Lifescapes

one household high and low

The bees are having a glorious week. The mesquite tree outside the door sings with energy and ambition and purpose from dawn to dark. Each mesquite catkin--the long, drooping flower cluster that is the heart's desire of every bee in Burnet County--is made up of hundreds of tiny five-petaled flowers. Each one conceals a precious drop of sweet nectar in its throat, enough to lure a lascivious bee deep inside, deep enough to pollinate the flower. All day, delighted, drunken bees and insects of all sorts, small and large, have been lurching from one catkin to another, fulfilling the plant's destiny in their abandoned pleasures. There will be mesquite pods aplenty in another month or two.

And on the other side of the yard...the chaste trees, another sweetly alluring destination for bees, and delirious hummingbirds as well. Chaste trees (Vitex agnus-castus) are easily rooted from cuttings; we have a dozen, all daughters of a single chaste tree we planted almost 20 years ago. In the summer, they form a lovely hedge some 14 feet high; they lose their leaves in the winter, but their bare branches and gray trunks are a pretty sight. Summer or winter, a fine addition to the garden.

The herbal history and lore of the chaste tree is fascinating--and yes, this lovely tree is an herb, as is the mesquite, since both have been used medicinally and ritually in a number of cultures. As you might guess from its name, the chaste tree was once supposed to inhibit sexual desire, and monastic cooks were in the habit of adding a handful of the spicy chaste berries, or monk's pepper, to the monks' food--something I learned for the first time from a Brother Cadfael mystery!

But there's nothing inhibiting about this lovely plant as far as the bees and hummingbirds are concerned. They're just busy getting breakfast, lunch, and dinner--and ensuring that the vitex reproduces itself. It's all part of the divine scheme of things. And these days when the nightly news is full of unnecessary war (is any war ever necessary?), hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, and other natural and unnatural violence, it's a joy to look up and see a tree buzzing, blooming, beautiful, benevolent. For just this brief moment, the wronged world seems entirely right.

Reading note, from Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir:

Light, leaf, foot, hand, and wing,
Such order as we know,
One household, high and low,
And all the earth shall sing.

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Reading note. "The pleasure of the day is not to be measured by the small space it occupies in this journal."--Henry Crabb Robinson, 1826

where's Amy? what happened to Amy?

A reader named Amy (whose middle name just happens to be Grace) wrote today to tell me that she enjoyed HEARTS, but was very disappointed not to find out what happened to Amy (Ruby's daughter), who was supposed to have a baby in December. HEARTS takes place in February, and there's no mention of Ruby's daughter. Where is she? What's happened to her? Amy (the reader) read all the way through the book, hoping to find out about Amy (the character), but there was a total silence. Not a sentence, not a word, not even a syllable.

Gosh, did I leave Amy out of the story? Oh, no! I couldn't have! She must be there somewhere--she's just had this wonderful baby, and she and Kate....

But no, she isn't there. I did leave her out, but please believe me, it was completely, totally unintentional. I got so tied up in what was going on with China that I completely forgot to pass on the wonderful news about Baby Grace! And in fact, Amy is the second reader to call this horrible oversight to my attention. While I was still out on tour, Judy wrote: "You didn't let us know about Amy's baby! Here are all these virtual grannies waiting for BLEEDING HEARTS so we can know about Amy and Kate's baby, and no news." (And then Judy went on to tell me a crackin' good story about a pilfered bleeding heart plant that had me falling out of my chair with laughter.)

So for Amy and Judy and all you other anxious virtual grannies (you know who you are), here's the straight scoop on Ruby's wild-child and her little girl. The baby was born on Christmas Eve, with Ruby and Kate looking proudly on, giving moral support while Amy did her part. The baby has dimples and curly red hair (naturally!) and Amy and Kate named her Grace. Ruby adores the baby and likes Kate more all the time, especially since Kate seems to be settling Amy down--or maybe it's motherhood that's doing it. But Ruby's mother...well, I'm sorry to have to tell you that Ruby's mother may never be able to accept Amy's and Kate's living arrangements. What's more, she's been acting very strangely lately. A security guard in a high-class department store recently caught her leaving the store with her purse full of--

Oops, sorry. You'll have to wait for SPANISH DAGGER for that bit. But rest assured: Amy is fine, Grace is totally wonderful, and Ruby couldn't be prouder. As for me, I am sorry. Very, very, very sorry. I'll do better next time, I promise. Meanwhile, blessings on all you virtual grannies out there for rooting for Amy and Grace and Kate and Ruby. You're the greatest!

