Lifescapes

Sun medicine

These goldenrods are as bright as the sunshine outside my window on this glorious morning.

I think that gardens are like people--they have good seasons and bad. This fall, the rains and cooler weather came at just the right times, and the plants have been rejoicing. See the goldenrod smiling, showing how glad it is to be alive? And if you looked very closely, you'd see that every shaft of blossoms is host to a tiny insect--glad, too, to be sharing the bounty of a generous autumn, and intent on their pollinating work, ensuring that the goldenrods return next year. What goes around comes around, like the sun, season after season, the glory of our earth.

Here's my entry on goldenrod, from the Book of Days, in bookstores next week.

The genus name of this remarkable plant is Solidago, which means “to make whole.” Goldenrod has been used as a healing herb since ancient times and grew throughout Europe, but the goldenrod market perked up when it was discovered that the colonies had it in great plenty. The plant was baled, loaded onto ships, and taken to England to be sold in the apothecary shops, where two ounces might fetch a gold crown.

For Native Americans, goldenrod was a staple medicine, and since there were some two dozen species growing across the continent, nearly every tribe was in reach of at least one. It was used as a wound healer, but also employed in the treatment of headaches, fevers, diarrhea, coughs, stomach cramps, and kidney ailments, as well as rheumatism and toothache. They chewed the tea, made a decoction of the roots, and made poultices of the leaves. Calling it “sun medicine,” some tribes used it in their steam baths, but it was also made into a charm, smoked with other tobaccos, woven into baskets, burned as an incense, and made into a dye.

Oh, yes, a dye. It does make beautiful colors, especially for wool. Using different mordants with different parts of the plant, I have obtained lovely shades of gold, orange-flushed tan, burnished olive, and shimmering gray.

And if that’s not enough to convince you of this value of this golden plant, consider this: Discovering that its sap contained a natural latex Thomas Edison bred the plant to increase the rubber yield and produced a resilient, long-lasting rubber that Henry Ford had made into a set of tires. Edison was still experimenting with his rubber when he died in 1931. His research was turned over to the U.S. government, which apparently found it of little importance, even when rubber became almost impossible to get during World War II.

Goldenrod rubber. Imagine that.

Reading note: A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.
—Walt Whitman

coming soon....

...coming next Tuesday, as a matter of fact. The Book of Days, which has been so long in the process. This post is a bit of brazen-hussy book promotion, so if you don't want to read it, you can click on over to China's blog and read about tomatillos.

Usually, the mysteries come out and land in the bookstore and I do a tour and a few signings and web promotion through the online newsletters and that's that. This book is a little different. It's an herb book, which means that it won't get reviewed in the usual places, and may not even get carried in the mystery bookstores or your favorite library unless you bang your fist on the counter and demand that they stock the book. So I've done some extra advertising, sent extra galleys out, and have been emailing herb shops and farms, in the hope that they'll carry the book.

Also, beginning in May, I started selling the books online through Story Circle, instead of through the bookstore that had handled my online sales for several years. It's more work this way, because I get to pack and ship books (as well as sign them--that's the fun part!). But Story Circle earns the profits, which means a lot to me, as the founder of that organization. It's a non-profit, and these book sales go to support its programs, like the anthology you've been hearing about from me, and the workshop and conference we're having next year.

There's been a terrific response to the online promotion on the book's website and we have a gazillion orders--so many that we'll have to order another 150 from Penguin! So for the past few nights (after the day's writing work is done), I've been making labels for the mailers and setting up a system to get the orders signed, personalized, and off to the post office as soon we get our shipment from the publisher. Once the books arrive, it shouldn't take long at all to get them out of here.

Here's one batch of mailers, ready to be filled with books. If your order isn't in there, it's in the other batch--or maybe you haven't ordered it yet! If not, that's easy to remedy. Go here and follow the links to the order form.

