Peggy Ehrhart's Blog, page 2
December 28, 2023
A Link to the Past
I probably have enough Christmas wrap to last for the rest of my life. I can’t resist buying it when it goes on sale after Christmas, and I also often find unused rolls or partial rolls of it on my estate-sale rambles, since an estate sale can include everything that was in the house at the demise of the owner. Sometimes this estate-sale Christmas wrap has a definite vintage look, and some even dates from the era when wrapping paper came folded rather than in rolls. Designs might feature children in 1950s clothing playing with very gender-specific toys, like dolls for the girls, and cars, trucks, and trains for the boys.
Being frugal, I also save and reuse the paper that wraps gifts that come to me. Since my sisters, who live on the opposite coast from me, have the same frugal gene, some Christmas wrap has made the trip across the country more than once, the same piece being used to wrap successively smaller boxes as the usable part shrinks.
I thus have a large, and growing ever larger, stockpile of Christmas wrap. But this year I got an idea for something else to do with it, besides wrapping gifts. Recalling the paper chains children used to make as Christmas decorations—with construction paper and paste as I recall, it occurred to me that my colorful odds and ends of recycled Christmas wrap, the ones too small to use as wrapping for anything but tiny boxes, could be used just like construction paper to make chains for my tree.
I cut my scraps of wrapping paper into rectangles 4-1/2 inches by 2-1/2 inches and folded them the long way to make 3-layer strips. I made the folded strips instead of just using one layer of paper in order to give the chain’s links more body. Some old wrapping paper, especially, can be thin and quite brittle. Then I fastened one end of the strip to the other, with a slight overlap, using clear tape. After I made the first link, I slipped each successive strip through the previous link before taping its ends together.
I spent several very enjoyable hours listening to Christmas music as I created my chains. Some pieces of my repurposed paper still had TO and FROM stickers still on them from their previous use to wrap gifts. At times, I felt a bit melancholy seeing the names of givers and receivers, and remembering Christmases past—even a Ghost of Christmas Past when I came upon a fragment of paper bearing a sticker indicating the gift it originally wrapped had been from a brother-in-law who is no longer among the living.
Despite the melancholy, the chains look very pretty on my tree, and they are giving lots of pretty paper scraps a second—or third, or fourth—life. You can see the results of my chain project in the December Yarn Mania post on my website. The post actually deals with a batch of little crocheted tree ornaments I came upon last year at an estate sale, but I photographed them hanging on my tree, with lengths of chain visible here and there, and I included a photo of a long length of chain not yet on the tree. Here’s the url for the Yarn Mania post: https://peggyehrhart.com/crocheted-ch...
I hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season!
Being frugal, I also save and reuse the paper that wraps gifts that come to me. Since my sisters, who live on the opposite coast from me, have the same frugal gene, some Christmas wrap has made the trip across the country more than once, the same piece being used to wrap successively smaller boxes as the usable part shrinks.
I thus have a large, and growing ever larger, stockpile of Christmas wrap. But this year I got an idea for something else to do with it, besides wrapping gifts. Recalling the paper chains children used to make as Christmas decorations—with construction paper and paste as I recall, it occurred to me that my colorful odds and ends of recycled Christmas wrap, the ones too small to use as wrapping for anything but tiny boxes, could be used just like construction paper to make chains for my tree.
I cut my scraps of wrapping paper into rectangles 4-1/2 inches by 2-1/2 inches and folded them the long way to make 3-layer strips. I made the folded strips instead of just using one layer of paper in order to give the chain’s links more body. Some old wrapping paper, especially, can be thin and quite brittle. Then I fastened one end of the strip to the other, with a slight overlap, using clear tape. After I made the first link, I slipped each successive strip through the previous link before taping its ends together.
I spent several very enjoyable hours listening to Christmas music as I created my chains. Some pieces of my repurposed paper still had TO and FROM stickers still on them from their previous use to wrap gifts. At times, I felt a bit melancholy seeing the names of givers and receivers, and remembering Christmases past—even a Ghost of Christmas Past when I came upon a fragment of paper bearing a sticker indicating the gift it originally wrapped had been from a brother-in-law who is no longer among the living.
Despite the melancholy, the chains look very pretty on my tree, and they are giving lots of pretty paper scraps a second—or third, or fourth—life. You can see the results of my chain project in the December Yarn Mania post on my website. The post actually deals with a batch of little crocheted tree ornaments I came upon last year at an estate sale, but I photographed them hanging on my tree, with lengths of chain visible here and there, and I included a photo of a long length of chain not yet on the tree. Here’s the url for the Yarn Mania post: https://peggyehrhart.com/crocheted-ch...
I hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season!
November 8, 2023
Goodbye Morning Glories
I just completed a fall chore—tidying the potted plants that decorate the deck at the back of our house. The petunias and geraniums had ceased blooming, so they went onto the compost pile, dirt and all, and their pots went into the garage till next spring.
The morning glories, a giant tangle of delicate vines, faded flowers, and dying leaves, went to the compost as well, but little did the morning glories know that they had narrowly escaped a much earlier banishment.
This past spring I thought it would be fun to grow something on my deck from seeds, instead of relying solely on plants already pre-grown for me by the green thumbs who stock the garden center. I pictured a climbing something, like morning glories, and I bought a seed packet featuring a picture of dramatic trumpet-shaped flowers in a beautiful shade of blue.
I planted the seeds in two large terra cotta pots, one at either end of my deck, and I created structures for my morning glories to climb on using three metal stakes, like long skewers, in each pot, tied together at the top in a teepee shape.
Excitingly, my seeds sprouted in less than a week, and it was fun to see the first leaves, two little ovals, appear. They didn’t look at all like “adult” morning glory leaves and reminded me of learning long ago in biology class that all plants (not grasses though) start life looking quite the same.
As the adult leaves began to appear, I watched my sprouts get taller, mentally urging them to find the climbing structures I had created for them. They, however, seemed not to understand what I expected, sending their delicate vines out to flail randomly, oblivious to the metal stakes in their midst.
Finally one vine latched onto a stake, twisting around it most magically, and then a few more did, and soon it became apparent that they wanted to climb much higher than I had prepared for. They quickly reached the tops of my teepees and kept growing, sending long questing vine extensions out in all directions, even eventually doubling back and wrapping themselves around themselves in a complete tangle.
All this while there was no sign of flowers, and it was past the middle of the summer.
The plants in one of the pots were near the end of the deck where, beyond the deck, a huge viburnum grows, thrusting up shoots that by this time were several feet taller than the deck railing. Those plants discovered that their vines could climb on the shoots produced by the viburnum and thus go higher and higher—but still no flowers appeared.
I decided that the flowerless tangles and roving vines weren’t earning their keep in attractiveness, and I resolved to compost them and put something more cooperative in the terra cotta pots. Then I walked out onto the deck one morning for my daily inspection and noticed a flower, my first morning glory!
It hadn’t actually been produced by a vine that had climbed up into the viburnum, but by one that had wandered into a neighboring planter where I had a copious crop of oregano. And the flower wasn’t blue, like the flowers on the seed packet, but rather pink. Seeing a flower was exciting nonetheless, so I gave the morning glories a reprieve.
A few days later, I noticed another flower, a blue one this time, on a vine in the pot at the other end of the deck. More flowers followed, a few, but I never got the profusion that the photo on the seed packet promised. By now it was well into fall, past Halloween in fact, and the leaves on the plants were beginning to turn yellow and some were even brown, so yesterday I pulled up all the vines and said goodbye—until I try again next year . . . perhaps.
The morning glories, a giant tangle of delicate vines, faded flowers, and dying leaves, went to the compost as well, but little did the morning glories know that they had narrowly escaped a much earlier banishment.
This past spring I thought it would be fun to grow something on my deck from seeds, instead of relying solely on plants already pre-grown for me by the green thumbs who stock the garden center. I pictured a climbing something, like morning glories, and I bought a seed packet featuring a picture of dramatic trumpet-shaped flowers in a beautiful shade of blue.
I planted the seeds in two large terra cotta pots, one at either end of my deck, and I created structures for my morning glories to climb on using three metal stakes, like long skewers, in each pot, tied together at the top in a teepee shape.
Excitingly, my seeds sprouted in less than a week, and it was fun to see the first leaves, two little ovals, appear. They didn’t look at all like “adult” morning glory leaves and reminded me of learning long ago in biology class that all plants (not grasses though) start life looking quite the same.
As the adult leaves began to appear, I watched my sprouts get taller, mentally urging them to find the climbing structures I had created for them. They, however, seemed not to understand what I expected, sending their delicate vines out to flail randomly, oblivious to the metal stakes in their midst.