Now, changing the subject--somebody wrote a comment asking about the knitting I did on the tour. I didn't do much, I'm afraid. Only two socks, and they don't even match (although I did learn to knit a nifty new heel flap). Oh, and I did three-quarters of a stranded mitten with #2 needles, in seven or eight colors, but I can't find it right now, and I'm not sure I want to, because the longer I knitted that mitten, the more I hated it.

Anyway, I haven't unpacked that bag of yarn yet, and won't for another week or two, because I am getting a new floor this coming week. Two new laminate floors, in our bedroom and in my office. This means utter chaos, of course, since these two rooms house most of the books, and ALL of the books have to come out of the bookcases so the guys can move them before the carpet comes up and the floor goes down. But you know what I'm talking about, because you have been there and done that, and you know exactly how I feel: happy about the new floor and glum about getting ready for the new floor.

And then one of the dogs--Toro, the heeler--sneaked into the kitchen and snarfed up what was left of the steak that Bill grilled tonight (a lot, actually, enough for a breakfast steak sandwich). It's not as if Toro hadn't already been fed his own gourmet doggie dinner, and hence couldn't possibly have been driven by hunger. But the steak was right out there in plain sight and easy reach (we won't say WHO left it within easy reach, although it was a person of the male gender). Toro says the devil made him do it.

It's been a very hard day.

In bloom this week: madonna lilies

I always think of Mom when I see these lilies, blooming tall and stately and snowy white in the garden. The plants came from her, when she was living in the nursing home. People would give her the potted lilies, and she would give them to me for the garden. She's been gone for nearly six years now, but the lilies somehow make her feel very close. Plants do that, don't they? They carry powerful memories, strong, sweet associations.

I've been working all day on the DAYS galleys. Most of the cutting is done, and I'm at the point now where I'm moving things around. Bless the editorial staff at Berkley: they've been so helpful with this difficult book, which is different from most of the straight-text books they do. They've given me a lot more wiggle-room with the galleys than I have any right to ask. Normally, at this stage, a book is pretty much carved into stone. Changes take time, and time translates translates into money. But they're letting me tinker, and I'm grateful. It will be a better book because of their flexibility.

Another piece of good news on the book front. We've just come to terms with the University of Texas Press on the memoir, LANDSCAPES OF SOLITUDE, which is now on the Press's Fall, 2009 list--and on my writing schedule for next year. I'm very much looking forward to it: a major change of pace from the fiction, and a huge challenge. But the thought of working with Theresa May, at the Press, makes me gleeful, and I'm still far enough away from that first page that I can think about the project with a deep joy. Don't worry--China and Ruby will go on, as scheduled, and so will the Cottage Tales. But dropping the Robin Paige books from the schedule has given me time for this, and I'm grateful. Grateful to Theresa for believing in the memoir enough to want it, and to Bill for supporting yet another wild-hair project. I've been thinking about this book for ten years, turning it over in my mind, looking at it from all angles, wondering what it would look like, sound like, feel like, if the words ever managed to spill onto paper. Now I'm about to find out!

Reading Note, from Barbara Kingsolver: "Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, writers will go to stupefying lengths to get the infernal roar of words out of their skulls and onto paper."

Donkey drops in

Our neighbor phoned us excitedly this morning with the news that a stray donkey had dropped into our pasture to visit with our cows and sheep. We wouldn't mind adding a donkey to our menagerie, but this handsome guy obviously had a home somewhere, so Bill called the sheriff's office to report a found donkey. By mid-afternoon, the owner had figured out that her donkey was gone and called the sherrif, then called us and emailed a photo to confirm her donkey's identity. By supper-time, Donkey was on his way home, much to the delight of the two little girls who were very upset that he was lost. We think he was looking for a willing lady donkey. He seemed ready to settle for one of our cows, both of whom showed a positive dislike for his proposals. (That's Mama Texas in the foreground, her calf Blossom behind her, and Mutton the sheep half-hidden behind Donkey.) I got to hear a donkey's bray close up: not exactly the most pleasant sound on this earth. I'm happy to report that things are back to normal on the north 40.

