Color is a developing story. So is my bookshop.

Sunny in the morning sun 

We have been having a spate of lovely mornings so far this October. Spate. That’s an interesting word. A large number of anything, definitions of the word say, although a few add that it usually refers to bad things. No, no! Lovely mornings are good! They are beautiful gifts, and we can never have too many of them! 

Barbara clouds at sunrise

Wild aster festival

A bend in the road

(For a very early morning sight, look here.)

Sometimes I make notes or lists ahead of time for a new blog post; other times the writing becomes a seat-of-the-pants improvisation. (Fiction writers are sometimes said to be “plotters” or “pantsers,” the former planning and charting a novel’s action, the latter just seeing where the action takes the story.) One reason I omitted from my last post the visit from a dear friend of 60 years (!!!) and her husband is that somehow, unbelievably, she and I completely forgot to have the guys take a picture of us together, and I was writing my post largely from photographs (except for the book stuff), so there you are. Terrible me! Sixty years! Jeanie, how could we???

If I work from photographs today, this will be another pantsed (seat-of-the-pants) post, and it looks like that’s what it’s going to be.

Always ready for fun

The World Around Us

Again, because I was unable to photograph it, I keep forgetting to record my sighting of a red-bodied dragonfly along our daily two-track road a few weeks back. Entrancing! Was it a common darter? A meadow skimmer? I confess I prefer the name meadow skimmer, so that's what I want to think it was. 

Red is not as common in nature, it seems to me, as green or white or yellow. Cardinal flower stands out for that reason alone. In this season, it is the leaves of the pin cherries that enchant me. 

What could be lovelier?

Virginia creeper?

Garden and Orchard Notes

Wanting to introduce Tree Guy to my favorite area nurseries, I drove us to one on the way home from errands in Traverse City, not intending to buy anything but simply to luxuriate in the arboretum atmosphere--until I saw something that had to come home with me, a little native shrub with the most beautiful fall color imaginable.

American hazelnut planted Monday

I was a goner! It fit in the car, and before sunset it was in the ground near my boardwalk perennial border.

Although shrubs involve more initial cost than most perennials, I am coming to think they might be a better bargain. How many so-called perennials have I planted, only to have them disappear after two or three seasons? Also, like a tree, a shrub it its beautiful self for at least half the year. Long ago I fell in love with a viburnum (var. 'Chenault') for its fall color, having no idea what it would look like when it flowered in summer. That shrub I planted in Northport in the late 1990s is still strong and healthy and beautiful, so I have high hopes for the shasta viburnum a friend brought me from a garden being bulldozed, another new member of my garden family.

Shasta viburnum planted Tuesday

I disassembled my strawberry tower to bring it to the bookstore for the winter. Maybe the plants will die, unhappy without a dormancy period. The whole tower was an experiment, anyway, wild plants not fruiting that I dug up along the back of my house, so there was nothing to lose.

Its earlier incarnation

Moving for the winter

More and more of the plant world is shutting down as the days grow shorter. The time for rest will soon be here. 

A late statement of color

The big harvest and preserving push at present involves apples. Peeling, slicing, saucing and drying. So far, I have two batches of sauce in canning jars and a second batch of slices in the dehydrator.

Adventures in Reading

Sounds like a schoolbook, doesn't it? As a lifelong reader, however, and bookseller of over three decades, I have to admit that many of my life's adventures are vicarious, found in the pages of books. One that held me spellbound was Venture to the Interior, by Laurens Van Der Post, although when I read about his life after reading the book, I wondered if I had been completely taken in. Were his facts really facts? Were the emotions he recounts what he truly felt? The morning those doubts assailed me, I began reading a memoir by Vikram Seth, Two Lives, and then watched a video of an interview with Seth, interested to note that he considers himself primarily a poet, although the world knows him chiefly as a novelist--much like Jim Harrison, I couldn't help thinking, the market (and how crass that word sounds in this context!) for poetry being so much smaller than that for long fiction.

Then there is nonfiction, which can be as fascinating as any novel written and as beautiful or heart-wrenching as any poem. Three nonfiction books in my recent reading, if they must be given a category (because nonfiction is not really a category, is it?), would have to be called anthropology. Two are called that, another subtitled “oral history.”