Finally one vine latched onto a stake, twisting around it most magically, and then a few more did, and soon it became apparent that they wanted to climb much higher than I had prepared for. They quickly reached the tops of my teepees and kept growing, sending long questing vine extensions out in all directions, even eventually doubling back and wrapping themselves around themselves in a complete tangle.
All this while there was no sign of flowers, and it was past the middle of the summer.
The plants in one of the pots were near the end of the deck where, beyond the deck, a huge viburnum grows, thrusting up shoots that by this time were several feet taller than the deck railing. Those plants discovered that their vines could climb on the shoots produced by the viburnum and thus go higher and higher—but still no flowers appeared.
I decided that the flowerless tangles and roving vines weren’t earning their keep in attractiveness, and I resolved to compost them and put something more cooperative in the terra cotta pots. Then I walked out onto the deck one morning for my daily inspection and noticed a flower, my first morning glory!
It hadn’t actually been produced by a vine that had climbed up into the viburnum, but by one that had wandered into a neighboring planter where I had a copious crop of oregano. And the flower wasn’t blue, like the flowers on the seed packet, but rather pink. Seeing a flower was exciting nonetheless, so I gave the morning glories a reprieve.
A few days later, I noticed another flower, a blue one this time, on a vine in the pot at the other end of the deck. More flowers followed, a few, but I never got the profusion that the photo on the seed packet promised. By now it was well into fall, past Halloween in fact, and the leaves on the plants were beginning to turn yellow and some were even brown, so yesterday I pulled up all the vines and said goodbye—until I try again next year . . . perhaps.
September 16, 2023
A Cat Conundrum
My first Knit & Nibble mystery, MURDER, SHE KNIT, opened with my amateur-sleuth protagonist, Pamela Paterson, wondering what had become of the skittish stray kitten she had been feeding. As it happened, the kitten had not vanished for good, and its eventual willingness to be adopted figures as a subplot in that book.
The skittish stray kitten theme was inspired by a real-life experience. One cold and wet winter night we discovered a tiny, shivering black kitten on our front porch. It absolutely would not let us approach it, but it was very willing to accept food. I think we gave it some canned tuna that first night. When it came back the next morning, we gave it more canned tuna, and then I made a trip to the market for cat food.
Every morning and every evening, we’d glimpse it through the window in our front door, waiting and waiting. The instant the door opened, it would vanish, but we’d set out a bowl of food and close the door and it would come creeping back and devour the bowl’s contents. We came to enjoy this ritual and even gave the kitten a name inspired by its color: Mel, from the ancient Greek word for “black.”
We would very happily have adopted Mel, but unlike the fate I envisioned for the stray kitten in MURDER, SHE KNIT, Mel refused to let us befriend it and eventually one day stopped showing up for food. We hoped against hope that someone else had managed to coax it indoors and that it was now well-fed, warm, and sleek in another household, but we will never know.
Now another stray has come into our lives. We first became aware that we had a visitor when we noticed that a handsome cat, part white, part tabby-gray, and nearly full-grown, had begun lounging in our yard. It was summer, so the spectacle wasn’t sad, like the sight of a wet kitten on a cold night.
The visitor seemed to particularly favor one plant, rubbing itself against the leaves and seeming to go into ecstasy, and we concluded it was somebody’s pet allowed to roam a bit on nice days. (People do this, though I know it’s frowned upon.) We decided the plant must be related to catnip and we started calling the cat “Catnippy,” “Nippy” for short.
After several days of these sightings, Nippy began appearing on our deck from time to time, quite visible through the window in the back door and the screen door that opens from a screened porch to the deck beyond.
One day my husband said, “I think it looks hungry.” We still had some cans of cat food left from when we were feeding Mel and so my husband put some in a dish and stepped out onto the deck, at which point Nippy vanished. He put the dish down and retreated to the screened porch, and Nippy reappeared and ate the food with great enthusiasm.
Now we have a new ritual. Nippy shows up on the deck at dawn—I know this because if I wake up extra early and look out the upstairs window, I see a patch of white and gray fur down below. My husband sets out a dish of cat food at about eight. As soon as he opens the screen door, Nippy retreats to watch warily from halfway down the steps, only coming back up once my husband steps back through the screen door and closes it behind him.
Every evening, Nippy reappears—sometimes the tips of its ears visible above the bottom frame of the screen door are the only sign of its presence—and we give it a handful of dry kibble.
