Mom's Guide to the Galaxy

Sunflowers!

Sunflowers make me smile, particularly in my own garden where I can see them every day. When I grow them in the backyard, they face away from the house, so I have to go outside to really enjoy them. When I grow them in the front garden, the sunflowers face the front door in the morning, and then turn towards the street later in the day, making the Spanish translation “girasol” (literally rotate + sun) a rather accurate name.

A resilient sunflower, broken at the base but still flowering

Sunflowers surprise me at times with their resilience. The stem for this particular sunflower was split, though I’m unsure whether it was by the foxes that play in my yard or a windstorm. The roots are still in the ground and the flowers opened despite the damage.

The locations surprise me sometimes too. There are the sunflowers I planted, and then there are the ones the squirrels plant from the bird feeder.

If you aren’t growing your own sunflowers, there may be a farm near you that has a field of them. In our case, Kuipers Family Farm in Maple Park has over 7 acres of just sunflowers that can be visited starting late August.

Own your mistakes

As Billy Joel says in You’re Only Human, “You’re not the only one who’s made mistakes, but they’re the only things that you can truly call your own.”

Everybody makes mistakes. Unfortunately, as a culture, we tend to spend a lot of time looking for someone else to blame instead of just owning our mistakes, learning from them, and moving forward.

Yellow crocheted Duplo brick, folded over and stuffed with catnip

This is the result of a mistake I made last week while crocheting. I’ve been working on a series of “Duplo” bricks – rectangles with bobble stitches in a two by three pattern. I was super excited about it, since yellow was the last color before I started assembling my various pieces. Then I reached for this piece, already tied off, and realized that I had left off a pair of bobble stitches. Whoops! I grabbed the yellow yarn again and made a replacement, which is easy enough when I’m crocheting something small.

But that left me with a crocheted brick that had no purpose, a waste of yarn if you will. It’s too small to take apart and reuse, particularly knowing that I’d be a little short on yarn for assembling a brick.

I initially flung it to the cats to play with, and they weren’t particularly interested in it. Then I realized I could improve on my mistake by folding it over, filling it with catnip, and crocheting it shut. I’ve seen three of the four cats playing with it, so I’d say that solution worked.

Be creative, if it’s an option, and turn your mistakes into something that makes you smile.

Garden Update: Summer 2022

Well, this is a long overdue post about my garden. Not to say I’ve been neglecting the garden, I just forgot to post about it. To begin with, I had a late start at planting this year – I didn’t plant any seeds until we returned from our vacation late April. Then the weather was topsy-turvy, with some excessively warm days (great for germination) followed by cool ones (poor confused plants), including some late spring weeks where I turned on the air-conditioning and the heat in the same week.

The backyard, from a hydrangea to raised beds & a minion rain barrel to the mulberry bush

We’re solidly into summer now, a surprisingly dry one according to my somewhat brown grass. It’s been just wet enough that I’ve gotten by with minimal plant watering (and I never water the lawn). We’re already harvesting peas, strawberries, mulberries, and blackberries, and the volunteer tomatoes have started producing flowers. There may be okra hidden under the peas… I’m honestly not sure if they’ve survived, though we’ll find out soon as the peas die out in the heat. I planted a few more okra seeds in another bed, just in case.

We’re growing sweet potatoes! After resounding success with purple potatoes last year, we decided on a mixed package of sweet potato plants with three different varieties. It’ll be a while before that harvest, but the vines are sprawling nicely.

Last, but certainly not least, is our “mammoth” sunflower circle. These plants have the potential to be significantly taller than us (up to twelve feet, if I remember right), so the area is intended as a reading nook. There are two rows of sunflowers wrapping around in a circle, with just enough of an opening for someone to walk in.

Do you ever wonder when you started a habit?

I was flipping through the newspaper the other day…

“Wait,” you say, “an actual newspaper?”

Why yes, that’s a funny story. I looked outside Sunday morning just as the lady who delivers the newspapers on this block backed up to my neighbor’s and tossed his two bundles mostly onto his driveway. I wondered why she was backing up, then realized there were two bundles on my driveway. I suppose she has extras in case of mistakes, because she didn’t bother to pick them back up.

Anyways, I noticed that while I read most sections of the newspaper like a book or magazine, from front to back, I treat the Sunday comics differently. I read the front page, flip them over and read the back, then open it up to read the insides. I have no idea when I started that.