On the book front: I am still reading galleys of DAYS. Too many pages with too much stuff on them, so I am cutting, cutting, cutting. My friend Deborah just emailed me to suggest that I save the cut material for a 2007 edition: a good idea, except that the cuts are mostly 3- and 4-sentence cuts, which aren't exactly enough to fill another book. Plus, I don't think my editor is going to be terribly anxious to do another one of these "extra" China books right away. This one has not exactly been easy sledding, since it's such an unusual book for them to set up. It's driving us all slightly crazy.

Donkey wasn't the only distraction today. The film MISS POTTER (starring Renee Zellweger) is now scheduled for release in mid-January, which means I need to start thinking about how to deal with possible film tie-ins for the Cottage Tales series. Looks like my publisher will reschedule the paperback publication of CUCKOO BROW, to take advantage of the PR surrounding the film, which is very good news. And I'll be finishing up the copy-edit of the nature anthology for UT Press, and delivering it on Thursday. All writerly work, and while it's not exactly writing, it's the sort of thing that has to be done after you've sold the project and find yourself responsible for getting it out into the world. Never think that putting words on paper (or into the computer) is all there is to it.

A great review! and other book stuff

The big news at our house: The Tale of Cuckoo Brow Wood (the third book in the Cottage Tales series, due out next month) earned a great review in Publisher's Weekly, which is almost the best you can get in this business. (The best being a great review in the New York Times, but of course, that's not going to happen, not for a mere mystery, and especially a mystery with--gasp!--talking animals.) I'm thrilled. Delighted. Ecstatic. And very, very proud of Miss Potter and the rats in her attic and all the other characters in the book.

And while I'm celebrating, I'm reading first-pass pages of the Book of Days. There's a lot of work to be done here, I must say, because I definitely over-wrote this book. This is a calendar book, and each day gets only one page, and there is waaay too much stuff to fit on most of the pages, so I'm going through with my red pencil, cutting madly. It's hard, though. Like pruning roses. It's all good stuff. I loved writing it and I love reading it. But there's much too much of a muchness, and some of it has to go. Quite a lot of it has to go, actually. It'll probably take another two days to cut this baby down to size.

While I'm celebrating a terrific review and pruning an overwritten book, I'm also resting up. I drove down to Victoria TX on Friday. Talked at the library there on Friday afternoon (a book talk) and at EarthWorks' Herb Fest yesterday (an herb talk). It was hot (yep, that's South Texas for you, nothing new about that), but it didn't rain and I had lots of fun. Patsy Asher, of Remember the Alibi in San Antonio, went with me to sell books, and we had a great time. Met lots of people, saw some old friends (a gang of Yo-Yos from Corpus: you know who you are, gals!), and met a great many of China's and Ruby's friends. So today is a go-slow day, here at my desk, cutting a book down to size and and feeling happy about life in general and books in particular.

Reading Note, by novelist Henry Miller:

I commenced quietly on my own, to prune it down, to mutilate it, to reduce it to skeletal strength. I'm getting a masochistic pleasure out of it. I wipe out whole pages--without even shedding a tear. Out with the balderdash, out with the slush and drivel, out with the apostrophes, the mythologic mythies, the sly innuendos, the vast and pompous learning (which I haven't got!). Out--out--damned fly-spots . . .

readers & reading

There's a delightful comment from Barb (Las Vegas, NV) on yesterday's blog entry. I'll copy it here, to make it easier for you to access:

My son Joshua (who is 12 and homeschooled) and I would like to thank you for the Cottage Tales and tell you how very much we are enjoying reading the series. I read the first two books myself after a recommendation from another homeschooling mom and happened to share the part in Holly How where Professor Galileo Owl recites his famous speech to the animals before they head off on their mission. Josh and I were studying Shakespeare's Henry V at the time and reciting the St. Crispin's speech. As I read this passage his eyes got wide as he recognized the piece (albeit a little changed lol) and after inquiring what the book was about ask me to use it as our read aloud. He was hooked and we are both anticipating the third book coming out soon. We even used Holly How for our reading during our usual Tuesday Teatime as we had a Beatrix Potter Tea one week. I have recommended the book/series on my homeschool blog on two different posts which you can read here and here. Thank you again for sharing these wonderful stories!