For a while, it spent most days lounging on the deck, moving from one side to the other as the shade moved. On particularly hot days, it would curl around one or another of my terra cotta flower pots. I keep the plants in them well watered and imagine that the terra cotta feels pleasantly cool.
Lately, however, we haven’t seen Nippy on the deck at all, but if I open the back door to step onto the screened porch for some reason, it often pops up the steps onto the deck, expecting an extra treat, probably.
We would gladly adopt Nippy, but we’re making no progress at all towards domestication. It must have been born to a feral cat, and how it came to survive to near adulthood and end up in our yard is a mystery. I’ve read that once a cat grows to adulthood it’s almost impossible to reverse the effects of growing up feral.
There was a spell of very rainy weather last week and we felt so sad to see Nippy braving the rain in order to show up for meals, though at least there are plenty of enclosed areas, like the space under our front porch, to shelter when it’s not dinner time.
Now that it’s getting on toward fall, though, the weather will get colder and wetter, and I don’t know what will happen. Perhaps an adoption is in our future, if we are patient and lucky.
The skittish stray kitten theme was inspired by a real-life experience. One cold and wet winter night we discovered a tiny, shivering black kitten on our front porch. It absolutely would not let us approach it, but it was very willing to accept food. I think we gave it some canned tuna that first night. When it came back the next morning, we gave it more canned tuna, and then I made a trip to the market for cat food.
Every morning and every evening, we’d glimpse it through the window in our front door, waiting and waiting. The instant the door opened, it would vanish, but we’d set out a bowl of food and close the door and it would come creeping back and devour the bowl’s contents. We came to enjoy this ritual and even gave the kitten a name inspired by its color: Mel, from the ancient Greek word for “black.”
We would very happily have adopted Mel, but unlike the fate I envisioned for the stray kitten in MURDER, SHE KNIT, Mel refused to let us befriend it and eventually one day stopped showing up for food. We hoped against hope that someone else had managed to coax it indoors and that it was now well-fed, warm, and sleek in another household, but we will never know.
Now another stray has come into our lives. We first became aware that we had a visitor when we noticed that a handsome cat, part white, part tabby-gray, and nearly full-grown, had begun lounging in our yard. It was summer, so the spectacle wasn’t sad, like the sight of a wet kitten on a cold night.
The visitor seemed to particularly favor one plant, rubbing itself against the leaves and seeming to go into ecstasy, and we concluded it was somebody’s pet allowed to roam a bit on nice days. (People do this, though I know it’s frowned upon.) We decided the plant must be related to catnip and we started calling the cat “Catnippy,” “Nippy” for short.
After several days of these sightings, Nippy began appearing on our deck from time to time, quite visible through the window in the back door and the screen door that opens from a screened porch to the deck beyond.
One day my husband said, “I think it looks hungry.” We still had some cans of cat food left from when we were feeding Mel and so my husband put some in a dish and stepped out onto the deck, at which point Nippy vanished. He put the dish down and retreated to the screened porch, and Nippy reappeared and ate the food with great enthusiasm.
Now we have a new ritual. Nippy shows up on the deck at dawn—I know this because if I wake up extra early and look out the upstairs window, I see a patch of white and gray fur down below. My husband sets out a dish of cat food at about eight. As soon as he opens the screen door, Nippy retreats to watch warily from halfway down the steps, only coming back up once my husband steps back through the screen door and closes it behind him.
Every evening, Nippy reappears—sometimes the tips of its ears visible above the bottom frame of the screen door are the only sign of its presence—and we give it a handful of dry kibble.
For a while, it spent most days lounging on the deck, moving from one side to the other as the shade moved. On particularly hot days, it would curl around one or another of my terra cotta flower pots. I keep the plants in them well watered and imagine that the terra cotta feels pleasantly cool.
Lately, however, we haven’t seen Nippy on the deck at all, but if I open the back door to step onto the screened porch for some reason, it often pops up the steps onto the deck, expecting an extra treat, probably.
We would gladly adopt Nippy, but we’re making no progress at all towards domestication. It must have been born to a feral cat, and how it came to survive to near adulthood and end up in our yard is a mystery. I’ve read that once a cat grows to adulthood it’s almost impossible to reverse the effects of growing up feral.
There was a spell of very rainy weather last week and we felt so sad to see Nippy braving the rain in order to show up for meals, though at least there are plenty of enclosed areas, like the space under our front porch, to shelter when it’s not dinner time.