Other habits are easier to pinpoint. I started carrying a spare pair of reading glasses in my purse – previously reserved for computer use – the time we ate lunch at a dimly lit TGI Friday’s and struggled with the menu. I started enjoying gardening (as opposed to just seeing it as a chore) when I was introduced to vegetable gardening; before that was just weeding and tree trimming. The inevitable gardening planning (a necessity for a project manager’s large garden) followed as the vegetable garden expanded, and is now scheduled for late winter/early spring every year. And as a habit, I sometimes just stand at the window and smile at my garden. (Really, I should go outside and pick some snow peas.)

If you take a moment for introspection, whether you recall how it started, what habit makes smile?

Thoughts on The Raven Spell

I just realized that the sequel to The Raven Spell is coming out soon, which seems like a good time to share this review of the first book in the Conspiracy of Magic series. This review was originally published in the February 15, 2022 issue of Booklist.

Luanne Smith kicks off a new magical series with The Raven Spell, set in Victorian London where a pair of sisters, Edwina and Mary, run a trinket shop. Living in a large city makes it easier to hide their magic from mortals and avoid the attention of the Witch’s Constabulary, which enforces laws relating to magic. Mary’s ability to capture a person’s memories at the moment of their death, transforming the memories into a small stone, is the catalyst for this story when the sisters find a private detective, Ian Cameron, dying on the shore. When Ian survives, Edwina accidentally restores the wrong stone – with somebody else’s memories – into his mind, then embarks on a mission to help Ian retrace his lost time without magic. As Edwina grows closer to Ian, she becomes aware of the growing distance between herself and Mary and the mystery of Mary’s nighttime activities. Smith wraps up the plot neatly while leaving a clear hook to entice delighted readers back for the next book.

Who will you march for?

There was another shooting today (9-Jun-2022), this time in Maryland. Early reports say that 3 people were killed. We have enough “mass shootings” (loosely defined as at least 3 victims) in this country that there’s a Wikipedia page specifically for mass shootings in the United States (here), and it includes a link to a “more comprehensive list” of the 2022 shootings (here).

March For Our Lives, a group organized by survivors of the 2018 Parkland, Florida shooting, is organizing marches around the country on Saturday, June 11th, calling for reasonable gun safety laws.

Will you march in the hopes of saving someone’s life?

The Paramount Theatre presents Hand to God

I’m not sure I can do justice to the Paramount Theatre’s latest production, Hand to God. It is everything live theatre is supposed to be: intense, insightful, and, in its own way, educational.

It is also, according to the Paramount’s own ad on Facebook, offensive. Their website and the ticket reminder both state that its rating is “Suggested for ages 18+ for strong adult language, sexual harassment, simulated sex, simulated statutory rape and violence.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, people were offended. Some were even offended enough to leave at intermission (and then respond to the Facebook ad, so we could all see they were offended). You know, after Act 1, when the characters have done almost every stupid thing they can, and the audience is questioning the characters’ wisdom and sanity, wondering how in the world they’ll recover from their mistakes.

The real problem, as I see it, is other than the possessed puppet, people were offended by things that happen in real life. And while we should absolutely be offended when they really happen, including them in theatre helps bring awareness to these issues. And, as expected, the characters grow and learn in Act 2.

Hand to God is playing at the Copley Theatre through July 10th. I highly recommend it.

Thoughts and prayers are not enough.

The United States is reeling from yet another mass shooting. No, not the one in Buffalo, where a hate-filled racist specifically drove to an African-American neighborhood to kill people. Not the church shooting in Laguna. Those were last week. This week’s mass shooting (yes, that’s a terrible thing to be able to say) was at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.

Screenshot from Wikipedia when searching for "mass shootings in"

This country clearly has problems, both with hatred and guns, and they primarily stem from our political system. We have politicians offering up “thoughts and prayers” every time who then refuse to consider legitimate gun control efforts or address the increasing issue of domestic terrorism.

Our churches, our schools, even our grocery stores are not safe. What can I do? What can you do?

First and foremost, vote. If you feel a need to be a single-issue voter, let it be a vote to let the living keep living. After all, our Declaration of Independence listed “life” as the first of our inalienable rights. That means remembering that our 2nd amendment includes the phrase “well regulated Militia,” and letting every person who wants a gun buy one does not constitute “well-regulated.”

