Wednesday Flowers - Lilies

Today is the first day of summer here in upstate New York.  With that, I have to change the name of my Wednesday feature. Goodbye to "Spring Things" until next year.

Last year, I spent the summer posting wildflower pictures, as I sought to learn more about them.  It was fun, and I learned a lot.  But the world of flowers also includes domestic varieties.

This summer, I am going to expand my Wednesday feature to include flowers of all types.  A lot of the photos will probably be taken during exercise walks on the West Side of Binghamton.  Others will be from my small perennial garden in Westover, near Johnson City, New York.  I will also feature wildflowers and flowers from my travels.

Lilies have taken center stage on the West Side of Binghamton, both daylillies and Asiatic lilies (and Asiatic hybrids.).  I took what may be my last outdoor walk for a couple of days.  Temperatures in the next couple of days will probably be in the 90's. 

What I love the most about lilies is the great variety of colors they come in.  Here are red lilies in a planter.

These are orange day lilies, a variety looking a lot like what many people call "tiger lilies".

Yellow lilies are one of the more popular colors.

There are some beautiful hybrids out there.  This particular variety, "Tiny Sensation" is a small Asiatic lily we bought this year for our front yard (right now residing next to a container of cucumber plants).

One thing I really like about the Asiatics is that they are almost fragrance free.  Believe it or not, I find the scent of certain lilies, especially some that are sold as potted plants for gift giving (Oriental lillies?) quite objectionable.  Other people have allergic reactions.

I've joked at times about it being a pity that there is no such thing as smell-o-blog.  Perhaps, at least for those of us who have allergies, lack of smell-o-blog is a good thing after all.  But, I'm curious to know if any other of my readers think certain lilies have an objectionable scent, or if they are allergic to them.

Still, despite these drawbacks - I love lilies.  What flowers (if it is summer where you live) are blooming where you live?

Happy 60th Girl #1

So, consider this fiction book.  Would you buy it?

Two girls growing up in the 1950's Bronx meet each other in 5th grade.  Girl #1 has lived in the neighborhood all her life.  Girl #2 has recently arrived from the South Bronx. For whatever reason, they become friends.

They go to the same junior high and the same high school. Then, they go their separate ways.  One wants to be a vet and has always loved science. She goes to City College of New York.  Back in school, her parents had gotten her a French tutor, a young man with a talent for languages.  At the end of her sophomore year, she marries her former tutor.  They move to Brooklyn.

Meantime, the other girl goes to college in the Bronx, starts out as a history major and later switches to anthropology.  At the end of college she marries her college sweetheart.  They wander here and there, and eventually settle in upstate New York.

Kind of boring, right?  Well, let's make it interesting.

Age 29, two small children, Girl #1 never becomes a vet. And then her world changes for good.  She is diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She beats it after nearly a year of harrowing treatment.  She becomes an elementary school teacher and teaches generations of childen.  She retires.  She has grandchildren.  She becomes a caregiver for her elderly mother.

Girl #2, well, that girl, in real life, is me.  And you've read the story of my last three years in this blog.

What did real life do to Girl #1?  It played her a nasty, nasty trick.  She's fighting cancer again today, on her 60th birthday.  But whatever you do, don't pity her.  She is taking things day by day and planning for the future.  I've visited her twice this year, and I hope to do so again. (I might even post more Brooklyn pictures one of these days.)  And, thank you for asking, she is still married to French Tutor.

Some things, you just can't make up.  A friendship that spans nearly 50 years is a priceless gift, one that I don't intend to give up any time soon. This is no fiction novel.  I am a non fiction writer, and this is a story I want to add chapters to for many years.

Amen.

Do you have a best friend from childhood?

Back To The Writing Board

I have never been one of those lucky people who thought they had a book within them.   So, this prompt in the Author Blog Challenge had special meaning to me.

The prompt is "Describe the market for your book - to the tiniest detail (e.g. childless divorced women past age 50 who want to remarry). Why that demographic?  How do you connect with them to market to them?"



I'm still trying to figure out if I even want to write a book.  In some ways,. this prompt is the most valuable question the Challenge has asked.

I've been blogging for over 3 years - since late April 2011, daily.  In the past couple of months I finally realized I was a writer.  I blogged in May about my dreams of being a snowbird (I live on the edge of the snowbelt of upstate NY) and escaping the 80 plus inches of snow we get here in a normal winter.  Once I retire from my day job, I need a way to generate income which will leave me free to live in two places.

One reason why I joined this challenge was to take this next step.

If I wrote a book, the Challenge would give me lots of information on interviewing, on e-book vs. traditional book publishing, on how to market, how to outline, how to - well, write.

But this question brought me to the heart of what I am trying to do:  Who the heck am I directing my writing at?  What is its purpose?  Will anyone even be interested?

Let's take one example.  I've had stray thoughts, here and there, about consolidating many of the posts I've posted since August of 2011. Thanks to Mother Nature, many have a common theme. In August of 2011, torrential rains from Tropical Storm Irene hit my area of upstate New York. Shortly thereafter, torrential rains caused by Tropical Storm Lee hit.  Rivers overflowed and caused massive flooding.

My blog was a first person account of the aftermath in one particular neighborhood near Johnson City, NY.  I actually wasn't here when the floods hit, which was fortunate.  I would have been blogging from a shelter, which is to say I wouldn't have been blogging.  And if my house had been several blocks from where it is, it may have been destroyed.  Maybe 'destroyed' is too strong a word but there are houses in my neighborhood that will never again be occupied.  There but for the grace.....

 I wanted to bear witness to what was happening around me.  I wanted to report it to the world.

But - then what?  What if I had written a book based on those blog posts?

Would I have wanted it as a fundraiser, proceeds benefiting a charity that benefited my neighborhood?

Would I have wanted to interview other survivors of the flood?  I know some of them.  I am one of them.  We can connect.

What about a memoir?  I know there are lots of flood memoirs out there - By The Iowa Sea being a recent example.  (And, I'm no Joe Blair.)  But my life isn't exactly market material.  Parts of it would put you right to sleep.