Now that it’s getting on toward fall, though, the weather will get colder and wetter, and I don’t know what will happen. Perhaps an adoption is in our future, if we are patient and lucky.
July 17, 2023
Waste Not, Want Not
The store where I was browsing wasn’t my regular grocery shopping venue, and the jar of what seemed to be fig jam struck me as an interesting variation on my usual jam choices.
Northern New Jersey is home to many ethnic groups, from the Italians and Greeks, who’ve been here for ages, plus people from Hispanic cultures, and more recent arrivals from South and East Asia as well as the Middle East and the Caribbean. Thus the food possibilities, both restaurants and groceries, are endless.
This particular store carries foods from just about every country that borders on the Mediterranean. The cheese, sausage, pasta, and bread possibilities are amazing, and a whole wall of shelves offers jars and cans of fruits and vegetables, some quite exotic, preserved in various ways.
My fig jam, when I got it home and sampled it, turned out to be not jam but whole figs in thick sugar syrup. I didn’t think it would spread very effectively on toast, and the figs were intensely sweet on their own. They could have been chopped up and used as a very tasty topping for vanilla ice cream, but I had another idea for them.
I got out my recipe for what I call “Adaptable Quick Bread.” Based on a recipe whose source I lost track of long ago, it has evolved over the years as I’ve discovered that it’s endlessly malleable—also quick and easy.
It’s actually more like cake in texture, though it’s baked in a loaf pan and served in slices. Quick breads are so named because, unlike yeast breads, which require time to rise, they use baking powder and/or baking soda and go together in no time at all.
Here’s my recipe:
2 cups flour (no need to sift)
¾ cup sugar (or more or less)
1 ½ tsp. baking powder
1 ½ tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt
¾ cup liquid
1 egg lightly beaten with a fork
5 tbsp. butter, melted
1 to 2 cups nuts and /or dried or preserved fruit
Notes:
For the flour you can use whole wheat or half whole wheat and half white. You can also replace up to half a cup of flour with corn meal or buckwheat flour.
You can use brown sugar in place of some or all of the sugar.
For the liquid you can use milk, evaporated milk without diluting, plain yogurt, or orange juice. With yogurt, you might have to add a bit than 3/4 cup if your batter looks too stiff.
If you use orange juice you can flavor the quick bread with grated orange rind too. A bit of lemon juice can be substituted for some of the milk or yogurt and you can add grated lemon rind too.
Directions:
You don’t need an electric mixer for this, just a large spoon.
Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add the liquid, then the beaten egg and the melted butter, and stir until the batter is smooth with no dry bits. Stir in the nuts and/or fruit.
Scoop the batter into a greased 5” X 9” loaf pan and bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes to an hour. You can tell if it’s done by sticking a wooden toothpick into the middle of the top. If the toothpick comes out dry, your quick bread is ready to eat. Let it cool a bit first though.
I once made the quick bread with dried apples from a friend who dries her own fruit, combining them with raisins. I poured boiling water on the raisins and the dried apple slices, let them sit for half an hour, and then drained them well and chopped the apple slices.
Walnuts and raisins are good together. Soak the raisins first in a bit of hot water if they seem dry. You can also use dates or dried apricots, or dried figs, or chopped prunes, or dried cranberries… It’s fun to experiment.
Dried apricots are very good with orange juice used as the liquid.
For my preserved fig quick bread, I chopped half a jar of the figs into bits about the size of raisins. I used yogurt for the liquid and I substituted some of the syrup for some of the yogurt. Since the syrup was very sweet, I used less than half a cup of sugar.
It was very popular with everyone who tried it—so much so that I’m going to pick up another jar of preserved figs the next time I’m in that store.
Northern New Jersey is home to many ethnic groups, from the Italians and Greeks, who’ve been here for ages, plus people from Hispanic cultures, and more recent arrivals from South and East Asia as well as the Middle East and the Caribbean. Thus the food possibilities, both restaurants and groceries, are endless.
This particular store carries foods from just about every country that borders on the Mediterranean. The cheese, sausage, pasta, and bread possibilities are amazing, and a whole wall of shelves offers jars and cans of fruits and vegetables, some quite exotic, preserved in various ways.
My fig jam, when I got it home and sampled it, turned out to be not jam but whole figs in thick sugar syrup. I didn’t think it would spread very effectively on toast, and the figs were intensely sweet on their own. They could have been chopped up and used as a very tasty topping for vanilla ice cream, but I had another idea for them.
