As some of my readers know, my husband Charlie is a master gardener. In fact when we married in 1988 the neighbors wasted no time telling me how he had improved our yard! Before that they had been very forgiving of the single mother(me) failing at the most basic yard duties including mowing, weeding, trimming and planting.

In our Connecticut home he cultivates a 30 plant blueberry patch with several varieties of high bush plants. This week he has been outside every day harvesting gallons of berries. We actually have a freezer just for the blueberries and later the bounty of tomatoes he grows. He freezes most of the berries, but a good amount go to friends and neighbors.

And of course down the road will be the famous peach blueberry pie. For those who don’t know, when we were first dating I mentioned once having a recipe for that combination. He wrote the newspaper asking them to search their archives for it. They did and I have treasured the recipe ever since. I just have to wait for the perfect timing of overripe peaches and just ripe berries. That will be soon, I imagine, with the heat wave we’re having.

Christopher Booker in 2019 wrote a fascinating account of what he called “The seven basic plots: why we tell stories.” When I read it(a long slog only for the diehard) I recalled how often I knew just where a novel was going. Unless I was enjoying the characters and settings, it no longer held my interest.

Janelle Brown’s newest novel What Kind of Paradise falls into the time honored coming of age story. Here our central character,Jane, has been raised in isolation for 17 years with her father deep in the Montana woods. When she finally stumbles upon hidden papers that tell a different story from her father’s, she sets out across the country seeking truth.

We are often ahead of her as we suspect more about her father. Still she comes to know what we know. The focus shifts to this young adult trying to figure out what she gained and what she lost in her upbringing. While the memoir Educated covered similar ground I found Brown’s depiction of Jane more nuanced and thus more convincing.

I also appreciated that the novel avoided violence and abuse from her father. Rather it focused on her father’s efforts to shape her outlook on the world. Jane (now Esme) has to grow into her own person. And what is coming of age, after all, but a time to form our own identity, apart from that handed to us in our family?

This summer’s balance of rain and sunshine has produced an abundance of flowers and a bounty of thriving greenery Charlie didn’t plant. Perhaps some lovely volunteers snuck in and are worth keeping. But equally likely they are the advance scouts of a coming weed invasion. How to know?

Long a user of Merlin, a free app to identify birds by sight and sound, I recently discovered the free app iNaturalist pictured above. I spent this morning trying it out on some of these mystery plants. Easy to use, one just snaps a picture and after “thinking” for a bit a suggestion is made with a prediction of accuracy. The loveliest interloper turned out to be giant goldenrod, now destined for removal.

Charlie tried it out indoors on our dog Zoe. I am not sure what he did, but it identified Zoe as Human with a 2.7% predicted accuracy. We didn’t want to disillusion her with this tidbit. She is certain, no matter what iNaturalist, says that she is Human with 100% accuracy

As a child in 1956 I saw an orthodontist about my teeth. The cost was too high, so I still have an “interesting bite” according to my dentist. What I remember most was seeing the terrible teeth of the doctor. Commenting about it later to my mother she told me Dr. Reese had been on the Bataan death march. I had no idea what that meant.

This many years later I read Angels of the Pacific by Elise Hooper and finally understood. Historical fiction, but carefully researched, Hooper writes of the World War Two Japanese attack on the Philippines one day after the December 7, 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor. The story begins in Bataan and Corregidor west of Manila focusing on the American nurse taken prisoners there. It continues to their imprisonment in a P.O.W camp in Manila and introduces us to the underground Philippine civilians working against the Japanese occupiers.

Not for the faint of heart, the novel depicts the cruelty that went on during the occupation. While it doesn’t directly mention the death march, the overall grim picture of those years until 1945 let me understand not only Dr. Reese’s terrible teeth but also his miraculous survival. Military and civilian suffering was immense, many died, and many were permanently injured. Many survived, including many of the women characters portrayed in the novel.

I have always appreciated balanced novels set in wartime. The courage, perseverance and underground tactics of many during those times encourage me. For me these accounts speak out against the cruelty so often on display both then and now. They remind me that together we can always “find a way out of no way.”

I was an early adopter of video games in pizza parlors. One of my favorites was Frogger. At the bottom of the image above a little green and yellow frog waits to cross the highway to get to the logs on the other side. She must weave between race cars, bulldozers, cars, and trucks to do so. Most times the frog(me) gets squished between one vehicle or another.

Since Covid turned regular drivers into speed demons, I often feel that I, in the center lane, am just an obstacle(a car) for that little black car(the frog) driven by a single young male driver trying to get to the right hand exit. He must weave left, then right, then left, then right again to exit. And of course his hyped up buddy, hot on his tail, must do the same. They come up on me so fast that even my blind spot warning can’t light up.

Drivers have been clocked at 130mph(the speed limit is 65) and often can evade the police. Meanwhile the state is debating how to catch the scofflaws. As for me, I now am seeking out the back roads. Sadly those same drivers seem to regard traffic lights and stop signs as suggestions. They ignore them!

I seem to have encountered a problem since I last wrote here. Am trying to fix it!

In one of my favorite Adrienne Rich poems, “Thirty-Three,” she writes, “piece by piece I seem to re-enter the world.” Later she states, “I have invitations.” I am dipping my toe back into writing my blog in a similar way. Several people have encouraged me to post again saying they miss my take on the world.

I must admit that in the present chaos in the United States I often struggle to say something meaningful that is neither Pollyannish nor dystopian. But the world is much bigger than the United States and my thoughts range far beyond the present clamor of politics. Restarting the blog reminds me to focus my thoughts away from the shouting and division back to what endures: story, memory, family, books, the natural world and each other.

See you here tomorrow.

I have been sporadic at best lately in keeping up with my blog posts and my blogging friends. My attention has turned to the research and writing about my grandmother’s Aunt Lucy, shown her in her 1919 United States passport application taken when she was 66 years old. The only image I have of her is constrained by the demand to “look straight ahead and don’t smile” such documents required.

The same imagination and creativity I brought to more consistent posts is now focused on her. It turns out I can’t keep both activities going at the moment. For the while—and I don’t know its length—I will be off line. I am well and life is good right now. Nonetheless I feel I have real relationships on line which I don’t want to abandon.

(In the meantime, feel free to write me at betsyfrompike@earthlink.net)

Rest assured, I will post very occasionally as I move forward in writing her life.

The summer I was seventeen I fell in love with Paul Newman as he appeared in “Hud.” I never really outgrew my love for the man. As we both aged, I enjoyed his new roles. Once we moved to Connecticut, I passed his town on the way to New York City and always yelled out “Hi, Paul.” Now I have to content myself with remembering the man.

I hadn’t really thought about that until I was talking about “Twisters” with my 17 year old granddaughter. She was raving about its male lead, Glen Powell. She knew all about him, including his previous screen appearances and shared that everyone was now infatuated with him. Since I had barely noticed that man when I was watching the film, I was fairly clueless about his appeal.

Once I put Paul and Glen’s photos side by side it was quite clear. He is simply the updated Paul Newman for a new bevy of 17 year old girls!