Would I have done photo essays?

Would I have wanted to aim this at political officials as a wake up call, to transmit the message that we've had two major floods in the Triple Cities of upstate NY in the past six years and if something isn't done, the next flood might be the "last straw" that destroys this beautiful area of the country?

This prompt made me think, and I realized (after two days of thought) that I did not have a demographic.  So, back to the drawing board.

It will come.  It just isn't coming yet.

Civil War Sunday - Father Facts

Today, in the United States, it is Father's Day.  It is also time for my weekly Civil War post.  Always looking for the slightly offbeat, I decided to do an internet search and see what I could come up with for Father's Day.

Some may call it trivia.  I call it living history.  Too many people are turned off by history, thinking of the dull, lifeless presentation of history too many of us endured in school.  I've always loved history and want to try to make it more accessible to people.

So how is this for a start - a 2010 feature in the Utah Deseret News - a woman, Bashie Thomander, talks about her father, who fought in the Civil War on the Union side.  Yes, she was 94 when interviewed, and yes, her father was 74 when she was born. Still, she links us with our past.

The story of her father's service is one of the fascinating things about the Civil War that few of us studied in college.  We think of the war as "North vs. South" but it actually was fought, in one way or another, in a lot of far flung areas - including Utah, which was still a territory at the time.  His service was not against Confederates but - well, you'll have to read the story for yourself.  If you read Mrs. Thomander's story, you will learn something about Utah and the Civil War that many people, including me, didn't know about.

Before posting this, I wanted to make sure that Mrs. Thomander was still alive. As far as I can tell through online research, she is.  (If you know differently, could you comment?)

Then, I found that, just like Mothers Day (which I blogged about on Mother's Day), Father's Day is also connected to the Civil War.  Why not?

And finally, I found some quick facts about Civil War personalities and the fatherhood part of their lives last year.  In an era of high infant mortality and mortality among those growing up, I invite you to read my Father's Day post from last year, talking about four main players in the Civil War and some little known facts about them as fathers.  You may be surprised and amazed to know these figures more as human beings and less as statues in a public square (or on a battlefield).

Happy Fathers Day to all my readers who are fathers.  It's one of the hardest jobs in the world.  On a personal note, today would have been my parents' 61st wedding anniversary.  Today, I pay tribute to my Dad, and to all fathers everywhere.

Did your father's father or grandfather fight, or otherwise participate, in the American Civil War?

Sustainability Saturday - Whines and Dilemmas

Today, after visiting two farmer's markets here in upstate NY, taking an exercise walk (3 miles) with some wildflower photography, making a trip to buy a couple of little gifties for a baby shower, I ended up in our local botanical gardens to check out the old and new fashioned roses in bloom.  Now I'm tired and whiney, and want to write a post that incorporates a couple of things that have been on my mind lately regarding sustainability and the buy local? or is it ever OK to buy imported? questions I struggle with.

At the Vestal, NY farmers market, the main items for sale were lettuce, radishes, peas, local strawberries, honey, garlic scapes, eggs, and - tomatoes???  I would be surprised if these were local hothouse tomatoes because they were as pale as a supermarket tomato normally is.  I wonder where they were from.  Maybe he does tell customers where they are from, and if I was less introverted, I would have asked.  Maybe he sells them as a convenience.  Maybe I'm making excuses for the vendor.

I saw someone selling peaches and those are NOT local, no way whatsoever, not in June.

There are customers, I am sure, who would buy produce from a farmers market that is still a month away from being available locally. I am not one of them.  I do not purchase in farmers markets if it is not local.  Period.

The second question is a question of quality. This year, local strawberries are not good.  On the other hand, I can get excellent strawberries from California, trucked over 2,000 miles, "fresh", to my local supermarket.  This is a local supermarket chain, headquartered in Rochester, New York.  That local supermarket provides about 600 jobs, many part time, but still jobs, to our community.  Do I buy the farmers market berries?  Or the supermarket berries?  I hate to say it, but so far, the supermarket berries have won.

At the other local market, at Otsiningo Park, I ended up with some more whines.  I bought a heuchera from this vendor last week, and was hoping she had a columbine.  She didn't.

The man who was selling sorrel last week had it again - but the weather was warmer, I was an hour later, and the sorrel was very wilted.  It's a tender plant - I hope he finds a way to put his sorrel in a cooler next time.  The schav (an Eastern European cold sorrel soup) my spouse made from last week's purchase was wonderful.  I had my taste buds set to indulge in some ice cold sour schav again.  Well, if that is the biggest disappointment I suffer this weekend, I can count myself fortunate.

My next stop was the Ravenwood Gardens booth.  But, to my disappointment, she did not have the herbal insect repellent I love.  Two more weeks, she said.   It was still steeping.  That was good to know - it means it is truly - shall I use the term? - artisan.

VINES, a very worthwhile urban gardening organization, didn't have anything we needed, which was too bad.

But a good day all in all.  The sun is shing.  What could be better than that?


Would you buy non local food from a farmers market?  Would you buy from a supermarket if the quality was superior to the offerings of the farmers market?

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day June 15 Variety is the Name

Do we gardeners know what day it is?  Yes!  It is Garden Bloggers Bloom Day!  Brought to you the 15th of each month by May Dream Gardens, garden bloggers from all over the world gather to show what is blooming in their gardens, their greenhouses, their houses, or wherever their flowers reside.

Please, by all means, go to the website.  Click on some of the links at the bottom of the GBBD post.  A world of beauty awaits you.  Bloggers in the Author Blog Challenge I am in this month, it is time to stop and smell the roses.  We have a lot of fragrant roses in bloom right now in the Binghamton, NY area.  Just not in my garden.  I wish I had smell-o-blog to transmit the scent to you.

The weather the last couple of days here in New York has been spectacular. Crisp, low humidity makes colors pop out.

