Buried by books/Gardens in bloom

From the L.A. Times, an article on when you're buried with books.

The garden which Edith Wharton gazed at while writing The House of Mirth has once again bloomed. "The mistress had a corner bedroom so she could look down on her flower garden while writing longhand in bed. This she did each day from about 6 a.m. to noon, often with a dog propped under one arm as she dropped each completed page on the floor to be collected by her maid and typed by her secretary."

First Pages
From Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi:

Every night she would fall asleep with the prayer that, while she slept, her body would stretch itself, grow to the size of that of other girls her age in Burgdorf--not even the taller ones like Eva Rosen, who would become her best friend in school for a brief time--but into a body with normal-length arms and legs and with a small, well-shaped head. To help God along, Trudi would hang from door frames from her fingers until they were numb, convinced she could feel her bones lengthening; many nights she'd tied her mother's silk scarves around her head--one encircling her forehead, the other knotted beneath her chin--to keep her head from expanding.