This is a reader's report that I will always cherish, for it reminds me how important it is for parents to participate in their children's reading, and to help them access texts that they might not otherwise encounter. I love the connection that Josh and his mom were able to make between the Shakespeare passage and the Professor's rendition of it, and the pleasure it gave them to recognize the comic exaggeration in the Owl's version. With enormous enjoyment, I imagine the two of them reading it out loud, comparing the lines and giggling over the funny parts. Josh is a lucky kid to have a mom who guides his reading, Barb is a lucky mom to have a kid who is able to read and appreciate Henry V, and they're both lucky to be able to read together. If there's a clearer testimony to the value of home-schooling, I haven't seen it yet.

Thinking about Josh and his mother made me think about my own reading experiences, when I was a child. It was my father who was the reader in our family. He was mostly a solitary reader, and I was too. I read what he read: mysteries (he was a Rex Stout fan, and loved Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers) and westerns (Zane Gray, Louie L'Amour), but also Dickens, Austen, and Trollope. He used reading as an escape from the family, and I did too. Reading was a way of being alone, of going somewhere by myself, even when I had to be with other people. I'm still a solitary reader. It's still my greatest escape.

But one family reading experience has stayed in my mind through all the years: family Bible reading. Every now and then, my dad would "get religion," and for months at a stretch we'd all truck off to church. This was not much to my liking, or my brother's, and we were always relieved when Dad would go back to his non-religious ways and we were released from all those Sunday schools and prayer meetings. But when my father was doing his "church thing," he made us sit down together every night and read a chapter of the Bible out loud. Each of us, one chapter. We read the King James version, of course, and it made a profound impression on me. I can still hear that stately, sonorous language, feel the rhythm, recall the rich poetry of it. That reading aloud shaped my own use of language: it gave me fluency, taught me some vocabulary I wouldn't have otherwise have known ("What does 'fornication' mean?"), and required me to puzzle out syntactical patterns I wouldn't encounter again until I studied Shakespeare in college. My father meant the oral Bible reading to teach me morality, but it did much more than that, and I'm enternally grateful.

I envy Josh his experience of reading with his mother. Wouldn't it be wonderful if all kids (and all parents) could read together? Thank you, Barb, for sharing!

Reading note: "We read to know we are not alone."--C.S. Lewis

Mesquite and Cactus Cornbread

3/4 cup chopped nopalitos (about 2 medium prickly pear pads, available in the produce section of many large grocery stores)
pinch baking soda
1 cup mesquite flour (make your own by drying and grinding mesquite bean pods, or purchase online or in Southwestern specialty shops)
1 cup yellow cornmeal
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup butter, melted
1 cup sugar
4 eggs
3/4 cup corn kernals (fresh, canned, or frozen)
1/2 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese
1/2 cup shredded Cheddar cheese

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease and flour a 9x13 inch baking dish. Cook chopped nopalitos in boiling water with a pinch of baking soda until they turn a dull green (3-4 minutes). Drain. In a large bowl, beat together butter and sugar. Beat in eggs one at a time. Blend in nopalitos, corn, and cheeses. In a separate bowl, stir together mesquite flour, cornmeal, baking powder and salt. Add flour mixture to nopalito mixture; stir until smooth. Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake 1 hour, until the top is golden brown and a wooden pick inserted into center comes out clean.

back to normal

Life is getting back to normal. Translation: things are just about as hectic as always. On Friday, I drove to Bastrop to talk to the Ladies' Reading Club. On Saturday, Bill and I drove down to San Antonio to Remember the Alibi, for a book signing. Tomorrow night, it's the Marble Falls library for a book talk. The end of the week, Victoria: the library on Friday and an herb fair on Saturday.

Today, I drove down to Texas State University in San Marcos to meet with a group of Story Circle gals (Paula, Susan, Nancy, and Patricia) at the TSU library, where we're holding the conference that will celebrate the launch of our book, currently called A LAND FULL OF STORIES. The book--an anthology of nature writing by women--comes out in April 2007 with the University of Texas Press. The conference (to be held June 8-9, 2007) will be co-sponsored by Story Circle and the Southwestern Writers Collection at TSU, which is also planning an exhibit featuring the book and its contributors. We'll be posting details to the book's webpage, so bookmark it and check back for updates.