I got out my recipe for what I call “Adaptable Quick Bread.” Based on a recipe whose source I lost track of long ago, it has evolved over the years as I’ve discovered that it’s endlessly malleable—also quick and easy.
It’s actually more like cake in texture, though it’s baked in a loaf pan and served in slices. Quick breads are so named because, unlike yeast breads, which require time to rise, they use baking powder and/or baking soda and go together in no time at all.
Here’s my recipe:
2 cups flour (no need to sift)
¾ cup sugar (or more or less)
1 ½ tsp. baking powder
1 ½ tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt
¾ cup liquid
1 egg lightly beaten with a fork
5 tbsp. butter, melted
1 to 2 cups nuts and /or dried or preserved fruit
Notes:
For the flour you can use whole wheat or half whole wheat and half white. You can also replace up to half a cup of flour with corn meal or buckwheat flour.
You can use brown sugar in place of some or all of the sugar.
For the liquid you can use milk, evaporated milk without diluting, plain yogurt, or orange juice. With yogurt, you might have to add a bit than 3/4 cup if your batter looks too stiff.
If you use orange juice you can flavor the quick bread with grated orange rind too. A bit of lemon juice can be substituted for some of the milk or yogurt and you can add grated lemon rind too.
Directions:
You don’t need an electric mixer for this, just a large spoon.
Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add the liquid, then the beaten egg and the melted butter, and stir until the batter is smooth with no dry bits. Stir in the nuts and/or fruit.
Scoop the batter into a greased 5” X 9” loaf pan and bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes to an hour. You can tell if it’s done by sticking a wooden toothpick into the middle of the top. If the toothpick comes out dry, your quick bread is ready to eat. Let it cool a bit first though.
I once made the quick bread with dried apples from a friend who dries her own fruit, combining them with raisins. I poured boiling water on the raisins and the dried apple slices, let them sit for half an hour, and then drained them well and chopped the apple slices.
Walnuts and raisins are good together. Soak the raisins first in a bit of hot water if they seem dry. You can also use dates or dried apricots, or dried figs, or chopped prunes, or dried cranberries… It’s fun to experiment.
Dried apricots are very good with orange juice used as the liquid.
For my preserved fig quick bread, I chopped half a jar of the figs into bits about the size of raisins. I used yogurt for the liquid and I substituted some of the syrup for some of the yogurt. Since the syrup was very sweet, I used less than half a cup of sugar.
It was very popular with everyone who tried it—so much so that I’m going to pick up another jar of preserved figs the next time I’m in that store.
May 3, 2023
No Absence of Malice
I hadn’t been to Malice Domestic since 2018, but as soon as I walked through the lobby of the Marriott Hotel in Bethesda, Maryland, and turned the corner into the corridor leading to the conference center, the setting was instantly familiar.
There were the conference rooms with chairs in rows facing long tables on platforms—all ready for panelists to take their places and talk about poison or older sleuths or furry friends or any one of a number of mystery-related topics. There was the escalator, leading down to the lower level with the hospitality lounge and the booksellers’ room. And of course there were the attendees, women mostly, eagerly awaiting the mixture of fun and fandom that is the Malice Domestic mystery conference.
Malice Domestic is held yearly on the last weekend in April. It’s a conference for devotees of the traditional mystery, that classic style that focuses more on a puzzling plot and unique characters than on mayhem and gore.
The traditional mystery is, as the Malice Domestic organizers have said in a nod to the traditional mystery’s British origins, “not everyone’s cup of tea.” But as Malice Domestic attendance, in the hundreds, demonstrates, devotees are plentiful.
Malice, to use the frequently employed shorthand term, is primarily a fan conference. Both writers and readers attend, but the focus is on readers connecting with their favorite writers rather than on writers congregating to learn more about the craft of writing and meet agents and editors.
Besides the many many panels that give mystery readers a chance to hear mystery writers opine on mystery topics, the conference offers other delights.
There are celebrity guests—among them this year was Ann Cleves, the author of the Vera mysteries that have now been dramatized in one of those marvelous BBC productions.
There is the Saturday-evening banquet at which the Agatha awards—for categories including best contemporary novel, best historical novel, and best short story—are announced and the winners presented with the trophy—a teapot. The awards are called the Agathas in homage to Agatha Christie, of course.
There are plenty of opportunities for attendees to buy books and have them signed by their authors. Malice Domestic is such a book-buying extravaganza for some attendees that the conference offers shipping services.
