Lifescapes

June @MeadowKnoll

Our neighbor sent me this wonderful photo of a Giant lichen orb weaver dining on a dragonfly. In nature, what's a tragedy for one is often a triumph for another, and this female spider needs to eat so she can make more spiders. And they can make more spiders, and so on... Summer is our spider time, and a cousin to the lichen orb weaver, the more familiar Golden orb weaver (the "writing" spider), will soon be setting up housekeeping beside our kitchen door. Happens every year.

It's been a busy month at MeadowKnoll. We've been putting the veggie garden away for the summer, covering the raised beds with black plastic. This "solarizing" will kill most of the weed seeds and make the fall garden easier to plant and maintain. Our spring potato crop turned out better than I expected--here are some of them: Yukon Gold (my favorites) and red potatoes (started from a grocery store purchase). When I first began to garden here, I planted potatoes on Valentine's Day. The seasons have shifted so radically (yes: climate change) that I'm now putting in spring potatoes between Christmas and New Year. I have to cover from some Jan/Feb frosts and occasionally lose some tops, but the longer season means a better yield.

The first Gulf storm, Cindy, is happening this week. This one won't be coming in our direction. But it's the season for tropical storms, and we could use the rain. Sadly, the people who are going to get this rain don't need it.

Book report. I finished The Darling Dahlias and the Unlucky Clover (Book 7 in this series) and sent it off to my favorite copy editor, Sandra Spicher. I love working with Sandra: she does an excellent job. (Believe me: I know. I have worked with a gazillion copy editors in my long life as a writer.) She'll have the file back to me the first week of July. I'm planning to publish the book (via my own imprint: Persevero Press) in March, 2018. Watch for the cover reveal, coming soon!

Meanwhile, I'm going to start the next book: The DDs and the Poinsettia Puzzle. I want to take advantage of the momentum that's built up in the last few chapters of Clover. And since I'm publishing these, I can control the publishing calendar. Nice!

I'm still working on the idea for the Georgia O'Keeffe book--and deeply enjoying the research into the artist's life. This will be more heavily fictionalized than my other biographical/historical fiction, I think.

I'm happy to report that The General's Women has been selected for the SELF-e library program. If you'd like to read a digital copy, ask your librarian to get it for you--of course, print and audio are available, too. There's a Goodreads Giveaway for this book, through 6/26/17 

Reading note. June has never looked more beautiful than she does now, unadorned and honest, vulnerable yet invincible.--Marie Lu, Legend

In Bloom This Week: the compass plant

 

The compass plant (Silphium albiflorum) returns every summer to our roadside. as persistent as a habit. This one is white, a rarer variety; I've read that compass plants are more often yellow. Coarse and weedy, it's not a very pretty plant, but it grows in an interesting way, aligning itself to the points of the compass. The rough, incised leaves grow on a north-south axis, facing the sun (east and west) morning and evening, but turned sideways (north and south) at midday (when this photo was taken). On hot summer days, this allows the leaves to do a good job of photosynthesis without losing lots of water through evaporation.  

William Least Heat Moon writes about the compass plant in PrairyErth: “Where these yellow rays of blossoms once grew in abundance ten feet high, some prairie tribes refused to camp, believing that the plants drew down lightning, yet during electrical storms the people burned the dried root to ward off thunderbolts.” The association with lightning may have arisen from the plant's many uses as a valuable healer for all sorts of ailments--as well as its narcotic properties (it's a mild opiate). The stems were slit and the resinous sap gathered for use as a "chewing gum." (It's also called rosinweed and gumweed.)

I love the compass plant because it's a remnant of the ecosystem that once encompassed the Hill Country. If you come across it when you're hiking out here, pause and smile. You've stepped onto a rare piece of original prairie, the way it was before settlers arrived and began plowing and fencing and cutting and paving. That's something to celebrate.

Garden report. Not much in the garden this year, because we were gone through late April and into May, our spring gardening months. We dug the potatoes this week, between rainstorms. The Yukon Gold yielded better than the Reds, but not by much. Still, there's enough for several weeks of meals, and they're very tasty, boiled, then pan-roasted with butter, garlic, and lots of parsley. Parsley, basil, and thyme are growing better than anything else in the garden this year. But the Girls are outdoing themselves and we have plenty of eggs. I'm planning a quiche for supper.

Book report. Loving Eleanor  has been shortlisted for the Eric Hoffer Grand Prize, another important recognition for this story of the thirty-year friendship of Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok. Also, The General's Women was reviewed in an Irish newspaper. (Ireland is the homeland of Kay Summersby, the main character in this biographical novel.) Nice to see that the book is getting some international recognition. And I'm nearly finished with The Darling Dahlias and the Unlucky Clover. This book is the first of a couple (maybe three?) plot-linked books in that series--planning to publish this one early next year. Currently researching: the later life of the painter, Georgia O'Keeffe.

Reading note, from Always Beginning, by Maxine Kumin: I am grateful for every ordinary day, knowing that these will draw to a close somewhere beyond our seeing. I hope to go on picking vegetables, pulling bindweed out of the fields, enjoying the birds, the dogs, even our elderly cat, whose last season this likely will be. . . Going on is, after all, the ultimate pleasure of our lives.