Rain, Weeds, Books, Lists, Laughter

Beautiful custom outdoor table cover by Dolls & More

Rain and Weeds

We finally got a bit more rain. Not enough, but better than none. On Wednesday evening I finally began digging up spotted knapweed, having ignored its invasion for too long in my fixation on the larger and more obvious autumn olive. Both are plants that want to take over the world (at least here in northern Michigan), and while autumn olive grows to be a massive shrub and knapweed dies back every fall, both are tenacious and create a circle of death around them as they grow. Spotted knapweed turns Leelanau hills a beautiful lavender color in late summer, and bees enjoy it and produce delicious honey from their foraging, but left on its own it creates a nasty monoculture, with no room for the colorful diversity of native plants, and so, like autumn olive, knapweed is a plant I want to discourage as much as possible around my old farmhouse.

Clearing the way to my apple trees....

The rain started Wednesday evening. I don’t know how much fell during the night, but Thursday morning arrived wet and refreshingly cool. The temperature and humidity reminded me of a September vacation week the Artist and I enjoyed once on Manitoulin Island, but I got a grip on the reminiscing and told myself that the rain would make weeding easier – and since I didn’t have to water my gardens (rain having done that), I spent a productive hour with long-handled weed digger and spade, with many a pause to launch a tennis ball for Sunny with the Chuckit!©️. The fact that I kept busy otherwise with my weeding encouraged her to bring the ball and drop it at my feet (to get my attention), rather than keeping it to herself and grabbing it away when I reached for it, in her customary teasing way. Every day she learns a little more about cooperative play. 

(Sunny on a sunnier day)

Meanwhile, In the Garden

First monarda (bee balm)

Embryonic daisy

Hibiscus and turtlehead awaiting their entrance

Little chrysanthemum jumps the gun

Red daylilies coming along

Vegetables and herbs

Porch table sweet peas

 

Second Quarterly Report, 2023

Since the June page has already been torn off the calendar, it’s time for me to list books I’ve read in the past three months, April through June, and here they are: 

 

59. Butler, Samuel. The Way of All Flesh (fiction)

60.             Logsdon, Gene. The Mother of All Arts: Agrarianism and the Creative Impulse (nonfiction)

61.             Angelou, Maya. The Heart of a Woman (nonfiction)

62.             McCarthy, Mary. Memories of a Catholic Girlhood(nonfiction)

63.             Sprigle, Ray. In the Land of Jim Crow (nonfiction)

64.             Bellow, Saul. Herzog (fiction)

65.             Salinger, J.D. Catcher In the Rye (fiction)

66.             Williams, Florence. The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative (nonfiction)

67.             Queen, Ellery. Cat of Many Tails (fiction)

68.             Backman, Fredrik. Anxious People (fiction)

69.             Lamott, Anne. Hard Laughter (fiction)

70.             ]Horowitz, Alexandra. The Year of the Puppy (nonfiction)

71.             Queen, Ellery. The Scarlet Letters (fiction)

72.             Jance, J. A. Nothing to Lose (fiction)

73.             Smith, Betty. Maggie-Now (fiction)

74.             Tyler, Anne. Noah’s Compass (fiction)

75.             Davis, Kyra, trans. (English to French) by Alice Boucher. Crimes, passion & talons aiguilles (fiction)

76.             Hubbard, Harlan. Payne Hollow (nonfiction)

77.             Tyler, Anne. A Beginner’s Goodbye (fiction)

78.             Gilbert, Elizabeth. Eat, Pray, Love (nonfiction)

79.             Darkshire, Oliver. Once Upon a Tome (nonfiction)

80.             Weinstein, Lawrence. Grammar for a Full Life: How the Ways We Shape a Sentence Can Limit or Enlarge Us(nonfiction)

81.             Bellow, Saul. The Theft (fiction)

82.             Harper, Michele. The Beauty in Breaking (nonfiction)

83.             Springer, Tom. The Star in the Sycamore (nonfiction)

84.             Ozeki, Ruth. The Face: A Time Code (nonfiction)

85.             Harrison, Jim. Sorcier (fiction – Warlock in French translation)

86.             Harding, Paul. Tinkers (fiction)

87.             Frank, Michael. One Hundred Saturdays (nonfiction)

88.             Ingall, Marjorie & Susan McCarthy. Sorry, Sorry, Sorry: The Case for Good Apologies (nonfiction)

89.             Raphael, Lev. Assault with a Deadly Lie (fiction)

90.             Bloom, Stephen B. Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes: A Cautionary Tale of Race and Brutality (nonfiction)

91.             Underhill, Robert. One Cold Coffee (fiction) 

Sweet peas and bachelor buttons

Books That Have Made Me Laugh Out Loud

This might be a hazardous list to make public -- one person’s belly laugh is another person’s groan, after all -- but I’ll chance it. Just for laughs. In no particular order, then --

 

Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods: David and I laughed so much over this book that “Big mistake!” became one of our favorite code phrases.

 

Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love: If someone had told me this was a funny book, I would have read it years before I did.

 

Richard Feynman’s “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman”: Just thinking of a certain sentence in this book makes me laugh. (It’s near the top of a left-hand page.)

 

Abigail Thomas’s A Three Dog Life: Her observations on parenthood at the beginning hooked me right away.

 

Gogol’s Dead Souls: The conceit (in old-fashioned sense) of this novel, left unfinished by its author, cracks me up every time. 

 

Matt Cook’s In the Small of My Backyard: --Which is poetry!

 

Helene Hanff’s Underfoot in Show Business: Stage-struck young woman goes to New York City in the 1930s with big dreams. How could this not provide laughs?

Goofy girl! She always makes me laugh!