My panel assignment was Scene of the Crime: Setting as Character, moderated by the very capable Andrea Johnson. After the panel, we adjourned to the booksellers’ room where we signed copies of our books, and then I took part in another book-signing event, organized by Kensington Press.
Each Kensington author in attendance was provided with a whole carton of her (we were mostly “her”) latest release, and we gave them away and signed them for all comers until the carton was empty. It was rather like Halloween trick-or-treat except with books rather than candy.
This year’s Malice Domestic was the 35th—and tremendous thanks and congratulations go to the people, all volunteers, who make it happen. I missed the conference in 2019 because I had just broken my wrist (no great harm done but very annoying).
The conference was held virtually in 2020 and 2021 because of Covid, and in 2022 a lot of people, including me, were still wary of large gatherings and stayed away. So this year was a wonderful return to normalcy, which happily coincided with that significant 35th anniversary.
So, yes, the setting was the same—but I hardly knew anyone there! When I first started attending Malice, I wasn’t yet a published writer but I had a large, mostly online, group of friends who were also unpublished writers.
Through the Sisters in Crime listserv, I had connected with a subgroup that called itself the Guppies—for “Great Unpublished.” The Guppies always turned out for Malice Domestic and it was huge fun to hobnob in person with my online Guppy friends.
Many of the Guppies are no longer Guppies, but are now published—and so busy with their writing that they no longer attend Malice Domestic. Other Guppies, sadly, have given up on their quest to become published and they also no longer attend the conference.
So I missed seeing a lot of familiar faces and catching up with old friends. But this year I had another conference companion instead. For the first time in all my years of attending Malice Domestic, my husband came along—in fact he heroically drove the whole five hours to Bethesda, in a pouring rainstorm, from our house in northern New Jersey.
He’s a longstanding mystery fan, and almost all our screen-watching at home is devoted to mysteries—but he has another passion as well. As it happened, the Pittsburgh Pirates were playing the Washington Nationals at National Park just a short Metro ride from the conference hotel.
Magically, the rain we’d driven through cleared during the night. He spent Saturday afternoon watching the Pirates beat the Nats and had his own version of a wonderful time.
Everyone who wants to attend Malice Domestic is welcome, and planning is already underway for 2024. Just visit the website at www.malicedomestic.org
There were the conference rooms with chairs in rows facing long tables on platforms—all ready for panelists to take their places and talk about poison or older sleuths or furry friends or any one of a number of mystery-related topics. There was the escalator, leading down to the lower level with the hospitality lounge and the booksellers’ room. And of course there were the attendees, women mostly, eagerly awaiting the mixture of fun and fandom that is the Malice Domestic mystery conference.
Malice Domestic is held yearly on the last weekend in April. It’s a conference for devotees of the traditional mystery, that classic style that focuses more on a puzzling plot and unique characters than on mayhem and gore.
The traditional mystery is, as the Malice Domestic organizers have said in a nod to the traditional mystery’s British origins, “not everyone’s cup of tea.” But as Malice Domestic attendance, in the hundreds, demonstrates, devotees are plentiful.
Malice, to use the frequently employed shorthand term, is primarily a fan conference. Both writers and readers attend, but the focus is on readers connecting with their favorite writers rather than on writers congregating to learn more about the craft of writing and meet agents and editors.
Besides the many many panels that give mystery readers a chance to hear mystery writers opine on mystery topics, the conference offers other delights.
There are celebrity guests—among them this year was Ann Cleves, the author of the Vera mysteries that have now been dramatized in one of those marvelous BBC productions.
There is the Saturday-evening banquet at which the Agatha awards—for categories including best contemporary novel, best historical novel, and best short story—are announced and the winners presented with the trophy—a teapot. The awards are called the Agathas in homage to Agatha Christie, of course.
There are plenty of opportunities for attendees to buy books and have them signed by their authors. Malice Domestic is such a book-buying extravaganza for some attendees that the conference offers shipping services.
My panel assignment was Scene of the Crime: Setting as Character, moderated by the very capable Andrea Johnson. After the panel, we adjourned to the booksellers’ room where we signed copies of our books, and then I took part in another book-signing event, organized by Kensington Press.
Each Kensington author in attendance was provided with a whole carton of her (we were mostly “her”) latest release, and we gave them away and signed them for all comers until the carton was empty. It was rather like Halloween trick-or-treat except with books rather than candy.