Chinese Lives: An Oral History of Contemporary China, by Zhang Xinxin & Sang Ye, with a preface by Studs Terkel, is a collection of stories made in China, inspired by Terkel's collections of Americans' stories. The man and woman who put these stories together were themselves Chinese, born in 1953 and 1955, respectively, Zhang having worked as a nurse and a factory worker before establishing herself in journalism, Sang trained as an electrician who also turned to journalism and modern Chinese history.

John Langston Gwaltney, who received part of his training in anthropology under the late Margaret Mead, collected in Drylongso (that word means “ordinary” in the Gullah language of coastal Georgia and South Carolina) the stories of black Americans of all ages from many different walks of life as his 1970s field study, which he called a “portrait of core black culture,” because as a Black man he felt his people had not been accurately represented in standard social science. Rather than concentrating on poverty or dysfunction, he looked for the ordinary, the drylongso, of Black American culture, and those who spoke with him (many of whom had known him all their lives) did so trusting him with their stories.

Ōkubo Diary: Portrait of a Japanese Valley, by Brian Moeran, was also an account by an anthropologist, but it was very different from Chinese Lives and Drylongso, in that Moeran, the author, (1) was an outsider, a Westerner, and (2) gave his own observations of the life of the Japanese village from a subjective, first-person standpoint. His Japanese wife came from an urban rather than a rural background and so was almost as much an outsider as he was (both spoke Japanese but not the local dialect); however, they bought a house in the valley, hoping to settle there permanently and that they would eventually be seen as “belonging.” Two years later, those hopes were dashed. 

Zhang and Sang, like Gwaltney, allow their subjects (for want of a better word) to speak for themselves, and as readers we feel we are meeting these individuals directly. Fascinating as Moeran's book is, we never have that same feeling. We are given only his stories of the people among whom he lived, and so, like him, we are held at a distance from their lives. Like him, we remain an outsider.

I'll be getting back to Vikram Seth soon. But Tree Guy and I will also be having more company this month, and there is still a lot of fall work to be done, too, around the home place. 

We are still learning, Sunny and I.

One of my favorite portraits of her

Last Monday may have been our last agility session for the season, or we may have one more, depending on the weather. Be that as it may, I asked Coach Mike to take a couple pictures of Sunny and me on the course, and this is what I have:

Sunny and I do pretty well at everything except the weave poles, so I am determined that we will focus on those next summer. Practice, practice, practice! It is the key to success in so many endeavors.

Endings can be beautiful, too.

Besides lovely October dawns, we have also had some spectacular fall sunsets. Those are the Manitou Islands out there on the horizon. 

Are you looking for color?

Equinoctal moon --
color only beginning now

Glimpses of color:

Tree Guy tells me that the red and orange and gold and yellow colors of autumn leaves are there all summer long, hidden by green. When the green seeps away (chlorophyll “breaks down” and/or stops being produced—obviously, I’m pretty vague on the science), other colors sing forth. 

Already in early September the green of our deciduous trees was noticeably less bright, red undertones darkening the overall effect of the woodland edges. Where I notice brighter color most in September is in pockets—peony foliage in my border, columbine in the shade garden, an isolated, stressed tree here and there along the road, the first red sumac leaves and berries. But the big color show, once it gets underway, will develop quickly—and then be over all too soon, as happens every year.

And oh, already the pin cherries! How often do we pay any attention to them? Look at their vivid color with the low, almost-setting sun behind the leaves!

Flowers and Gardens of the Shoulder Season:

When bee balm goes to seed and phlox begins dropping its petals, I sometimes, with a wave of sadness, almost panic, that the time of blossoms is past—and then the asters begin to bloom. Asters in the village, asters in my meadow, asters along the roadside! Tiny white and pale pink ones and splashy big deep purple flowers. The bees love them, and so do I. 

My old corner from long ago!

Busy bee --

Chrysanthemums in pots appear around the same time and certainly fill an important niche, but it’s the wild asters that make me stop and smile. Carefree as weeds, bright and varied in their colors, they are Nature’s free will offering. Thank you!

Meadow asters

More

There are colors in my garden, too, though. A few marigolds from last year’s seeds, some dwarf hollyhocks (why they came up where they did and why they are so small, I have no idea), a handful of zinnias. My strawberry tower did not yield fruit but survived the summer, and I’m considering bringing it to the bookstore for the winter to see what it will do. Any thoughts on that?