I don’t think that’s enough. We can work to change our political system with our votes, but we also need to work against hatred. If you read Heather Cox Richardson’s daily letters (and you should), she recently explained the history of the extreme polarization that we’re seeing between our political parties. Essentially, starting in 1990, certain political leaders worked to deliberately vilify the opposition simply for being members of the opposing party, urging party members to label their opponents in deliberately negative terms – using hashtags before they were even invented. This has been exacerbated by radio and TV talk show hosts who have promoted hatred, not necessarily because they believe it, but because it improves their ratings.

Your Democratic or Republican neighbor is not evil simply because they have different political views than you do. Your neighbor who appears to be Middle Eastern (and saw a rise in racism against them after 9/11), Asian (with a rise in racism during the pandemic), or any other nationality has no more to do with their homeland government’s decisions – assuming they’re not US citizens – as you do with ours, and certainly nothing to do with a virus that has killed millions. The United States has been a country of immigrants since the first Europeans invaded and stole land from the Native Americans, and the portrayal of our country as a place where anybody can prosper (however accurate) will always draw new people.

Like revolutions, the United States as a country was built on hope and on the concept that all ~~men~~ people are created equal. Take the time to meet your neighbors, especially if they look or sound different from you. You can combat hatred by learning to appreciate the differences in people around you.

Thoughts on How Long ‘Til Black Future Month?

Last year, when I had a subscription to MasterClass, I took several classes relating to writing (not surprising, really), including N. K. Jemisin’s class teaching fantasy and science fiction writing. When we stopped at a bookstore on our Florida trip, I stumbled onto her anthology, How Long ‘Til Black Future Month?.

Both in the MasterClass and introduction to her anthology, Jemisin emphasizes how much representation matters. Science fiction and fantasy as genres are historically white, male-dominated, and heteronormative (that’s a link to the definition) and Jemisin managed to offend some parts of fandom by writing characters that didn’t fall into those categories. You can assume at this point that I’m either rubbing two fingers together, playing the world’s smallest violin in mock sympathy for them, or bouncing those same two fingers in front of my eye for a tiny guy jumping up and down shouting “I give a shit.” I have no patience for toxic fandom or gatekeeping.

Frankly, it’s their loss if they choose not to read her work. I thoroughly enjoyed every story in this anthology. Flipping through it, a couple made me smile just glancing at them again. “Red Dirt Witch,” for example, about a witch (duh, it’s in the title) in the civil rights era and her daughter who sees into the future, including a glimpse of a black man in the White House. “The Effluent Engine” has a steampunk feel, with blatant racism and sexism that was unfortunately appropriate in nineteenth century New Orleans, and turns into a queer romance story. “The Evaluators” follows a different writing style of message exchanges and reviewed transcripts as humanity rushes in to doom itself. I could keep going, but really, go find yourself a copy and enjoy a good read.

Florida 2022: places to eat

I’ve discussed culinary tourism before… when traveling, we like to explore new (to us) restaurants. We certainly managed that in Florida! I’ll mostly let the photos talk here.

Key West: The Cafe – we had walked past several restaurants on Duval Street when this charming restaurant on a side street caught our eye.

Miami: Tapas de Rosa – this was a Google find, looking for somewhere to get a nice lunch between Vizcaya and Miami Beach. Being a tapas restaurant, we selected several small dishes to share.

Miami Beach: the quest for restaurants, hidden inside hotels and apartment buildings, led us (with Google’s help) to the delightful Lola Restaurant & Grill. We likely would have eaten there again if it weren’t for the next day’s lunch.

Dinner at Lola Restaurant & Grill in Miami Beach

Coral Gables: Havana Harry’s does not skimp on portions – we ate three or four meals from the leftovers after this lunch! Pictured below are three entrees and one of the plates of side dishes. (Also, arrive early for good parking.)

Lunch (and a couple other meals from leftovers) at Havana Harry's in Coral Gables

Melbourne: Pane e Vino, to my delight, had escargot on the appetizer menu. Yeah, I know, that’s a French dish. I had it anyways.

Kissimmee: Last, but certainly not least, was El Tapatio, a Mexican restaurant recommended (and rightfully so) by our hotel. What’s that greenish drink in the photo, you ask? That was a delicious avocado margarita (not to be confused with a key lime milkshake I had near the Everglades).