These bluets in the back yard are the most cheerful things I’ve seen in a long time. While looking for information about bluets online, I came across an article that says they’re ideal for rock gardens. Isn’t that fortuitous since I’m currently in the process of planning a rock garden?
This is a forsythia flower glorying in the late afternoon sun. You can’t help but admire its sunny personality, not to mention its persistence. At some point my husband cut this bush back so far that I didn’t even know we had forsythia in the yard, and I believe his intent was to kill it. Now look at it!
Forsythia is like that, though. It grows like a weed, and I can remember one place where it grew so big and so ugly that it almost turned me against the plant forever. It was in my parents’ back yard, near the fence that separated us from the neighbors that had the worst dog ever. It was like a jungle of forsythia there. And don’t even get me started on the dog. I haven’t liked dogs much since, either.
But this yellow fellow is so pretty, I may have to forgive forsythia for all its past sins. It just needs a strong guiding hand, someone to keep it in line.
“Hey, fellow. You grow so much as an inch out of line and my husband will cut you back within an inch of your life!”
Do you think this forsythia will behave itself?
As I’ve mentioned before, the previous owners of our house didn’t exactly wear themselves out keeping up the old place. The yard, completely neglected for however many years, is in sorry shape, but there are some bright spots here and there. Take this daffodil for example. It’s a very fancy daffodil, a testament to the care that some long-since-relocated gardener once took of the landscape. Let this pretty flower also stand as a symbol of what we hope to do here. We’re going to make this yard beautiful again. Maybe not this year, maybe not next, but soon. Just give us some time to plan and to plant, and it will be a garden paradise.
When I was about 7 months pregnant with Marshall, my husband and I took a hike in the woods and up a very steep hill. I’m not exaggerating when I say it’s steep. It used to be a ski area.
Maybe we were nuts to tackle it during my third trimester. Falling would have been very bad, and I could just imagine my gynecologist berating me for putting my baby at risk. But I was proud of the fact that I could still climb a hill, and I needed the exercise. I was as careful as I could be.
The reason I mention this story is that near the top of the hill, there was a sunny area covered by flowering shrubs. The flowers were pretty and I wondered what they were. When I came home, I looked them up in my field guide to North American plants and decided that they had to be either blueberry or bearberry.
Later that year, I discovered a blueberry bush in my own yard. I was thrilled! Though I never got to eat any of the fruit (it was mostly gone before it was fully ripe), I knew the bush could act as a gauge, telling me when the local blueberries were ripe.
As you can see from the pictures, my gauge plant is in bloom and getting itself pollinated. The fruit is on the way!
This year, if I can find a big patch of blueberries, I might be able to pick enough wild blueberries to make blueberry pancakes. So I’m thinking about those bushes, not to mention some other promising areas of shrubbery up in the woods behind the house, and hoping.
Wishing, wishing, wishing for wild blueberry pancakes!
The spring is here and the plants are all coming back to life. I want to share some of the pictures I’ve taken over the past few weeks. Expect to see them posted under the name SITY (Seen in the Yard).
My man isn’t rich, but he has tons of money.
He keeps it in bags, until the bags break.
Ka-ching! Ka-chang! The coins hit the floor.
There’s money on the ground. Oh no!
On with the reading posts…
The Curious Adventures of Jimmy McGee by Eleanor Estes
Grade: C-
I had heard good things about Eleanor Estes, a Newbery Award winner, so I picked up this book at the closing sale of a local used book store. What a disappointment! The character of Jimmy McGee is interesting, but never fully explained or properly developed. He is “a little fellow, a plumber, a banger on pipes, a HERO.” He zoomie-zoomies all over the place, fixing things here and there, making his summer home on Cape Cod and his winter home in D.C., just like Amy, a little girl he knows. Is Jimmy just an invisible friend of Amy’s, or is he an existing magical being who just happens to live in the same places as Amy? Where did he come from? Why does he do the things he does? I just didn’t get it. And the story, largely about a doll he rescues and a bunch of animals that stay in his cave during a hurricane, is unbelievable and dull, not to mention unbelievably dull. I would not recommend this book except perhaps to fans of Eleanor Estes, because two of the characters also appear in The Witch Family, a more popular book by the same author.
