branch and who had a hickory nut for a head. Miss Hickory accidentally gets left behind when her family goes traveling. She was forced to fend for herself in a bunch of creative little ways. I was entranced by her creating canning jars out of hollow acorn nuts, clothing from birch bark, shoes from lady slipper flowers. She had a magical, although usually solitary, little life and met her fate when a no-good squirrel friend of hers (who hadn't worked to shore up food for winter) eats her head.

I must have read that book a dozen times! It fit right in with my own original fantasies of being very small and living in fabulous bush apartments that I would create with large leaves, empty seed pods, nutshells and flower petals. I think I always used fragrant and velvety soft rose petals as blankets. And it was always a bonus if I could find a milkweed pod, ripe and full of white silky down. I think the world would be a much better place if we were all just 2 inches high. Yep, that is how I would solve all the problems today, shrink everyone down to about 2 inches high.