Really, it's a very good book. And there's a cute little surprise in it that I'll tell you all about next Tuesday morning here, and on China's blog and on the website. Sorry, you'll just have to wait until next Tuesday to find out what that is.

What? You thought that to be a writer all you had to do was put words on paper, find an agent, sell the book, and enjoy the profits thereafter? Think again!

Reading note:
Be a scribe! Your body will be sleek, your hand will be soft...You are one who sits grandly in your house; your servants answer speedily; beer is poured copiously; all who see you rejoice in good cheeer. Happy is the heart of him [sic] who writes; he [sic] is young each day.--Ptahotep, 4500 BC

autumn!

The equinox brought our second cold front of the season, and it's feeling like an early fall. The air was so crisp and clean that the dogs could scarcely contain their enthusiasm on this morning's walk, and we've opened the windows and doors. I'm grateful for the air conditioning that goes all summer--life would be impossible here without it. But there's nothing like the brisk breeze of autumn to sweep out air-conditioned stuffiness and give everybody a boost of new energy.

The unusual inch or two of rain we got in August and the cooler temperatures in early September are making for a prettier-than-usual fall flowering. This is a wild blue salvia I transplanted from the far corner of our east meadow some four or five years ago. It's happy here in the garden, and this year, it's putting on a show, along with all the other salvias. If I get some time this afternoon, I'm going to do some trimming and cleanup. But mostly today, I'm working on Nightshade, and thinking about October's travels (Houston and Dallas), and looking forward to more of these pretty autumn flowers.

Also: please check out China's blog tomorrow morning (Monday). She and I made some tomatillo sauce.

Reading note: A garden is like the self. It has so many layers and winding paths, real or imagined, that it can never be known, completely, even by the most intimate of friends.—Anne Raver

back in the saddle again

Whew. The three-hour cleanup job on the computer (necessitated by the incomplete cleanup done two weeks ago and scheduled at our usual Marble Falls repair shop for Thursday morning) turned into a six-day nightmare. The meathead repairman put another job ahead of ours on Thursday, took Friday off (which inexorably led into the weekend, when the shop is closed) and on Monday, professed himself baffled. He became unbaffled on Tuesday morning and pronounced the job complete on Tuesday afternoon, while I was sharpening my knives, collecting my plant poisons, and concocting an air-tight alibi. The computer is running again, and we're looking for new repair options.

I worked on Bill's computer while mine was down. Made some headway in NIGHTSHADE (have about a quarter of the book finished), but couldn't do any online work because all my passwords are stored in my computer, which was . . . well, you know. Felt as if I was working with one hand and half a brain.

It was also a weekend for wrapping up the nature anthology, now scheduled for publication next March/April by UT Press. Paula and I worked our brains to the bone on the index, and I proofed the galleys, which were fairly clean, especially given the problems at copy-edit. Tomorrow, I deliver everything to the Press and we're off and running. We're already at work on the conference.

Also did some knitting, but confess myself frustrated. Maybe you can help. I was working on this sock, which is a simple stranded pattern. But it's waaaay too tight, although the sock is my usual 60-something cast on (this one is 66), #2 needles, ordinary sock yarn. Is there a secret to working stranded socks that FIT?

Reading Note, from Our Harlot, If I am foolish enough to be arrogant about my knitting, I will understand when it spontaneously bursts into flames.

moving along

In case you wondered, yes, I'm writing. Sporadically. Intermittently. Raggedly. I'm working on NIGHTSHADE, but slowly, very slowly. It's not just the vacation (which was interruption enough), but the computer (which is still giving me fits). It has to go back to the shop today--third time in two months. Bill is a wizard, but even he can't figure out what the problem is. If you don't hear from me for a while, blame my computer. I'd get a new one, but the thought of reloading all that software (some of it now available only in NEW versions that I don't want!) makes me want to put my head in the oven. Grrr...

Good news, though, for audio book lovers. Recorded Books has just issued BLEEDING HEARTS, unabridged, read by Julia Gibson (who seems to me to be getting better with every book. Go here and type in the title.

