The Nature of Things

I didn't get to participate in Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day hosted by Carol of May Dreams Gardens in August, first because I was otherwise engaged at the time and second because I really didn't have much to show anyway. Now here we are in September and there's probably even less to show, but I'll give you a peek at what I've got. In the interim, of course, we had a bit of excitement when Hurricane Harvey came calling. He was actually relatively gentle with my neighborhood. We had no destructive winds and we only got 24 inches of rain. Two feet of water is less than half of what some areas got. But even a "gentle" hurricane was no fun for my garden. Plants that were in bloom at the time had their blooms shredded and knocked to the ground by the pounding rain. Several shrubs and perennials had many or most of their leaves knocked off and a lot of the leaves that were left quickly turned yellow. In short, it left the garden in a mess and, since I've be...

What a pleasure it was to read this book. From the first sentence to the last I was captivated. I didn't mind at all that the plot was slow in developing. The elegant language alone was enough to hold my interest. Sarah Perry's book is set in the late 19th century and it takes the form of a gothic novel. This was an exciting period for scientific discoveries and intellectual debate and such debates are at the heart of this book as we watch two people, each from very different worlds, come together and form a unique relationship bond. Cora Seaborne is from London. She has recently been released from a loveless and occasionally abusive marriage by the death of her husband. She admits at one point in the book that the day of her husband's death was probably the happiest day of her life. She still bears scars from that relationship, including a painful physical scar on her neck which she hides with scarves. Cora was left quite well off financially by her husband's death and...

Several years ago, I took a continuing education course entitled "The Great American Novel" at our local college. One of the works discussed in the course was The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. I never actually read the book during the course, but I've always been curious about it and it had long languished on my TBR list. Time to tick that box. This short novel - actually more a novella or long short story - was published in 1892. It was inspired by the author's own experience with mental illness. Following the birth of her child, she suffered from what we would now recognize as severe postpartum depression.  Both her husband and her brother were agreed that the best treatment for what ailed her was the "rest cure," which was recommended by a specialist. It was essentially a period of enforced inactivity and solitude. And so this was the treatment which Charlotte endured. Her opinion on the matter was not solicited. Then, some years later, s...

Acclaimed American poet John Ashberry died on September 3 at age 90. He was extremely prolific in his long career and was the winner of numerous awards including the Pulitzer and the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, all of which came for his 1975 book Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. I admit I have only a glancing familiarity with his work. I knew his name and had read one or two of his poems. That was about the extent of it. I went looking for one of his poems to feature this week and found this one, which was published in 2013 in The New Yorker . It seemed particularly current with its references to hurricanes.  His hurricane references seem quite light-hearted though - nothing like the real event.  Breezeway by John Ashberry Someone said we needed a breezeway to bark down remnants of super storm Elias jugularly. Alas it wasn’t my call. I didn’t have a call or anything resembling one. You see I have always been a rather dull-spirited winch. Th...

A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment : A Tri-Colored Heron stalks his prey. *~*~*~* As the gigantic storm Irma takes aim at Florida after flattening several islands in the Caribbean and as Hurricane Jose gains force in the warm ocean waters where Irma formed, one might suppose that it would become harder to argue that global warmer is not a factor in creating these massive storms. All of this, of course, comes less than two weeks after Hurricane Harvey devastated much of the Texas coast. Then, of course, you have people like Rush Limbaugh who ranted on his radio show this week that all the hurricane forecasts and the hype surrounding them are  just a liberal conspiracy . They are never really as strong as the forecasters say. He said all of this right before he fled Florida ahead of the storm. *~*~*~* Meanwhile, back in Texas, humans are still cleaning up from Harvey's damage and will be for a long time. But what about the damage to Nature and to wildli...

Arundhati Roy has a new book, her second novel, out this year and much acclaimed. I want to read it, but in thinking about that book, I remembered her remarkable debut novel, The God of Small Things , which was published twenty years ago in 1997. I had read the book back then, but in recalling it today, I found that its details had blurred and I wanted to read it again. And so I did.  It was even better the second time around. Perhaps my life experience in the last twenty years has given me a greater appreciation of the story. Roy's luminous prose makes reading an unadulterated pleasure, even when she is describing the tragic events of this tale. The story of fraternal ("two-egg" in the language of the book) twins Esthappen and Rahel and their childhood in the state of Kerala in the southern tip of India, as they try to understand and come to terms with their fractured family and as they learn to their eternal sorrow that the events of one day can change things forever, i...

Louise Penny's latest book featuring Armand Gamache,  now Chief Superintendent of the Sûreté du Québec, is a meditation on the role of the conscience in human affairs, as, in fact, all of her books are. It seems only incidental that there is a murder to solve. Gamache's team from the  Sûreté  is intact, as are his friends and supporters in the little anonymous village of Three Pines where he and his wife Reine-Marie had moved after his initial "retirement" from the  Sûreté. Of course, that retirement didn't take. Now, Gamache must face the fact that his team is losing - or has already lost - perhaps its toughest battle: the war on drugs. Drugs pass almost freely through the province of  Québec on their way south to the huge market in the United States.  The porous border between the province and Vermont, much of it heavily forested, makes it almost impossible for the police to interdict the traffic.  People are dying in great numbers on both sides of t...