In between these events, I've been cleaning up the garden, pulling that pesky Johnson grass and dead-heading roses. The summer bloom isn't here yet (except for a few eager lantanas) and the spring bloom is mostly over. But there are still some Japanese iris blooming down by the creek, and some columbines and the fairy roses--gorgeous. I missed most of the rose bloom, though, and will have to content myself with the rebloomers as they come along. Here's the Japanese iris, lovely and delicate among the creekside ferns.

Somebody asked whether I managed to do any writing while I was gone. No, that's just impossible. To tell the truth, I'm doing well to get my face washed and fall into bed at the end of one of those tour days! I'm planning to get back to work tomorrow. Since I've been away from it for such a long time, the book (the fourth of the Cottage Tales) will be cold. I've got some plot problems (just too much material in it!), and hope that I now have enough perspective on it so that I can clean out the "extras" and stow them away for another book. And even though I wasn't actually writing while I was gone, I was thinking. I've come up with a slightly different plot angle, so I'm going to play with that, turn it around, tease it, tickle it, see what happens. Talking about the books is fun, yeah. But it will be good to get back to the real work again. That's what makes me feel alive.

Reading note. A lot of writing is readjusting your perspective: deciding what is worth keeping, finding the spot that has energy, or the one that is deadly dull and going back to make more of it.--Bonni Goldberg

High points (and a few lows) of the tour

I won't even try to wrap up the tour for you--too many days, too many stops. Peggy has posted quite a few nifty photos.  I met thousands (literally) of friends of the work (to borrow May Sarton’s phrase), but some people and events definitely stand out in my memory. High on the list is Art Morgan's Holly How Cottage (Art lives in Monticello IN, where the house is now on display in the Monticello library.) Isn't it delightful? Just think of all the time and creative energy that went into the project! Thank you, Art--very, very much. Miss Potter would be thrilled with it, I know. She had a very soft spot in her heart for dollhouses.

Other high points, many of them. There were the many people who drove for hours to come to a signing; the delicious herbal goodies prepared by loving hands; the small-town libraries that posted beautiful displays of the books; the stormy night we had stand-room-only in the mystery bookstore in Mechanicsburg PA on a rainy Saturday night; the little North Carolina town where 30-some people turned out for lunch at their local bookstore; the outstanding service from National Car Rental when they helped me swap out rental cars in Roanoke; Bill’s voice on my cell phone twice a day, connecting me to home; and Julie (my publicist) in New York and Peggy (my right-hand gal) in Austin, both standing by to help when I needed them. Lots of people put a lot of work into planning and preparing for my visits, and special effort into making me feel at home. Love and kisses and thanks to all of you!

Of course, there were a few lows, too. There was the bookstore (I will be sweet and not name it) where the owner forgot to tell the staff that I was coming, so that when people called for information, all they got was “duh.”  No advertising. No books, either. The owner told me they were "lost" in his storeroom and he'd been too busy getting his son off to his high school prom to look for them. (Honest. Could I make up a lie like that?) There was getting lost in the pouring rain on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, trying to locate the exit among a forest of orange marker barrels wth an eighteen-wheeler nosing my rear bumper. There was the old blue truck that pushed me up over the curb in Roanoke, taking out a pair of passenger-side tires on my rent car. And there was missing Bill and the dogs and the roses in my garden--April is our prettiest month here at MeadowKnoll.

But still, the best tour ever. In business terms (that is, by the numbers, the way my publisher measures things), it was an outstanding success: BLEEDING HEARTS made the New York Times extended bestseller list and was #1 on the Independent Mystery Booksellers list for April. In personal terms, it was a joy to meet so many of China's friends and Ruby's admirers and to talk non-stop about books and herbs, two of my passions. So thanks to all who made it possible and made it work.

I have more things to do this month, here in Texas. As these are finished, I can begin to turn my attention back to THE TALE OF HAWTHORN HOUSE (the fourth of the Cottage Tales, nearly half-done), and family and home and garden. I'm back where I belong.

Reading note:  To discover our true address, we will have to stay off the interstates, avoid the friendly franchises, climb out of our cars, hunt up guides who have lived heedfully in place, and we will have to walk around with eyes and ears open to the neighborhood.--Writing from the Center, by Scott Russell Sanders