Garden gold

Strawberry tower

Look out for this invader!

I had a nasty shock while Tree Guy and I were working on reducing the number of (total elimination is a pipe dream) young black walnut trees and the ever-invasive autumn olive. A large shrub I had been walking by for years was covered with black berries. What were they? Anything edible? Imagine how I recoiled in dread when the identification turned out to be the horrible buckthorn! That, too? No fair!

Chainsaw, loppers, pruners, poison, and a bag to contain the berries stole an hour from our pursuit of other goals, but I will be on the lookout from now on, and if you see this invader on your land, don't let it get the upper hand!

Buckthorn! Very unwelcome!

What of the 2026 apple crop?

Judging only from what I see as I travel county roads, it looks like a fantastic apple year! My own little trees have produced nicely after two off-years (first because of codling moths, then the next year a late spring killing frost nipping the blossoms). This year I was ready with traps for the moths at the end of winter, and spring frosts were unproblematic, so my only regret now is having neglected to thin the crop, because there are too many undersized apples, too much fruit competing for the trees’ resources. Three years ago, I did a good job of thinning, but this summer I forgot all about it. Oh, well! There are some good-sized apples in the mix, too.

One of my overloaded trees

Orchardists will not have made my mistake. Their crops look great! A place on Swede Road makes the most delicious fresh sweet cider with theirs. 

Cider stop, Swede Road

Wild apple trees look to have had a boom year, also, so there will be plenty of fruit for wildlife this winter.

Big wild apple

What people have been reading this year:

Three categories of fiction frequently requested this past year stand out, along with one of philosophy: (1) science fiction; (2) fantasy; (3) romance; and ((4) Stoicism. Even given the dystopic, post-apocalyptic trends in (1) and (2), the first three genres, as I see them, spell escape from present reality. 

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours….

So wrote William Wordsworth, noting further that “we are out of tune.”  

Out of tune. Not in harmony. Out of tune with nature, surely, tragically. Out of tune with our times—perhaps not such a bad thing, since the times themselves are out of tune with nature. 

So where does that leave (4)? Why are American readers—at least in Northern Michigan—turning to an ancient school of philosophy? Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus. As with the escape reading, the Stoics seem clearly a response to the times in which we live, with the difference that Stoicism would have us deal with our challenges, accept our limitations, and keep our cool rather than explode in anger, simmer and shiver in anxiety, or fearfully burrow down the rabbit hole of escapism.

The Serenity Prayer is an example of the Stoic approach to life: 

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, 

 

Courage to change the things I can, 

 

and Wisdom to know the difference.

Stoicism is not resignation. Change what you can and then don’t give your one brief precious life over to agonizing about what you cannot control.

It has been an interesting summer of bookstore requests, this one of 2026, with three frequently requested categories of reading to escape reality and one to help us deal with it.

I am reminded by a recent customer request that there have also been more older adults than usual looking for the simple stories of their early years. Women have always been ready to revisit Nancy Drew, but in 2026 I’ve had men in their 70s wanting to re-read Hardy Boys books. Comfortable familiarity is another welcome escape, so there is a fifth popular category.

What I’ve been reading and thinking about:

For myself, I read and think and attempt to deal with life as it is and also periodically plunge from the present day to a previous century and another continent, escaping the here and now, or binge on two or three murder mysteries in a row. (Murder mysteries are a satisfying escape because the genre generally dictates that justice triumph in the end.) I recently finished my reading of the Anatole France novel, The Gods Are A-Thirst, a novel of life immediately following the French Revolution of 1789 (which is not at all escape reading, given the Terror and all that it involved), but I fell into a nonfiction book that turned out, to my surprise, to lead off with an introduction to Stoicism, and while I can’t go the whole nine yards to believing that “everything happens for a reason,” i.e., according to some kind of grand plan, the idea of imagining a worst-case scenario is long familiar to me, something I’ve done for years, though I never gave it a name or realized it was part of Stoic practice. 

“What’s the worst that could happen?” Thinking about a possible worst case, I can decide ahead of time how to deal with it, should it come to pass. That gave me a measure of control—not over the outcome but over my response—and thus a reason not to fret overmuch.

