§ So far this spring, each week has woken up one or two new plants. In late March, it was the crocuses and the garlic. April brought the rain and the bees, shortly followed by the trout lilies, asparagus, and dandelions.
Now this week, suddenly, it feels like everything else has woken up all at once. The beans are sprouting, the strawberries and lilac are flowering, and the raspberry and blackberry are rapidly leafing out.
§ On Wednesday, our governor held a surprise press conference at my workplace. As I’m sure you can imagine, it caused quite a hubbub with lots of cameras and people in suits.
§ For the past couple of months I’ve been working with a local company to help fabricate an enormous, 14 foot tall replica of a ship’s hull that is meant to be the centerpiece of the big exhibition I’ve been building.
I finally got a chance to visit their shop this week to see how it’s coming along. The wooden skeleton of the structure, on its own, was incredibly impressive and almost imposing up close, given the scale of the thing. I can’t wait to see how it looks after it’s painted and the graphics are applied.
§ There was a brief moment this weekend where I thought I finally understood how to properly use a ratchet. Nope: I still managed to thread the strap on backwards.
§ For the past few months my wife and I have been brainstorming where to celebrate our one-year wedding anniversary in July and I think we’ve finally settled on a location: Mackinac Island, Michigan. The only city in the United States that has completely prohibited cars. I can’t wait.
§ I’ll fess up. I did it again: I started a new book before finishing my current one. It wasn’t even Where the Axe Is Buried either but 2666 by Roberto Bolaño, an author who really wasn’t even on my radar at all previously.
It wasn’t until I was well into the second chapter, a couple hundred pages in, that I remembered that reading should be fun—not some academic slog fueled only by some vague sense of obligation—so I put 2666 away and went back to the strange, inspiring, and fun world of Brother Brontë, and finished reading the last few chapters I had left.
I need to break free from the notion that reading should this high-minded, challenging, academic pursuit. It’s an unproductive association I must have picked up during college that has ultimately resulted in me reading fewer books than I would like and getting less enjoyment out of the books I do read.
§ In short, Brother Brontë: evocative and inspiring, two thumbs up. 2666: tedious, one thumb down.
§ Speaking of books I haven’t finished, the One Hundred Years of Solitude show was incredible which is particularly impressive considering the difficult-to-adapt source material.
The acting was frequently moving even though I watched the dubbed version (I know, I know). The clothing, architecture, set design, and props were all excellent. The hand-woven songbird cages! Buendiá‘s enormous courtyard! There were times it almost felt like a stage play with highly-choreographed, long-take transitions between scenes. Highly recommended.
§ I wish I could be as effusive about Last of Us but this week’s episode feels like the show is on a fast track to becoming Walking Dead.
§ On Saturday morning, while driving to a haircut appointment, I heard a sudden distinctive pop that I’ve come to know all too well. I got a flat tire just four months after my last one. So now I have scruffy, uncut hair and $250 less.
§ Nevertheless, I made it to our local ramp festival Saturday afternoon. I’ve been looking forward to it ever since just missing it last year so I wouldn’t let something as simple as a flat tire stop me.
It was great! I got a pound of fresh ramps which, as it turns out, is quite a lot—maybe three-dozen plants. I saved half of them to eat and planted the other half around the trout lilies in the shady area of my garden.
