Out of the Frying Pan

High Country Gardens Sale

I should have mentioned this before, instead of leaving it until the last minute. Anyway. Today is the last day of the High Country Gardens Perennial Sale. I scored Echinops banaticus ‘Blue Glow’ and Eryngium 'Big Blue'. There are still plenty of great bargains to be had.

Meeting at the feeder

This pair comes around faithfully to enjoy niger seed. Occasionally they'll take a little safflower, but mostly they keep to the niger feeder. Sometimes they're harassed by larger species; sometimes they're left in peace and they belly up to the bar together. They feed for surprisingly long sessions, even ten minutes. Which tells you that I watch for surprisingly long sessions ;)

Monday Mix

• The MOST amazing bubble wands I've ever seen
• MuseumWales photo stream at flickr has tons of gorgeous images
• Copyright stuff for bloggers
• Studio G, garden and landscape design blog
• 7 Vastly Overrated Business Books, an article from BNET that does a great takedown of some ol' dawgs that should have been run out of town long ago.
• And, special, The Post Rapture Survival Guide. BNET is running a little late on this, but go with it.

On the reading table (or tablet)

• Crazy U: One Dad's Crash Course in Getting His Kid Into College, Andrew Ferguson. I'm glad I didn't read this book before our family got into the process years ago. Things turn out OK for this kid (as I think they did for ours), but one gets the idea that it was more the operation of luck than the result of a rational exercise. Sitting on the sidelines many years later, I found the book an amusing and poignant fable of true parenting.


• America the Edible: A Hungry History, from Sea to Dining Sea, Adam Richman. Apparently the author hosts a TV travel show; this book might be a riff on it. It hits a number of American cities including Austin and Portland, Maine. The narrative arc is a little contrived, but trying to inflict narrative on travelogue is likely to be, right?


• This Boy's Faith: Notes from a Southern Baptist Upbringing, Hamilton Cain. Having been "brung up" Baptist, myself, I tend to be interested in memoirs such as these, but I wish I'd given this one a miss. There's a lot of reciting of his history here and not much in the way of reflection. His parents get bashed hard and, in my view, unfairly. Over at Amazon I gave it two stars, which was generous.

On the reading table (or tablet)

A couple days late because I'm sometimes lazy about writing, but never about reading!

• Chicken and Egg: A Memoir of Suburban Homesteading with 125 Recipes, Janice Cole. My nascent interest in suburban homesteading is going nowhere but to the bookstore. Although I'm delighted to read other people's stories, more and more I find that I am less and less interested in "cultivating" (har har) any stories of my own. The recipe to text ratio is something like 60/40 or even 70/30: not ideal for the iPad, truthfully, but a good value in the other format.


• Goat Song: A Seasonal Life, A Short History of Herding, and the Art of Making Cheese, Brad Kessler. But if I were amenable to being tipped into homestead behaviors, this is the book that would have done it. In fact, I'll just say it: read this book, because I'm pretty sure you'll enjoy it.


• Sh*t My Dad Says, Justin Halpern. The son of "the least passive-aggressive human being on the planet" serves up a book with an incredible number of LOLs per page. With a humdinger of a coda. Even if you don't buy this book (you should, imho), find a way to read the last chapter. It is one of the most beautifully instructive pieces about life I've come across in quite a while.


• If You Ask Me: (And of Course You Won't), Betty White. What a hoot. Among the many anecdotes, the peek behind the curtains at SNL was priceless.


• Concierge Confidential: The Gloves Come Off--and the Secrets Come Out! Tales from the Man Who Serves Millionaires, Moguls, and Madmen, Michael Fazio and Michael Malice. There's some snarkiness, but the interesting part was about what it takes to get things done... all kinds of things.


• Good Stuff: A Reminiscence of My Father, Cary Grant, Jennifer Grant. I like Cary Grant a lot and would probably even try to read sawdust, okay?

Monday Mix

OK - I'm late with the Reading Table this week but (watch out for non sequitur) these are a few things that are interesting or fun:

• For kids: an online version of Mad Libs
• Scholars Resource: a tremendous repository of all kinds of images. You need an institutional address to be able to register as a student, but a .org works. If you are a home schooler, I might be able to help with that.
• 10,000 Birds is a tremendously well written bird blog.
• How to steal like an artist, etc. Ahem.
• blotanical - an outstandingly huge array of garden blogs
• It's an old blog entry, but this time of year as a nature photographer I like to revisit it: Why the sharpest photo isn't always the best photo

The world weed uprising

An excellent cartoon commentary on the insurrection with which all gardeners must live.

Six ways to hand-hold your camera

Good, practical article.

You cannot miss this

The elegant Amateur Bot-ann-ist has a tour of the Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden in Portland, Oregon. It's one of the most beautiful places on the planet, a place that even when bursting with visitors retains its essential peace.

SpeechTrip

After a couple of false starts, it looks like SpeechTrip, complete with spiffy logo, is launched.

My mission now is to re-activate my own work as a speaker. I have several topics in mind, including blogs (duh!), distance learning, returning to school as a mature learner, Web resources for religious educators, and more.