Memento mori thinking is something else that has meaning for me, so encountering it in Stoicism is like meeting an old friend. Before my husband died, we had already lost many good, lifelong friends, and the Artist would often say in the morning, “It’s a beautiful day! And we’re alive!” The implication, sometimes voiced, always implied, was that we would not always be alive—obvious, but not something everyone wants to contemplate daily but for us a happy reminder to rejoice in the day we were beginning together. Now that he is gone, remembering that I too will die still reminds me to appreciate the moment and hour I have while I am in them. Not only will I die, but so will Tree Guy, and so will Naughty Barker, and so will all the people I know and love, but we are here now, and life is all the more precious because not unlimited. 

Stoicism, though, isn’t just about feeling good. That would be a shallow and simplistic reading of it. As Oliver Burkeman notes in his book, The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking, when a Stoic thinks that any day could be her last, she doesn’t go wild and max out her credit card because she won’t have another chance to buy things and besides, she’ll be dead and won’t have to pay the bill. That is not memento mori thinking at all. Rather, the Stoic idea is that every day is an opportunity to live a virtuous life, to be courageous, practice healthy moderation, and to pursue justice and seek wisdom. We won’t have an eternity of chances, but we have today. Here’s a quick introduction that may lead you to want to read more.

Dogs are natural stoics, a friend reminded me. So true! The dog with a sore leg avoids straining it as much as possible, and even a dying dog doesn’t weep and wail, “Why me???” Which makes me think of Sarah's last day of life and the photo I will put here of that day, and, as for taking the opportunity to practice doggie virtue, the way she staggered to her feet in the late afternoon, four hours before her last breath, and asked to go outside. She needed to pee. We would not have cared if she had peed on the floor, but she was still concerned with doing right, as a good dog sees right.

Our last day together: Dos Cabezas, Arizona

Brief comment on the news:

I really will keep this brief. My response today is to the Vice President of the United States, who defends the President's actions against media networks whose coverage he doesn't like. (The president has barred those networks from future press conferences. They are suing.) The Vice President says that negative coverage of the president is (I'm going to paraphrase rather than look this up) “not representative of the American people's views.” Huh? Does he understand the difference between news and opinion? Or is he like my stepson's grade school teacher? That teacher told the class, “We only like nice news.” VP also called negative coverage “left-wing propaganda.” Hmmm, propaganda. News ≠ opinion ≠ propaganda. I could say more but won't. You all know what propaganda is, I hope.

A common enemy?

It’s often said that nothing unites people as much as seeing a common enemy. Without one, we find reasons to feud with each other; with one, we make common cause. 

With election year competition and conflict and vitriol building to fever pitch, there is at the same time a growing sense that the American people see AI as their common enemy. Will this be the future conflict? Humans vs. (for lack of a better word) “robots”? Sounds like science fiction, but if it would unite all human beings on earth, I can imagine worse scenarios (e.g., the one we've been living most recently).

How agile are we?

Sunny and I had another agility session with Coach Mike on Monday morning, and he had us doing some complicated new things that we did, I must say, very well. Sunny seemed happy to do what I asked of her, and I was happy with how well we both did. One more reason to keep the grass mowed in my yard is to keep the stage clear for agility equipment. Ah, but Sunny is just as happy with her beloved tennis balls. She is demanding but only within a narrow range!

(I can't photograph her when we are running the course.)

I cannot leave this unsaid.

I learned this morning that one of my oldest and dearest Leelanau friends died last night, Wednesday, Sept. 22. I saw her the previous Friday and a couple Mondays before that and thought there would be more visits, more time to hold her hand and tell her I loved her and what a good friend she had always been. The next-to-last time I was with her, I'm not sure she knew me, though she had called me by name two weeks earlier, and we had shared some laughs. Last Friday, though, she had a beautifully lucid moment when I mentioned all the good times we had had together. She said, “There's one thing we didn't do. We didn't go to the U.P. together. We need to make that trip.”

Ellen, you will be in my heart wherever I go!

Another: One year four of us drove down to the countryside near Buckley to see the giant elm. At the side of the road, on a metal folding chair, inside a Tupperware sheet cake container, there was a guest book. We all wrote something in the book and signed our names. I don't remember what year that was, and now I can't ask the others, because they are all gone.

