What’s Happening In and Around Town and Country, Indoors and Out?

As mentioned in yesterday’s postscript, Sarah and I went to Peterson Park on Monday afternoon. The images today are from my time on the beach. I’ll intersperse them with unrelated text, if you don’t mind.

I’m reading (devouring!) Marry or Burn, having set aside Deeply Rooted to dive into the long-awaited (by me and others) Valerie Trueblood story collection. I’ll have a lot to say about both of these books in the near future, but I was so confident about Trueblood’s work, after Seven Loves, that I chose her for this week’s recommendation before even opening to the first page, something I’ve never done before. I can say now, several stories in, that my confidence was fully warranted. More on this later. And more on the various books related to agriculture I’ve been reading. Another that might go into the to-read-soon pile is Sacred Trusts: Essays on Stewardship and Responsibility, ed. by Michael Katakis, with illustrations by Russell Chatham.

Pictures immediately below:
Petoskey stones come in rock size, too.
Land and water forms join.
Other rocks present alluring colors.




We finally got to set our clocks back on Sunday, and Northerners now have another hour of sunlight in the mornings. I suppose Southerners do, too, but can it possibly mean as much to them as it does to us? I love having a wider window of opportunity for morning dog walk/runs. (I walk, she runs.) Some people are grumpy about losing light in the evenings, but the home fireplace takes the pain out of dark evenings for me, and it’s a good excuse to stop yard work and come into the house, too.


With the sun so low, the shadows of even tiny creatures stretch to great lengths.

Bless my neglected garden! Yesterday I wanted carrots for soup but didn’t want California carrots (Sorry, California, we have plenty of carrots in Michigan!), so the grocery store in Northport wasn’t going to help me, but riding through the countryside with Sarah after our expedition to Lake Michigan I remembered that I hadn’t dug the carrots from my garden yet. Went home. Got out the spading fork. Sure enough, beautiful and fresh and crisp and sweet! There are enough for a few more diggings, too. Very satisfying!

Here is a plant from the beach, kinnikinnick, or bearberry, Arctostaphylos uva-ursi. Not much from a distance, but up close the berries are bright, cheery red.




My calendar has suddenly spouted another exciting holiday event. Well, the date isn’t certain yet, but I’ll keep everyone posted and add it to the calendar as soon as possible. Marjorie Farrell, whose mother-in-law lives here in Northport, will be visiting from Woodstock, New York, in December and will be bringing her new line of beautiful, stylish, reusable, eco-friendly wrapping cloths. They are perfect for books (I love how easy books are to wrap, anyway), and lucky recipients can use the wrappings afterward as scarves, small table covers, art for the wall—or as wrapping for gifts to pass along to friends. “The medium is the message”? In this case, “The wrapping is [part of] the gift”! We’ll have a party at Dog Ears Books, with refreshments, Marjorie will give a demonstration, and we will banish the winter blues, if anyone already has them in December, which I hope will not be the case.

For now, anyway, it's still November with balmy October weather.


P.S. Please take time to read Sharon Astyk's post today on the "love economy."