So if you know any organization within a hundred miles or so that is looking for a good speaker, let me know. Chances are I'd be happy to do it.

On the reading table (or tablet)

• How to Eat a Small Country, Amy Finley. Dropping marital counseling and moving the scene of the marriage to France together isn't conventional wisdom on how to save a troubled marriage, but it might have worked in this case. Finley, to her husband's great chagrin and disappointment, won a competition on the Food Network for a new cooking show. Why she entered despite his wishes and what they did after she won is grist for this book's mill. I thought it was worth a read, but I was disappointed by how little in terms of good behavior is expected of very young Americans.
• A Box of Darkness: The Story of a Marriage, Sally Ryder Brady. Finley's story was that of early marriage; this story is of a marriage that ends after 46 years with the death of Upton Brady. The secrets Upton leaves behind are, in reality, the harvest of almost half a century of love and deception. I haven't yet decided what I think of this book; I'm only reporting that I read it last week. Cop out...
• Come to the Edge, Christina Haag. Two stories of marriage and now, a story of no marriage at all. Rather, it is a memoir of the author's five year affair with John Kennedy, Jr. The two became acquainted in high school, better acquainted in college, and became lovers at age 25. It would seem that any story involving a Kennedy would be sensationalistic, and yet this is anything but. Rather, it is a meditation on the joy and griefs of an ill-fated love. And, frankly, to me it made sense of Kennedy's death. Some have faulted the quirky timeline the author has chosen. In context of the story, I thought it was an appealing device.
• A Redbird Christmas, Fannie Flagg. When Oswald T. Campbell learns that his health will not see him through another Chicago winter, he takes a bold step into the charmed world of Fannie Flagg. Unlike the sad or uncertain endings of the stories above, in a book by Fannie Flagg, you can depend on things working out. The fun is in seeing how her characters resolve to change... and do.
• Bad Dog (A Love Story), Martin Kihn. Ever heard of the Canine Good Citizen® program? Ever known of a dog who needs it? Meet Hola. Or, rather, wait until he gets through it. Otherwise, you might get knocked over or maybe get a little nip. This completely engaging story of a man and his dog and the marriage the dog almost ruined -- well, it might have been the drinking, too -- had more turns than a boxwood maze. I loved it.

May day in the garden

I'm a sentimental gardener. Among my roses, for instance, I count Joseph's Coat and Griff's Red. Both carry names of priests dear to me. This tulip is Lady Jane, in honor of my best friend from high school and college. It looks delicate, but it's tough: qualities in common with Janie! I think it's beautiful, just like my friend.

In my gardens, muscari haven't needed to be planted. If anything, they've needed weeding out. But Colorado is different. This year I'm trying yet again. As you see, success is far from assured.

Identification

It's a real mess, but once I get it cleaned out, this will be a good year for 'Carnival Glass', a miniature rose I've grown for many years, i.e. before we came to Colorado. The picture is here because I noted the rose leaves which feature in this Girl Sprout NM entry.

And that entry reminded me of the late Oregon rose grower, Fred Edmunds, who was able to identify roses by leaf, alone. Given the thousands and thousands of roses in cultivation, I think that would be an extraordinary skill.

I grant that Fred was most active in the rose growing world before the popularity of English and old garden roses, but I'm not sure much would have thrown him. He was a brilliantly hard worker, erudite and funny, and a fine gentleman.

On the reading table (or tablet)

Memoir week here and memoirs can be pretty long sometimes (or maybe they just seem that way).

• The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie, Wendy McClure. McClure's interest in the life of the author of Little House on the Prairie is more than a hobby, but no more obsessive than that of the many people she meets on the trail of Wilder's biography. I had no idea of the museums and pageantry that keep alive the myth of the Little House and truly no concept of the extent to which Wilder's life has been scrutinized.
  
  
• No Biking in the House Without a Helmet, Melissa Fay Greene. I have conflicted feelings about this book. On one hand, there is no doubt but that the writer and her family rescued five children from what would have been horrible lives. On the other hand, I think maybe the author underplays the extent to which privilege plays a role in the story she writes. Without an income many times what constitutes middle class in America today, I doubt that it is possible to pursue Greene's path. It's a virtuous path, to be sure, but also a path of where Greene holds a number of trump cards unavailable to most people pursuing international adoption.
  
  
• Reading My Father: A Memoir, Alexander Styron. If Darkness Visible outed the reality of major depression for the sufferer, Reading My Father documents some of the ways families can be damaged when one member has poorly controlled illness. Reading this book, I have to say it occurred to me that more than unipolar depression was at work here. The mood swings, the rages... I dunno.

I realize I sound kind of cranky this week. Probably I could do with a little light entertainment after all the drama of the week. But what's a memoir without drama? It's my grandma's diary about the weather, the garden, and church-going, that's what. There was plenty of drama in her life, but none of it made it onto the page. These writers have weather and maybe gardens; none of that makes it onto the page because it doesn't make for interesting reading. (Sorry, Grandma!)