Ellen, Ann, Linda
(I was cameraperson for this shot.)

And Then It Rained

(I am in love with pagoda dogwood!)

Reminder: This Thursday, June 11, at 4 p.m. at Dog Ears Books, author Robert Downes will give his presentation on Native American history prior to European exploration. This is a free event and one you can take in before your dinner hour!

Seasonal thoughts and projects

Reading one of Jean-Luc Bannalec’s murder mysteries the other evening at bedtime, I ran across a phrase—and here I have to paraphrase what would be a translation, anyway—about summer always arriving on a certain day. That is, there is a day when you feel, at last, Yes, this is summer. I felt that way last Friday. It wasn’t the first day I’d been able to have the bookshop door open, nor the first day warm enough to go about in sandals and without a jacket, but it felt different. Not just a temperate spring day, but summer. 

That being the case, my two “days off,” Sunday and Monday, were busy ones at home. Accomplishments included getting my lawn mower working again (it had gone on strike, and I was able to persuade it back to work again all by myself!), mowing grass, running out to a couple of nearby garden centers for more plants (both flowers and vegetables), getting all the new arrivals in soil (either in the ground or in planters), along with catching up on laundry, hanging the heavy items out on the line and later bringing them indoors to fold, wrapping up the day by watering everything, even though rain was in the forecast for after midnight.

The garden is coming together.

Did it rain overnight? If so, I slept through it. Morning was misty and calm, my world jungly green, only a sweet, slight breeze through the open window. No need to water on Tuesday, so, after her morning sortie, Sunny and I had a leisurely porch breakfast. Later in the day, it rained for sure. 

Poppy after rain

All three cuttings I took from my cranberrybush viburnum survived the winter well, one of them even flowering its very first solo season, which encourages me to try more of this manner of propagation. For 2026, the experiment I have in mind is pagoda dogwood, Cornus alternifolia, which I am delighted to discover blooming very close to my house as a volunteer, not far from the legion of volunteer black raspberries I depend on harvesting every summer for my signature ‘blackstraw’ jam, a combination of black raspberries and good local strawberries. Yum!

Dogwood again...

...and raspberry-to-be!

Again, reading

Besides the Bannalec mystery, I’ve been reading, a few pages at a time and in English translation, Rabelais's big work, Gargantua and Pantagruel, but don’t know if I’ll get through the whole fat paperback volume. It is entertaining, I admit, but entertaining in the way of “Saturday Night Live” rather than as a movie with a strong narrative from beginning to end. Lots of smart-aleck nicknames and jokes. Lots to do with controversies of the time of Rabelais and his opinions. A few pages at a time, I can do. The whole thing? In my mother’s deadly phrase, We’ll see!

Thoughts on “being an author”

An author is the originator of a written work. Some authors are writers by profession, while others are not. 

Being a professional writer, like being a professional musician or fine artist, involves long-term commitment, sometimes lifetime commitment. Other people come late in life to writing, often as a second (or even third) career in retirement. 

Not all professional writers are book authors; they may author (the word here functions as a verb) articles or short magazine stories. Some are journalists or columnists or grant writers. Also, not all authors of published books consider themselves—or even aspire to be—career writers.

I’ve been sorting through my thoughts on this because a couple of women visited my bookshop recently with a new book written by one of them. “I’m not really an author,” Jennifer Sager said, modestly introducing her book. “She keeps saying that!” her friend protested. After the three of us conversed for a while, and I took a careful look at the book they had brought in to show me, I said to Sager insistently, “You are the author of this book!” And she is, whether or not she ever writes another. 

Steph’s Story, published by a relatively new small press in Bloomington, Indiana, Filibuster Press, is a story Jennifer Sager felt “compelled” to write. Jennifer is a middle daughter who grew up with an older and a younger sister. The oldest, Stephanie, was born with Down syndrome. In telling of her sister’s life, the author of Steph’s Story also tells her own journey from sheltered childhood to dawning realization of handicaps faced by many different groups of people for various reasons. Because her parents did not heed doctors’ advice to put Stephanie in an institution (and “try again” for a “normal” child), Jennifer’s growing up introduced her to a range of other young people with disabilities, from those in wheelchairs to those with high-functioning autism. Only as she grew older and had experience outside her immediate neighborhood did she realize that poverty and skin color, like disability, could trigger discrimination. 

