Things I Learned

Things I learned dog-sitting:

1.  Wolf is a very good dog.
2.  I'm not the only one in the neighborhood with scraggly end-of-summer yard and gardens.
3.  Wonderful bells Sunday morning near Epiphany Church.

Things I learned driving my daughter to school this morning on a Blue Monday:

1.  I love her music, which she plugs into the whatchamajigger.
2.  The mist is rising off the cornfields out there even when there's no mist in town.
3.  The cattails are high in the ditches.
4.  The O/D Off switch (Overdrive Off) had been inadvertently pressed, perhaps during a previous music plug-in.
5.  How to turn off the O/D Off switch.

Things I learned by starting to read The Weird Sisters, by Eleanor Brown, our next book-group selection:

1.  I am not the only one who reads various books simultaneously; so do the Weird Sisters.
2.  This kind of "weird" used to be spelled "wyrd" and meant fate; I think I used to know that via Macbeth.
3.  [I was briefly a "wyrd/weird" sister in Macbeth in the Dark, a truncated Macbeth with flashlights, and an excellent way for the Free Shakespeare Company to save money on the utility bill. (I "learned" that I still remembered this...was also Lady Macduff in the same production.)]
4.  This book is set in Ohio, where I lived for a time.
5.  I cannot escape corn; from pages 33-34:

Summer, however, is different, because in the midst of all these farms, there are roadside stands, fertile with the bounty of the season in Ohio: crisp, sweet, Silver Queen corn; perfectly ripe, yielding tomatoes the size of baseballs; delicately flavored cucumbers with satisfyingly watery flesh; strawberries, blackberries, peaches--a dizzying array of colors, lush with juice.  Often, in summer, this is all we eat, a table laden with fruits and vegetables, and Rose saw as she entered the kitchen that this was the case that night. Fortunate, as this also meant dinner would be ready before the crickets came out in earnest.

6.  I am not alone as a haphazard cook, preferring a raw-fruits-and-veggies meal whenever possible. (But the Weird Sisters' mom walks away from the stove and forgets what she's cooking sometimes, and I am guilty of that.)
7.  I am not sure about Eleanor Brown's use of "fertile" above, but she's using a community voice of sorts, the voice of all three "weird sisters," so maybe it's OK. Likewise, "dizzying array," which is a readymade phrase. But a narrator, even a community voice narrator, does have to talk the way people talk.

Thanks again to Jonathan Koch for fabulous fruit art! And, hey, he's got a sports series up now!