We're lucky enough to have a small stand of native Texas bluebells, Eustoma exaltatum. They truly are exalted, perhaps the loveliest of all our Hill Country wildflowers. This is a good year for them, because of the winter rains, and I'm seeing quite a few of them here at MeadowKnoll and on our local country roads. If you find it, take a photo. Please don't try to dig them up--they don't transplat well. And if you take the seeds, take only a few, to give the plant a chance to reproduce itself in the place where you found it. They are disappearing, as their habitat is destroyed by development and as people stop to pick them for bouquets. If you'd like to see them in your garden, look on the Internet for seeds of cultivated varieties.
The big news here won't nudge the needle in the grand scheme of things, but it's a Big Deal for me: a new PC. I've been working on an old laptop (a 2009 model)--literally 1000s of hours of trouble-free work. The motherboard finally died of old age. I replaced it with a desktop, and asked my computer tech to clone it from the old laptop. He did a thorough job. All I had to do was reload my Kindle and Audible libraries, and I'm back in business. (I also have a MacBook Pro, but it doesn't seem to play nicely with Word, which I need for the books. So I use it for travel and evening surfing.) The issues with the laptop made it harder to work this spring--the new computer is a joy, and I'm back to feeling bouncy again.
Book report. I'm winding up work on The Darling Dahlias and the Unlucky Clover (#7 in the series)--the current work-in-progress. It'll go to the copy editor later this week. I've decided to dig into the next Dahlias (#8), to keep the momentum going. It will be a Christmas book: The Darling Dahlias and the Poinsettia Puzzle. Both of these will be published in 2018, so put them on your watch list.
Foreword Reviews gave The General's Women a big thumbs up in their recent review, finding it "sympathetic, satisfying, and heartbreaking." Maybe you'll remember that this is the novel I was working on last year--the true story of Kay Summersby and her relationship to Dwight Eisenhower. I thought of Kay last week, when we remembered the 73rd anniversary of the Normandy landing. She was there at D-Day--because Ike needed her. One of his generals remarked to somebody who was criticizing her, "Leave Kay alone. She's helping Ike win the war." And it was true.
More recently, I've been digging into the life of the painter, Georgia O'Keeffe, considering a novel about her later years--doing lots of reading about her. You'll find some of the books on my Goodreads O'Keeffe shelf. To read my reviews, click on the cover and scroll down to "Community Reviews." O'Keeffe died over 30 years ago, but she's still a powerful, complex, and strongly appealing figure.
Swinging into summer here, with temps in the 90s and high humidity. But I'm looking forward to long, cool days indoors, with my new computer buddy and a writing project. Hope your summer is filled with the things you really want to do...
Reading note. Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.--Henry James