All of the author's factual information, history, and advocacy, however, is woven into a very personal, engaging story. I started reading on Monday evening and had soon eagerly devoured over 100 pages.

Three sisters! For me, as the oldest of a trio of sisters, that idea alone sparked my interest, but it was Jennifer’s love for Steph and her joy in their bond that is holding me page after page. Who wouldn’t enjoy this book? I’m sure the affirmative messages will be especially important for anyone with a child or grandchild who diverges from the “norm,” but I’m also sure that anyone at all interested in families—and who of us is not?—will enjoy reading Steph’s Story. 

From where I stand

Is this section a rant? Call it what you will.

Let me first note, briefly, that a request for evidence is not satisfied by insults, name-calling, or the sheer repetition of an unsupported claim. However loudly you may yell, however nasty you get with the person who asked for evidence, if yelling and name-calling and hurling insults is all you can do, that just tells me is that you have no evidence, no ground for your claim. (You know who and what I'm talking about here.) 

Day after day, it remains astonishing to me how many Americans are willing to accept not only patently false claims but outrageously bad public behavior from someone elected to serve our country. Serve, not harm, not injure, certainly not destroy. What are they, those sticking with him, getting from supporting loss of dignity and destruction of hope for others? Anything other than the satisfaction of seeing their opposition’s misery and frustration? 

Now, something else: Less than 1% of the American population identifies as transgender. One percent. Of this one percent, only 0.002% (ten out of 500,000) are college athletes. How and why did transgender people come to be such a huge political issue? 

Two words: smoke screen. 

Just say the word ’transgender,’ and certain groups of people completely freak out. They are filled with fear, their fear fuels their rage, and they forget everything else. Jobs are vanishing while wars are not, and the rich get richer and richer as the poor get poorer and sicker and more and more disenfranchised. 

Someone must be blamed for the woes that afflict us! Where do we look for a scapegoat? Let’s find a very small, vulnerable population and focus fear and anger on them!

I am so tired of that cruel strategy and sick of watching people fall for it!

On the other hand--a life well lived!

Leelanau Township lost a priceless citizen recently. At 99 years of age, however, Julia Brabanec was ready to go. “I don’t know why I’m still here,” she had confided to me in one of our visits in her last year. 

Julia's contributions to the northern Michigan food landscape were featured in Emita Brady Hill’s 2020 nonfiction book, Northern Harvest: Twenty Michigan Women in Food and Farming.  In fact, the first chapter in the book is “Julia Brabanec,” in the opening section, “Two Orchards and a CSA: Becoming Organic.”

Julia and her late husband John first came to Leelanau County on their honeymoon in 1948. Later they bought land here and on it developed an organic orchard. The Brabanecs lived simply, pumping water from their well and lighting their house with kerosene lamps until a home wind generator enabled them to electrify. They did almost everything themselves, too, so although they built the foundation for their new (second) home on the property in 1985, the house was finished only in 2005 with the help of their children. Julia and John were always too busy farming to build a house. One thousand, one hundred trees—apples and peaches—“mom & pop” doing it all, from planting to delivery.

If you haven’t read Northern Harvest yet, you really should, to learn the rest of Julia’s story, as well as that of other women in food and farming in Northern Michigan. 

My late husband always referred to John and Julia as “the Helen and Scott Nearing of Leelanau County.” John died 16 years ago, and I remember his funeral well. Julia wanted to go out more quietly, and she got her wish. 

It’s easy sometimes to say and think, as we witness the passing of the old guard, that the future will never again know such good people, and yet I see men and women in younger generations already coming up with solid values such as Julia and John lived by: love of the land; belief in organic methods; a strong work ethic; and dedication to the future. That last is what it all comes down to, isn’t it? Care for the future and all who live on the land, urban and rural. Respect for life and the dignity of all.

I am honored to have a beautiful portrait of Julia Brabanec, a photograph by author Emita Brady Hill, behind my bookstore desk, as I am honored to have known Julia Brabanec and to have counted her as a friend.

Julia Brabanec: A good life, well lived!