The Broken Teaglass by Emily Arsenault
Grade: A
My mother gave this book to me, perhaps thinking that it would remind me of my job, and it did. It is about a young man who gets a job as a dictionary editor. He and his coworker discover some odd citations in the files which turn out to be pieces of writing by a former employee. Each citation is numbered and tells part of a story, so the two editors start hunting for the rest of the citations so they can read the story as a whole. The answer to the mystery of why the citations were hidden in the files is revealed slowly and elegantly. I recommend this book for both dictionary-lovers and mystery-lovers.
I almost missed it, but through a series of random thoughts in the shower yesterday, it occurred to me that today was to be my third blogversary. I can’t believe it’s been three years already. And I’m not quite sure what to say about it. Let me think…
What has blogging brought to your life?
It has given me a purpose for writing, an excuse to take pictures of flowers, and a way of recording the special moments of my pregnancy and my son’s childhood. It has helped me to set goals and even to achieve some of them. It has brought me and my Faithful Reader closer in some ways. It is now a part of my life. Even when I don’t post, the blog is still there, waiting for me to come back to it.
What are some of your favorite blog posts?
I’m so glad I wrote and posted some rhymes and limericks, like Wearied and Baad, Baad, Black Sheep. I think they’re fun. I’m also pleased with the Dear Marshall posts. I hope that when he’s older, he’ll read them and understand how wonderful it has been to watch him grow up and how much we love him. And of course, my very first post, Love for One’s Fellow Creatures, is a classic. If I had waited for “the perfect topic” to use for my first post, I would never have started writing. Using such a silly topic made it possible to break into the writing groove and it told readers that I didn’t intend to take myself too seriously.
What are your goals for future blogging?
A lot of my early posts were freeform and stronger creatively that what I’ve been doing recently. I’d like to get some of that creativity back. But on the other hand, I have been working toward writing posts in a more traditional style with the goal of entertaining the reader and not just myself. I’m looking for the right balance. I’d also like to write more stories. But most importantly, I’d like to write more often. I wrote more posts in my first year than in the second two combined! Posting more often is definitely going to be a priority.
So those are my thoughts on my third blogversary. Thanks for reading!
I’m way behind on my reading posts again, but my husband has given me the day off, so I finally have time to write them. Here goes!
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Grade: A
Though The Secret Garden is as much a favorite as A Little Princess, I felt at times on this reading as though certain ideas were sticks with which the author was beating me over the head. I wanted to holler, “OK! I got it! Fresh air and digging in a garden are good for you! Enough already!” But overall, it’s a beautiful story about an English girl living in India who loses both of her parents but who is too disagreeable to care. She goes to live with her uncle in Yorkshire and there is nothing for her to do there but wander the grounds. During her wanderings she finds a secret garden, and in watching and helping the garden spring back to life, she herself begins to bloom. A classic, and rightfully so.
The Frog Princess by E.D. Baker
Grade: B-
A juvenile but enjoyable tale about a princess who kisses an enchanted frog to turn him back into a prince. The magic goes wrong, however, and she turns into a frog instead. Together they go on a quest to find a witch who can make them human again.
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
Grade: A+
And Then There Were None is not part of the Marplethon. It’s just a book I had always meant to read. According to Wikipedia, it is the 7th most popular book of all time. Wow!
That factoid reminds me of something from my youth. Way back when my family used to vacation at my grandparents’ cottage on a lake, we were playing a game of Trivial Pursuit and the question was, “Who is the most translated author of all time?” (or something to that effect). I immediately said, “Agatha Christie.” I had never read one of her books, because I was too young. Hers was just a name I had heard so many times that it seemed like a good guess. And it was a good guess, because it was the right answer. Since that time I’ve been interested in her work. You don’t get that famous without good reason, after all. You get famous for writing books like And Then There Were None!
The title is a spoiler, but don’t worry. The characters, all mysteriously invited to an isolated island, are going to die, each and every one, but you won’t know when or how or why until you get to the end. It’s a great mystery, perhaps the best I have ever read. Highly recommended.
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