For some reason, my perennial flowers have decided not to show their blooms for the 15th.  Several have buds:  daylillies, a clerance peace lily we planted last year, several astilbes.  Others have already come and gone since the last GBBD:  my irises (which, for some reason, barely bloomed this year), my wild honeysuckle (no, I didn't plant it) and a wild rose that decided to take up residence on the edge of my property.

So what do I have to show off this month in my zone 5 garden?

 

The last of my columbine.  Columbines did very well this year here in upstate New York. I only have one plants, and I'm on the lookout for another.

Next, a couple of new plants:

Heuchera "Georgia Peach". (yes, it has a tiny flower stalk, not really visible, but it is blooming.)  I've not had the best luck with heuchera.  I got this at a local farmers market last Saturday.

Lilium Asiatic "Tiny Sensation" (for scale, next to a 12 inch pot containing cucumber plants)

One of my few established perennials, a yellow bleeding heart.

On the annual side, I wanted to show off a couple of unusual ones.  First, an impatien.  This impatien, I believe, was one I ordered from Burpees as plants last year.  The plants came (unusual for Burpees) sopping wet and I lost 10 out of the 12. I ended up taking a cutting from what survived as fall neared, kept it growing and planted it out.  It is rewarding me with a beautiful bloom.  I don't think this is the same color pattern as last year, but I am not questioning it.

Speaking of unusual impatiens, African impatiens have always done well for me but for some reason I haven't grown any in a couple of years.  This year I bought this peach colored one, and it is thriving in a pot near my front entrance.


Happy GBBD to my fellow bloggers around the world.  What is blooming in your garden today?

Edgar Rice Burroughs and Cover Art

One of the recent prompts of the Author Blog Challenge brought back a childhood memory.

"Describe your process for choosing and designing your book cover.  Who created your cover?  How did you find him/her?  What do you love about your cover?  What might you do differently next time?"

Book covers - it brings back memories of the first author who influenced my writing.


When I was 10 years old, I broke my leg, and was treated at a hospital in the Bronx.  I had to go back to the hospital periodically to see the doctors during my recovery.   On one visit, at the hospital gift store, one of my parents bought me a book to read.  I don't know how or why, but they picked "A Princess of Mars" by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

It changed my life.

I don't know how many young people have heard of Edgar Rice Burroughs.  Even in my day (I am talking the early 60's) enough children may have known Edgar Rice Burroughs mainly through Tarzan movies.  Reruns of old Tarzan movies featuring Johnny Weissmuller were a staple of weekend movie afternoons on non-network local New York City channels.

But this book my parent bought me was something different.  The cover attracted me immediately - an exotically dressed woman in peril, with a muscular man, holding a sword, defending her.  Although the book started slowly, I very quickly got into the story once the hero, John Carter, reached Mars.  I ended up devouring the other 10 books of the series over the next few years.  Then, I went on to other series written by Burroughs - the Venus books, many of the Tarzan books, one of the Pellucidar books, and a couple of his non-series books.

I loved those book covers on the Ballantine and Ace versions of the Martian books from the 1960's.  In doing research, I found that other Edgar Rice Burroughs books were graced with unforgettable covers.  They really wanted to make you buy and read the contents.    Even after I grew up, the tradition of spectacular book covers continued.

Here, Burroughs himself writes about his experiences with illustrations of his books.

I don't have a book written yet, but if I did, I would like someone like Burroughs as my self-publishing mentor. Something tells me Burroughs would have been right at home in this Challenge and in the world of self-publishing. 

Incidentally, if you are interested in reading the Martian (Barsoom) books of Edgar Rice Burroughs, or some of his other books in the public domain, they are available for free online.

Did you find Edgar Rice Burroughs when growing up?  Are you a fan of "his" cover art/illustrations?  Do you long to visit Barsoom one day?

Spring Things - The House of the Midnight Sun

Late spring.  Almost summer.  Here in upstate New York, we are almost at our maximum day length.  Only two more minutes to go. In fact, in a couple of days, our sunrises will start getting later.

This is as good as it gets.  And I love spring in upstate NY, don't get me wrong.  Right now the roses are blooming along with lillies.  And after a spring rain, flowers can look lovely.  But, it does make me long for the midnight sun I have never seen.

(Rose after rain on the West Side of Binghamton, NY taken by Ramblin' with AM).

I have never seen the midnight sun.  For all I know (as I am a very nervous flyer) I never will, at least in person. Upstate New York is a long way from Iceland, or Norway, Antarctica or even Alaska.

If I had a bucket list, seeing the midnight sun would be on it.  Why?  Because light at midnight breaks a basic rule of my life.  I grew up in New York City, and have lived in Florida, in Iowa, in Kansas, in Arkansas, and, for the past 25 plus years, upstate New York.

In all of those places, the sun rises every day.  It travels up in the sky.  Then it goes down and sets.  Then there is dark.  Repeat, 365 days a year.  It's one of those basic rules.  If the rule breaks, you become scared in a primeval way.  The world isn't right.  Just like, if you looked up at the dark sky, and the stars were all in places they didn't belong.


But the sunrise/sunset daily cycle doesn't happen the same way everywhere, and I've known that, within me, since I was a little girl.  I think I knew it before I ever learned about "why" in elementary school science.  I knew there were places where the sun did not set during some of the year, and did not rise during some of the year.  Or, the sun did rise or set, but not enough to matter.

I've blogged about the midnight sun (or midnight dark) on many occasions, including a post one year ago today.

Ironically, I visited Alaska once - in September, 1988. So the day length was about the same there as in upstate NY.  The quality of the light was different.  It was - well, not just dimmer.  It was different. Dusk seemed to go on for hours.

And the flowers - the flowers!  Nasturtiums with blooms practically the size of dessert plates (OK, I exaggerate) tumbling out of planters in Juneau.  Glaciers with ice so blue that I bought a blue topaz just to remember the color.  (We also saw banana slugs and moss covered roofs, but we won't go there.) 

I would love to see the Midnight Sun baseball game in Fairbanks, AK.  You'd be surprised how many major leaguers played ball in Fairbanks before they went on to bigger and better things.  They all got to see the midnight sun.   Arrrghhh.....

Thanks to the Internet, I can visit webcams, and blogs, that talk about life in these parts of the world.    I can even read the blog of the Midnight Sun baseball game.  And, I can see a video of Tom Seaver, who would go on to everlasting major league baseball fame playing for the NY Mets, playing as an amateur in the 1965 Midnight Sun game.  In Fairbanks, the sun does set, but still, they play the game without artificial light.

Until I can see it, I will dream and write about it in my blog. Who knows, maybe the reality won't be as good as my imagination.  And I think - if I had months with just three or four hours of sunlight a day, how could I ever grow houseplants with natural light?

There is that.  The months of dark.

Do you have a bucket list?  What is on it?

Pruning, Thinning, Deadheading, and Weeding

 (Photo courtesy of Ramblin' with AM)

The Author Blog Challenge is almost half way through.  That means June is almost half way through.  This is a beautiful month of flowers blooming, and gardens growing.

I continue my month long journey to decide if I want to take my writing to another level - to try to write a book. Or at least, to go beyond blogging.

Today's prompt in the Challenge is:

"Describe your editing process. Who edited your book? What was your relationship with your editor like? What could each of you have done to improve it? What might you do differently in the future?"

Well, I have no book, not yet.  But if I had a dream editor, I would hope that she would be my ally.

In gardening, it is necessary to cut, shape, and sometimes even thin, in order to get maximum production from your plants.  Some flowering plants also require deadheading.  This sounds horrible but is only the cutting off of flowers past their prime so that the plant will keep producing.  As for thinning, it seems mean to pinch the life out of tiny beets or lettuces.  However, if you don't give your seedlings enough space,  if you let them remain crowded, they will become stunted.

It is always necessary to weed, to give your plants enough room to stretch, and to insure that they get enough light.  And, because many garden plants are actually weaker than the weeds that threaten to overcome them, our garden plants need us to be their advocates and their allies.

Few gardens flourish without the guiding hand of a good gardener.  The skilled gardener sees the potential in his or her garden and, with a firm but gentle hand, prunes, deadheads, thins, and weeds.

My ideal editor, should I be able to get one, would be to see the beauty of my writing garden.  I, as the author, plant the garden and get it to growing. But, I might be so close to my work that I might not be able do an adequate job of shaping, pruning and thinning.  My ideal editor would help me see where to cut and where to shape.  I might not always agree, and I know the process would be painful.

But in the end, I would hope that, between the two of us, my book would bloom, and enrich the lives of its readers.


Do you have an editor?  Is it a good relationship?  Painful? Both? Does he or she make your writing bloom?  Do you have any advice to give a writer just starting out?

Author Blog Challenge - No Pain, No Gain?

My writing has not been critiqued (directly to me, that is) since college.  And that was a longgggggggggg time ago.  Sometime in the last century.  We won't mention which decade but there was a "7" in the number.

With the 9 month flood anniversary here in upstate NY having to be commemorated and my normal Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday theme days begging for attention, I haven't followed the prompts very much this week.  But that doesn't mean I haven't been paying attention to the quality of writing in this Challenge. Now, it is time to return to this Challenge.

Today's Author Blog Challenge prompt is:  "Have you participated in a critique groups?  If so, how did it work out for you?  If not, why have you avoided them to this point?"

The short answer is "No, I never have.  Don't know if I ever will."

I could have given you a lot of answers for the "why" but a blog post written by Tor Canstantino (not part of this challenge but his writings are well worth reading, in my humble opinion) finally explained why.  His post, The One Trait Every Writer Needs, created one of those "a-ha!" moments for me.

Tor wrote "..most creatives write from their hearts, losses or experiences – the words are inseparable from the author."  That is so true for me.

At this point in time I could not appear before a group, carrying my heart-I mean, my writing- and having people examine it.  Even if they found my writing was the greatest ever (no chance of that) the stress of the experience would be too much for me to bear.

I'm not even sure I could hire someone to do it for me privately.  Or have someone in the Challenge (if they offered) do that for me.  Not now.   Not yet.

But, I think I am beginning to realize that "no pain, no gain" is more than a cliche about exercise.

The encouragement I've received from fellow bloggers is like sunshine on the leaves of a green plant, to be sure.  But encouragement doesn't teach in the same way as a helpful critique.   One day, I must prepare to face that I must seek an unbiased opinion out if I want to continue my growth as a writer.  But first, I need to grow a very thick hide.  So, how do I do that?

Nothing worth doing is easy, is it?

Fellow readers and writers, what do you think? 

No critique pain, no gain?

Civil War Sunday - Civil War Penmanship and Dr. Charles Leale

 (Matthew Brady photograph of Abraham Lincoln in the basement of the Tioga County Historical Society, Owego, NY November, 2011, salvaged from the September 2011 flood..  Photographed, not too skillfully, by me.)

This past week, some exciting news was announced - the report of the first doctor to reach Abraham Lincoln after he was shot was found.  The doctor was Dr. Charles Leale,a doctor who had seen Lincoln speak several days before.  For some reason, Lincoln's face fascinated him and he decided to go to Ford Theatre that fateful night of April 14, 1865, to study Lincoln further.  Accounts say he was only about 40 feet away from Mr. Lincoln when he witnessed the assassination.

Of course, it is always exciting for historians to have a source document found.  But, to me, what is more exciting is the availability online of the document itself.

For example, doctors have wondered if Lincoln's life could have been saved by modern medicine. As of 2007, the answer would have been "yes but with a lot of brain damage".  Now, we have an exact account of the medical measures taken.

From my point of view, though, what fascinated me the most was the document itself.  If you look at it, you will see it is beautifully written.  Not only is the writing that of an educated man, but the quality of penmanship is breathtaking to the modern reader.  For example, I would never win an award for my penmanship.

I had to do some research.

Handwriting was a main form of communication during the Civil War.  Those fortunate enough to be schooled spent countless hours practicing penmanship.  There were no typewriters commercially available (to the best of my knowledge) until right after the Civil War, although they had been invented.  Many documents were handwritten.   Part of judging how educated a person was consisted of judging penmanship.

Each side, Federal and Confederate, wrote countless letters, battle orders, and the like. Some kept diaries. Most all of these were handwritten.

What I found is that there were two main styles of writing during the Civil War era, "Copperplate script" and "Spencerian script."  I am not a graphic designer, but it seems from the small amount of research I did that both scripts, in one form or another, are still quite alive and well.

Even the instructions provided for Spencerian script sing to me.

With penmanship an instinctive skill, the writer was free to express his thoughts - and I could imagine the thoughts of Dr. Charles Leale flowing as he wrote about the fateful night of April 14 and morning of April 15, 1865. He did not talk about that night, the night he spent holding the dying President's hand, for years.  He  made his observations public in 1909, the 100th anniversary of Lincoln's birth, in a speech called "Lincoln's Last Hours".

Dr. Charles Leale died in 1932, one of the last living witnesses to the assassination.

Have you learned calligraphy?  Do you mourn the removal of cursive handwriting from elementary school curriculums?

Sustainable Saturday - Garlic Scapes and Sorrel

The Farmers Market season is in full swing in the Binghamton, New York area with the opening of the downtown Binghamton farmers market yesterday.  Due to major road construction nearby (they are building a roundabout) I fear the market will be smaller than in previous years.

I went there yesterday and it did seem to be less well attended. Some regulars had shown up, including a vendor of baked goods that has sold there for years, and someone selling local strawberries.  Yes, our local strawberries are coming in now - but because of the rain, I'm told they are very watery tasting. Too bad.

Another veggie for sale at our farmers markets is one available for just a short time - garlic scapes.  A perfect veggie for the person interested in sustainable gardening, as it makes use of a part of the garlic plant many people throw away.

You aren't going to find these at most chain supermarkets.

But if you have some land, you can easily grow these in your garden, even if you only have limited space.

What are garlic scapes?  They are the flower stalk of the garlic plant.  You can, and should, snap these off.  Many gardeners throw them away - but, please don't do that.  You are missing out on a wonderful taste treat.  These garlic scapes are from our garden.

Picking the scapes is a little tricky, because you have to get them before they become tough.  Once you do, then what?  There are a lot of garlic scape recipes online.  As for ours above, my spouse is going to steam them briefly and then put them into a pasta/veggie salad, along with red and yellow pepper, cauliflower, and snow peas from our garden.

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Today's Otsiningo Park Farmers Market was held in overcast weather, but many people came out to buy.  Besides the garlic scapes, to my delight, we were able to find some sorrel.  Sorrel is not something you usually find at the market, and I immediately purchased one of these bunches.  The same vendor was also offering lettuce, and easter egg radishes.

I love schav, a cold sorrel soup served with sour cream.  It was a staple of my childhood, and that is how this sorrel will be used.

Other vendors were offering baked goods, lettuce, broccoli rabe and rhubarb.

Our last stop was an egg vendor, for some large free range eggs.  This vendor had set up an educational exhibit.  The egg on the left is a pullet egg, the type of egg laid when a hen first comes into production.  On the right, is the egg of a very mature hen,of an age your usual commercial chicken will never live to see.

Support sustainable agriculture and your local farmer.  Visit a Farmers Market today.

Do you have farmers markets where you live?  What is being sold right now?

Flowers Bloom Where Flood Waters Stood

Today the commemoration of the 9 month flood anniversary here in upstate New York continues.  Once again, I am not following the prompt for the Author Blog Challenge but following my heart.  Who knows, one day, some kind of book will come out of all those posts with the "Binghamton Flood of 2011" label.

So much to write about.

I could post a list of businesses and roads still reopening.  That would be the easy way out.  Rather, I want to talk about the fact that on Saturday, my neighborhood YMCA celebrated a new beginning.

I took this photo near the Y parking lot on September 11, 2011 - the closest we could get to the building on that day that so many of us were let back into our neighborhood.  That isn't snow. That's mud left from the waters that receded. There was still flood water not that far away.   Fortunately you can't smell that scene.  Fortunately, not that much water (comparatively) entered the building.  If you look past that gas station (which was closed for nearly two months) know that some 8 feet of water covered parts of that road a couple of days before. 

The Y reopened on September 19.  No furniture, no lockers, bare concrete floors, but we quickly learned that all you need is the basics.  A roof.  Caring staff.  Pegs to hang our clothes on.

And then, less than a month later, a 2 alarm fire struck the Y.  Back to square one.  In some ways, the fire was even worse than the flood.  Now we members were exercising in a facility with wires hanging down, with ceilings missing (stripped to the studs), with the gym (near where the fire started) closed for months, with the smell of smoke everywhere,  Never mind us.  The staff had to work there, and work they did.  Many of their members had been through the flood.  Some of the staff members had been through the flood, too.

Slowly, painfully slowly, the Y building returned to normal.  Ceilings reappeared.  Then lockers.  Slowly, the walls were painted.  The smell of paint replaced the stench of smoke.   An actual front desk replaced the card tables. Carpet was laid over a period of a couple of weeks, and then, finally, the gym reopened.

And now, the Y is in bloom - literally  In the front. flowers bloom profusely. The flood waters didn't cover the planters, thankfully.

An iris brightens the day.

Now, near the playground, a vegetable garden has been planted, where flood waters stood 9 months ago.

Welcome to the Y garden.

Tomatoes and pepper plants grow in a narrow strip of land, also where flood waters stood, and seeds planted on Saturday should be sprouting soon.

 In nearby houses, in the flooded part of my neighborhood, domestic and wildflowers bloom, too.  Nature is healing us.

In the yard of perhaps the oldest house in my neighborhood (I'm told it dates from the 1800's) a chicory bloom, so beautifully blue.

And, next to a little apartment house that is still undergoing repairs, a hydrangea bush comes into bloom.


Nature heals.  A new beginning.






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We are Unsinkable

Today and tomorrow we mark the 9 month flood anniversary for portions of upstate NY, Pennsylvania, and assorted places in New Jersey and other northeastern states.  After a much wetter than normal summer, and Tropical Storm Irene in August, Tropical Storm Lee came and dumped approximately 10 inches of rain on our area on Wednesday, September 7, 2011.  The ground and rivers couldn't hold the water anymore.  On September 7, flash flooding started.  One impacted road, in fact, just reopened today.

And then the rivers rose, into September 8.  Rose, and escaped their banks.  The Susquehanna inundated entire neighborhoods, entire villages.  My neighborhood of Westover, near Johnson City, NY was one of the hard hit neighborhoods.  But there was worse.  Much worse.

One of the worst hit was Owego, the "Coolest Small Town in America".

I've read estimates that 75% of the buildings in Owego suffered flood damage. This building was one of them.

I blogged about Owego last November and the recovery continues.  But....

It's always the children who suffer the most.  The Owego-Apalachin school district (called O-A locally) lost 4 of its buildings with others badly damaged.  The children had to be split up and bussed to different schools.  I know an elementary school teacher in Endicott who teaches some of those children.  She, personally, was also impacted by the flood.  Only in the past few days has FEMA stepped up to help with the replacement of these buildings. 

But the schools were helping with the childrens' flood recovery way before that announcement-through writing.

O-A is spearheading a project called "Unsinkable".  Students will write or tell their stories, and input from other residents is being sought. Eventually these will be compiled into a book, so all can remember.

I've thought myself about writing some of my experiences into a memoir.  I've blogged about some of them, but there are other stories I haven't told anyone.   I plan to blog more about this "someday".

This continues to be a difficult time for our region, but we are making progress.  We are unsinkable.

And tomorrow, on the 9 month anniversary of the river flooding, I will write more about our recovery.

Spring Things - The Pink and Yellow Celebration

Yesterday I walked on the west side of Binghamton, New York.  It was a crisp June day (it only reached 64 degrees) but it was a nice break from the rain we've been getting recently.

The spring flowers are slowly transitioning into summer.

First, this lovely front yard art from a couple of weeks ago.  I had to share this with you.  Bravo!

And now, some of the lovely flowers I photographed yesterday afternoon

The last of pink poppies.

Daylillies starting to dominate.  These may be Stella D'Oro but nowadays, there are so many varieties of yellow daylillies, it's hard to say.

And, pink roses.  I wish there was smell-o-blog; I would love so to share this scent with you.

What is your favorite late spring/early summer flower?  (and for my readers in the Southern Hemisphere...just three more months before spring...)  If you love to flower garden, let me know!

For the Love of Reading

For the Author Blog Challenge I am participating in, yesterday's prompt was:

How do the things you read impact your writing? What do you love to read? What do you avoid reading at all costs? How would your writing change if you read more of the things you typically avoid?

I avoided this prompt yesterday but it kept gnawing at me - so today I am going to have two posts.  One, on this prompt, and one, my regular Wednesday Spring Things features.

I probably will not be following the prompts the next several days.  Thursday, June 7 and Friday, June 8, are the 9 month anniversary of the great Binghamton, NY flood of September 7 and 8, 2011, thanks to Tropical Storm Lee.  I use the monthly anniversaries to track the progress of the recovery of my neighborhood (one of the neighborhoods badly impacted) and the Binghamton area.  Saturday, June 9, is my Sustainable Saturday feature and Sunday, June 10, is my Civil War Sunday.  I will use these "days with a purpose" to (hopefully) improve my writing skills, and I hope you will join me.


What I love to read:


1.  My first love is nonfiction, and if I do end up writing a book, I suspect it will be something along the non fiction line.  Examples of books I have enjoyed in recent years:

Freakanomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner.  They write about "The Hidden Side of Human Nature".  I loved their unexpected takes on "accepted facts", or what you might also call "Everything You Thought You Know is Wrong."

Outliers-The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell. Who would have thought that success in sports depended so much on your birthday?  Or exactly why was young Bill Gates in the right place at the right time?

The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places on Earth by Eric Weiner.  Another "it's not what you think" book.  Come to think of it, that seems to be a theme of my non fiction reading.


2. Alternate history (what if the Axis powers won World War II?  What if.....) including these favorites:


The Man in the High Castle by Phillip K. Dick.  
The Gladiator, by Harry Turtledove (YA fiction).
The Worldwar series and Colonization series (which are related), by Harry Turtledove.

Why alternate history?  Because I was originally a history major in college.  And I do enjoy a good "what if", if well written and richly researched.


3.  Dystopian fiction, mostly YA.  My prize find was The Hunger Games, which I read not long after it came out and long before the entire world discovered it. (Truthfully, I was not near as thrilled by the two sequels.)  I love seeing how each author meets the challenge of creating a world and allowing you in, and making you feel, even after you put the book down, that you belong in that world.  You can't wait to reenter it.

Other favorites, not strictly dystopian, include:


The Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld
Rot and Ruin and its sequel Dust and Decay by Jonathan Maberry.

Rot and Ruin contains what I think is one of the best opening lines of any book I've ever read:  "Benny Imura couldn't hold a job, so he took to killing."  

Yes, these two Jonathan Maberry books are zombie lit, but...don't sell zombie lit short. 

In a way, it's too bad that dystopian literature has become so popular but - that's a subject for another post.

What do I avoid?  Romance. (well, I do read an occasional romance in Good Housekeeping magazine, but that's about it.) Anything that sounds like a textbook.  And (this may horrify some people in the Challenge) poetry. Except for some Robert Frost.  Would my writing change if I read these genres?  I truly don't know.

What I do know is that I am paying more attention now to books I read, to discover (in books that work for me), why they work.  I need to read more to learn to write better and I need to pay more attention to the inner workings of those books.  But I will still read for pleasure, and I always will.


If you are an author-when you read for pleasure, do you find yourself dissecting books?  Or do you just - read?

 
 







 

Exercise Wildflowers

Much of last summer, I featured a weekly "Wildflower Wednesday".  It was an attempt to learn more about wildflowers.  I love to blog about flowers, but I have so much to learn.  It is not a subject I can consider myself an expert on.   I may be in an Author Blog Challenge, but sooner or later I just have to abandon the prompts and talk about flowers.

Sometimes, my readers teach me more than I teach them. And I have a feeling this post is going to be one of those times.


In a normal year, you would find these wildflowers on the Vestal Rail Trail just about now.  The Vestal Rail Trail, a "rails to trails" trail in upstate NY, is one of my favorite places to walk - and to take pictures. But this has been a strange spring, full of early surprises.  Over a week ago, I saw chicory and Queen Anne's Lace in bloom.  I almost half expect to see goldenrod any day now.

And on May 20, I saw some pretty amazing wildflower sights on the Vestal Rail Trail.  Some of these I'm not sure about.  One is a complete mystery.

This (I believe) is a viburnum.

I think this may be wild geranium.  But I am not sure.  Does anyone know?

Nor do I know what this mystery yellow flower is.

And finally...I thought these flowers might have been blackberries but they seemed too big.  The Trail has a lot of rugosa roses but they tend to be pink, not white. There were a lot of these blooming this year.  My guess is they are rugosa roses and not blackberries.

If you can identify any of my mystery flowers, please do! (UPDATE:  Please see comments for probable identifications of my wildflowers.)

My next goal is to be able to take pictures of things moving:  butterflies, bees, and birds.  My camera, a Sony, has a long lag between the time I try to snap the picture and the time the picture is actually taken.  It is very frustrating.  But there must be away around this.  Other than the long lag time, I really like this camera.

Do you like to take nature photos?

Asimov, Turtledove and Lee

Day Three of the Author Blog Challenge and today's prompt is:  Who are the writers you most admire?  Who are your writing mentors?

I have a number of authors I admire.

1.  Isaac Asimov - a very prolific writer indeed, with over 500 books to his credit.  It isn't that I admire being prolific as an isolated goal.  Rather, my admirations comes from the fact that  Mr. Asimov wrote on almost every topic you could imagine, from science fiction, science fact, science textbooks, to ancient history, the Bible- and did them well.   If you think about robots, you think about robots as Isaac Asimov wrote about them.  He changed what our entire society thought about robots.  His books and stories reached millions of people, and inspired them.

Isaac Asimov and I also share some similarities in family history.  His parents immigrated from the Soviet Union, as did my paternal grandparents. (One disclaimer-the U.S.S.R. did not exist when my family came to the U.S. but their home area did become part of that country.)  Both his father and my grandfather owned candy stores in Brooklyn, and both Mr. Asimov and my father had to work in the family business.  So in a way, I identify with Mr. Asimov in a way far beyond that of the normal reader/writer relationship.

2.  Harry Turtledove - I must have a thing for prolific authors, although Mr. Turtledove concentrates more on history, both nonfiction and fiction.  I enjoy the alternate history genre, and Mr. Turtledove excels in it.  What I admire is his researching skills.  If I do write, it may be non fiction, and researching skills are a must.

3.  Harper Lee - she wrote one of the greatest books of all time.  She refined it, and refined it, and refined it.  And then, after she published it, she never wrote another novel.  She knew when to stop.

Mentoring - if you mean the sense of a writer working directly with me, I don't have one-yet. But I do have a friend, Billie Noakes.  Billie is in my family, and although I have only met her once, she introduced me to my very first blog challenge.  I owe her a lot.  And who knows, perhaps one of the writers on this author's challenge will end up becoming a mentor.

As far as blogging, I would count Michelle Rafter at the WordCount Blogathon as a mentor, along with Tia Bach (who is also a published author of a book, Depression Cookies) and Jackie Dishner at Bike With Jackie.  They don't know me personally, and I don't know them, but I try to learn from both of them.  One other blog I would mention, Carolina Heartstrings, which has encouraged me in my Civil War blogging.  This is a blog written by two sisters, one of whom I had the pleasure of meeting at a Civil War reenactment.

Who has influenced you?

Civil War Sunday - POW Newspapers

On Sundays, my blog features a United States Civil War (1861-1865) feature.  I am a very amateur historian, not any kind of Civil War expert.   I like to blog from various aspects - reenactments I go to (I am not a reenactor myself), exhibits, and not commonly discussed aspects of the war and life during the 1861-1865 period.

I am a native of New York State, but have also lived in the South (Florida and Arkansas), so try to approach this subject from the point of view of both North and South.

Sandi Tuttle, an internet radio host, talked last week about Camp Ford, a prisoner-of-war (POW) camp in the state of Texas, and a newspaper its prisoners published called The Old Flag.

I did a little Internet research (Sandi, sorry, but I am probably not going to be able to help you with your mystery flag) and came up with a very interesting story of writing under less than ideal conditions.

I have blogged before about Civil War POW camps, many of which were hellholes of disease, starvation and worse.  Both sides had these camps.  On the Confederate side, Andersonville, near Americus, Georgia, is probably the best known of any of these camps.  On the Federal side, Elmira (known also as "Helmira"), in Elmira, New York (about an hour from where I live).  In comparison, conditions as Camp Ford (which held Federal prisoners) were relatively humane, with food, fresh water, and shelter available.  Prisoners were able to advertise their skills to other prisoners and even make trade with the locals.

But life, in general, was pretty boring there.  So what else to do but write up a newspaper?  And that is just what the prisoners did.  Not only that, there were two handwritten newspapers, and possibly three.

The paper Sandi talked about was The Old Flag.  The Old Flag was published irregularly in 1864 by a Union prisoner who spent 13 months at Camp Ford.  The paper featured poetry, art, satire, chess problems, (ah!  so that's how people before the Internet entertained themselves!) and local news. Advertisements for prisoners selling their skills were included. These skills included barbering, pipe making and carvers of chessmen.  The paper was passed around and read aloud in each "mess". 

Another Camp Ford newspaper was only published once:  The Camp Ford News.

I found mention of a third paper, Right Flanker, but could find no information on it.

Camp Ford was not the only Civil War POW camp where newspapers were published.  On the Northern side, Confederate POWs at Ft. Delaware, for example, published a camp newspaper called The Prison Times.

Would some of the soldiers involved have been bloggers today?

We bloggers should take inspiration from these long ago newspaper writers and publishers.

 Does anyone have an ancestor who was in a Civil War POW Camp?  Do you know of any family members who mentioned these newspapers, or was even involved as a reporter or writer?

A Writing Journey - The Baby Years

Welcome, participants in the Author Blog Challenge and other readers, to my blog.

28 days to discover if I want to become an author, and learn how.

I normally have a "Sustainable Saturday" feature.  If you are looking for that feature, I published a post yesterday on a special store in Brooklyn (New York City).

Because of the Author Blog Challenge, which is taking place for 28 days in June, I will keep up my topic schedule days as much as possible,and still follow as many of the prompts of this challenge as possible.  I still want to publish my flower and wildflower photos too.  A pretty tall order!

 I have blogged for over three years now, daily for the past 13 plus months. What's next? I hope this challenge will help me answer this question.

For today, we are asked:  Describe your earliest memory of writing.  How did your writing habit/process/career develop?

My very earliest memory?  How about second grade?  No, I won't count the many hours I spent with plastic molded toy soldiers (World War II, Civil War, Cowboys and Indians), making up "movies" for them.  I never wrote the plots down.  I also remember making "comic" strips that passed through a paper TV screen. I also won't count the many hours I spent daydreaming that I worked at the Daily Planet alongside my heroine, Lois Lane.  I never did get into journalism.

No, I think it was when I was 10 or 11.  I loved superhero comics (Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, and a host of other).  I decided to make up my own superhero comics.  The hero I created was "Cold Man",  He could freeze anything to near absolute zero.  I couldn't draw worth a whit, so I enlisted the help of a friend with artistic talent. She, in turn, suggested my next venture and my first actual manuscript:  The Birdmen of Zuma.  The Birdmen of Zuma were half man, half canary, and lived hidden away in the Canary Islands.  An American pilot crash landed near their city.

It went downhill from there.  Many adventures, just coincidentally, resembled similar adventures of  my beloved John Carter of Barsoom.  But it was a start.

My serious writing started (after I stopped writing all together in my early 20's) in April of 2009.  I was in my late 50's.  I started a blog inspired by an "eyewitness" (sort of) email I wrote the day of a mass murder in Binghamton, New York.

My writing habit developed by participating first in the 2011 WordCount Blogathon (31 daily posts, no skipping a day permitted), and then several rounds of the Ultimate Blog Challenge.  And then, I completed the 2012 WordCount blogathon.


I have the habit of daily writing, thanks to over 13 straight months of daily blogging.

I don't use a traditional writing process in the sense that I have never taken a writing course.  I do "prewrite" but not formally.  No one taught me these steps - I developed a rhythm on my own in my first months of blogging.  I've refined it over the years.   I do draft, revise, proofread and publish, usually taking at least 30 minutes with each post.  I sometimes prewrite, but if I research it is usually during the drafting phase.  I usually write in the early evening but that is more because of my Monday to Friday work schedule. (I have a 40 plus hour a week corporate job). Some of my posts seem to spring, fully formed, from my mind.  Most don't.

I don't have a writing career.  Yet. That's why I'm here.

I have no idea what to expect from this challenge.  What about you?

Sustainable Saturday Friday Edition - Fairway Red Hook

I am posting my Sustainable Saturday post on Friday, to make room for the first post of the Author Blog Challenge on June 2.

Sustainability isn't just about food.  It is also about neighborhoods - urban neighborhoods.

Tourists generally do not visit New York City supermarkets.   In general, it is well that they don't.  They would be so disappointed by the cramped, dirty, and unimaginative markets city residents, too many times, are stuck with.  I wonder why this lack of quality is tolerated by a population that expects, and gets, the best in music, the arts, and other aspects of urban life.

Now, let's consider the former industrial and maritime neighborhood of Brooklyn called Red Hook.  Red Hook has fallen on some mighty hard times, thanks in part to crack cocaine. Since the 1950's, it has lost over half its population.

Slowly but surely, Red Hook is rising from the ruins although many historic buildings remain endangered.  One major success story is the New York City supermarket chain, Fairway, locating one of its stores in Red Hook. (another one is located in Harlem, a neighborhood non-New Yorkers may have heard more about than Red Hook.)

Some might call Fairway "yuppie" (OK, who uses that term anymore? So 1980's) but visit one and you will see a true melting pot of people of many ethnicities, all having a good time.  The Statue of Liberty is visible from Fairway's back patio, adding to the symbolism.

Fairway's Red Hook store is located in a former warehouse built in 1869.  Fairway was a perfect fit for the warehouse, as this supermarket chain is a firm believer (according to their advertising) in sustainable agriculture.

(Front entrance - and yes, there is plenty of parking, by Brooklyn standards.)

The pride of a Fairway market is its Wall of Produce.  Outside the front entrance are, displayed on a wall at a slant, boxes and boxes of produce.  Some (not all) organic.  Fairway tries to use specialty farmers (usually family run) when possible.

(If the prices seemed a little high, I am showing specialty produce - and, it was winter.)

Fairway features a lot of what you might all "New York City Food". (full disclosure, this picture above and the next picture were taken in Fairway's newest store, in Douglaston, Queens.) Here are barrels of loose pickles. The half sours, at the top left, are my personal favorite.

Salmon, sturgeon, sable, smoked trout....call it gourmet.  But at the same counter, Fairway sells a direct set cream cheese from a Manhattan company called Ben's, at a reasonable price.  Ben's doesn't even pack its cream cheese into consumer sized containers - the retailer has to do that.    What could be more local in New York City than  Ben's Cream Cheese?.
Another local (well, local to me, here in upstate NY) product sold at Fairway?  This liquid gold.

 More and more, supermarkets are seeking out local producers.  And when the supermarket is combined with an urban renewal project - what can be more sustainable than that?

Have you ever experienced New York City food "off the beaten track"?  Or a New York City farmers market? (Yes, I've done that, too.)