I'll be back when my computer comes home.

Sunflowers

This field of sunflowers is blooming along the road to our house in New Mexico, against a sky so blue it makes your heart hurt. The altitude here is about 7500 feet. The low mountains against the sky to the west are the Sangre de Cristo, the southernmost Rockies, named for their blood-red color at dawn. The buildings you can just glimpse through the trees are part of the old Pendaries Ranch, and beyond is the tiny village of Rociada, where the houses are mostly adobe with tin or clay-tile roofs. As I take this picture, a pair of ravens tumbles across the sky like ecstatic trapeze artists, drunk on the bright, clear air, and in the ponderosa pine, a pair of magpies chuckles and chortles, celebrating the morning. There are butterflies and bees and a dozen tiny insects feasting on the nectar in each blossom. I sit down in these flowers, letting them arch over my head like the golden ribs of a cathedral, filling the sky with their shimmering citrus sunshine. I want to sit here, just here, forever, and I think that perhaps the best gift of time is having enough of it to spend a quiet hour at the foot of a mountain, sitting in sunflowers.

Reading Note: Nobody sees a flower really--it is so small it takes time--and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.--Georgia O'Keeffe

home again

It's me again, after...how long? Three weeks? Feels like a century. And unfortunately, while I was gone, my computer was in the comp doc shop. When it came home yesterday, I discovered that all its cookies had been tossed--and you know what that means. Not even Typepad remembered who I was. I had to go on an extended treasure hunt for all those buried passwords.

Gotta tell you: New Mexico was wonderful. It's monsoon season there, so it rained every afternoon, and the mountains were cool and green. Very, very green. Mornings were almost frosty, and the dogs (loving it) frisked through the meadows like young pups. Bill would have liked more sun, less rain, and warmer temps, since he was working on the logs. (You'd think that logs would be maintenance free, wouldn't you? Not so, even in a relatively arid climate.) And I was working, too--not on NIGHTSHADE (the current writing project), but on upholstery. Yep. I've been promising myself to reupholster the love seat and chair we moved out there, and here are the results.

The dog is Zach, and thereby hangs a tail. The loveseat used to be in our bedroom here in TX, and he made it his bed. Then we took it away from him, moved it out to Coyote Lodge(our name for the NM house), and I reupholstered it on this trip. Zach looked, sniffed, leapt up on it, and happily reclaimed it, as you can see in the photo. He was devastated when he had to come home and leave it behind.

Toro (our blue heeler) claimed the matching chair, although he was absent on other doggie business (probably napping on the bed) when I took this photo. (Lady, the other black lab, was probably under the bed, trying to hide from the thunder.) I haven't done any upholstery in about ten years--the last time I did each of these pieces of furniture. It was fun to try my hand at it again. I also made a valance and covered the seats of our dining room chairs. All of which was time-consuming but what the heck, it's vacation, right? I can do anything that pleases me. And there's something very satisfying in seeing an old chair (I bought this one, very used) some 20 years ago) come back to life, and look new and spiffy and happy again. And also something very meditative and focused, sitting at the sewing machine, paying attention to the fabric as it passes under the needle, every seam cared about, every fold careful and clean, nothing rushed or hurried or grabbed. Dealing with the reality of things-as-they-are (an unfortunate shortage of upholstery tacks, occasional missing scissors, a piece cut too short, a bobbin that runs out of thread in the middle of a long seam). The Tao of Upholstery. The rest of my life isn't like that, so this was pure blessing.

I have a gazilion more photos and will be posting some of them as the week goes along--including the socks I knitted when I wasn't sitting at the sewing machine.

More later...

Reading Note: To be engrossed by something outside ourselves is a powerful antidote for the rational mind, the mind that so frequently has its head up its own ass--seeing things in such a narrow and darkly narcissistic way that it presents a colo-rectal theology, offering hope to no one.--Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird