This won a Newbery Medal? It's not a bad book, but it's not momentous either, and Strawberry Girl had the same girl-goes-to-the-country thing. If Four-Story Mistake didn't win, did this one because it featured a father with combat fatigue?
Idyllic country life, living on government pension (because the father was a POW), lots of sugaring on Maple Hill, which is near Pittsburgh. Cynical, I wanted to shout through the pages to these people about incipient acid rain.
Precor elliptical, 30' @ 100% incline and 60.17% resistance, 20' of two 2-lb. handweights.
Weights: leg presses, 3x12 @90; chest presses, 3x12 @35; fly, 3x12 @25; shoulder press, 3x12 @25 I think; lats, 3x12 @70.
Ten abdominal leg lifts.
I appreciate how difficult it must have been to write an historically accurate novel for children about someone few of whose records involve his life before age 60, but Elizabeth Yates did a lot better with the history than with keeping racist assumptions and tropes from her book. Perhaps she wanted to dwell on the known, his circumstances and career, rather than on the unknown, like how he contented he seemed to be while enslaved. But that gives her too much benefit of the doubt: she portrays him as proud all his life and exultant in his eventual freedom, so his acceptance of his lot before manumission rings hollow.
Whatever: I am closing in on the goal of reading every Newbery Medal winner. I think I'm at 69 (of 81).
My plants arrived Friday. High Country Gardens ships of a Monday, and I like Friday arrivals. I don't plant until Saturday, so Thursday arrivals mean plants remain unplanted despite being in my care. Friday shipments are in boxes just as long, but it's not as much my fault. It's all about me, not about the plants.
I can't quite believe I paid money for more Vinca major (big leaf periwinkle) instead of just taking cuttings from the two-year-old plantings in the south easement, but what the hell. Seven seedlings and a few seedlings to start filling in the north easement. I did end up hoeing out the grass; I'll mulch it over to protect the top soil.
I weeded the north side of the house among the bishop's weed, and transplanted some sprouts from elsewhere, and began to dig a border along that property line. I don't know why the neighbors want grass, but I figure they want it as much as I want my pretty variegated dry shade groundcover. Except they probably don't want it much: the border protects the bishop's weed from the grass and vice versa, and also my plantings from the bindweed they allow to run rampant.
To fill in the north front, I planted--oo! 13 plants. I put seven Veronica oltensis (thyme-leaf speedwell) on the slope, because the two on the south slope have spread so very obligingly over their three years and their azure flowers in mid-May make me insanely happy. Along the north boundary, I clustered three each of Salvia dorrii (desert purple sage) and Lavandula angustifolia (buena vista English lavender). Because I am not the smartest of all possible bears, I didn't notice when selecting my plants that Agastache x blue fortune (blue fortune hybrid hyssop) is suitable for zone 6, not 5, so I placed the three of those along the south property line: the neighbor has erected a (fairly short and surprisingly inoffense) fence that will shelter them from some sun. Nearby I transplanted some sprouts from Perovskia atriplicifolia (Russian sage).
The Cytisus purgans (Spanish Gold Hardy Broom) I planted against the north half of the west-facing porch two years ago died in its first summer, and blue is better than yellow anyway (and three better than one) so this time I am trying Salvia reptens (west Texas grass sage) instead.
I can't think how I misread the plant description for Artemisia versicolor 'Seafoam' (curlicue sage), currently against the south half of the porch. It is lovely, but I want big plants against the porch and eight inches isn't quite enough height. So I will move it somewhere, I hope without killing it, and replace it with, um, something yellow: Ribes odoratum (Crandall's Currant). Also to be moved is a Penstemon pinifolius (pineleaf penstemon), which will look better with its siblings, among which lurks a big gap; also I am not unreasonably hopeful that the Cerastium tomentosum (snow-in-summer) and Erodium chrysanthum (yellow stork's bill) will fill in that spot.
In the backyard, against the south fence where I allow less xeric ornamental plants, I planted more Sisyrinchium angustifolium (Lucerne blue-eyed grass) and three Pulmonaria longiflora (Roy Davidson lungwort).
I hope the frames are full of happy dirt and worms now. In the east one, I planted carrots, Romaine lettuce, New Zealon nigh-spinach, and peas. I can't wait to thin the carrots so I can feed tender little tops to Blake, who loves them. The north one will take tomato seedlings again, in mid May.
Pretty.