This year’s Malice Domestic was the 35th—and tremendous thanks and congratulations go to the people, all volunteers, who make it happen. I missed the conference in 2019 because I had just broken my wrist (no great harm done but very annoying).
The conference was held virtually in 2020 and 2021 because of Covid, and in 2022 a lot of people, including me, were still wary of large gatherings and stayed away. So this year was a wonderful return to normalcy, which happily coincided with that significant 35th anniversary.
So, yes, the setting was the same—but I hardly knew anyone there! When I first started attending Malice, I wasn’t yet a published writer but I had a large, mostly online, group of friends who were also unpublished writers.
Through the Sisters in Crime listserv, I had connected with a subgroup that called itself the Guppies—for “Great Unpublished.” The Guppies always turned out for Malice Domestic and it was huge fun to hobnob in person with my online Guppy friends.
Many of the Guppies are no longer Guppies, but are now published—and so busy with their writing that they no longer attend Malice Domestic. Other Guppies, sadly, have given up on their quest to become published and they also no longer attend the conference.
So I missed seeing a lot of familiar faces and catching up with old friends. But this year I had another conference companion instead. For the first time in all my years of attending Malice Domestic, my husband came along—in fact he heroically drove the whole five hours to Bethesda, in a pouring rainstorm, from our house in northern New Jersey.
He’s a longstanding mystery fan, and almost all our screen-watching at home is devoted to mysteries—but he has another passion as well. As it happened, the Pittsburgh Pirates were playing the Washington Nationals at National Park just a short Metro ride from the conference hotel.
Magically, the rain we’d driven through cleared during the night. He spent Saturday afternoon watching the Pirates beat the Nats and had his own version of a wonderful time.
Everyone who wants to attend Malice Domestic is welcome, and planning is already underway for 2024. Just visit the website at www.malicedomestic.org
March 11, 2023
Just in Time for St. Patrick's Day: IRISH KNIT MURDER
This time of year, at least in chilly northern New Jersey where I live, every holiday that offers momentary distraction from the gloomy skies, brown lawns, and leafless trees is welcome. Valentine’s Day, with its hearts, flowers, cupids, and billing and cooing birds, is one such holiday, and of course there’s Easter, with its explicit springtime imagery.
In between comes St. Patrick’s Day, an occasion for feasting and celebration. I look forward to making a traditional St. Patrick’s Day meal every year, with corned beef, cabbage, boiled potatoes, and homemade soda bread.
Coincidentally, my editor at Kensington suggested I add a St. Patrick’s Day theme to the Knit & Nibble mystery I began work on last spring, given that it had a spring 2023 release date. IRISH KNIT MURDER, with not one but two St. Patrick’s Day feasts, is now out.
The first feast is a luncheon featuring corned beef with all the trimmings, organized for the seniors group in Arborville, New Jersey, the town where the Knit & Nibble mysteries are set. Unfortunately the feast ends on a less than festive note! A local eccentric, Isobel Lister, has just finished presenting a concert of Irish songs when she is found dead.
The second feast has no such distressing climax. Bettina Fraser, who is the best friend and fellow sleuth of my series protagonist Pamela Paterson, invites Pamela to join her and her husband Wilfred for his annual corned beef extravaganza.
Besides the corned beef, cabbage, potatoes, and homemade soda bread, he serves a dessert created just for the holiday: Irish Coffee Trifle. The recipe is included at the end of IRISH KNIT MURDER, and many photos of the treat are up on my website’s IRISH KNIT MURDER page: https://peggyehrhart.com/knit-and-nib...
Working out plot complications for IRISH KNIT MURDER, I decided to bring in the old Celtic nature religion that survives in present-day Wiccan beliefs. St. Patrick, to their way of thinking, isn’t a hero but rather something of a villain—because he discredited their belief system when he introduced Christianity to Ireland.
My Wiccan character is a suspect in Isobel’s murder, but she’s also a fascinating person. She’s a fount of information about the old nature-based calendar that gave us holidays like Christmas, Easter, Halloween, and others when the Christian calendar was superimposed on celebrations that had been observed for, probably, millennia.
I also made my Wiccan character adept at the Tarot, a system of divination that uses a deck of special cards not really to tell fortunes—though some people believe that’s the point—but rather to help seekers understand situations they find themselves in and choices that confront them.
At the end of IRISH KNIT MURDER, my Wiccan character does a card reading for Pamela. I myself am not a believer, but in doing research for this scene I read a book about the Tarot and I bought a set of the cards, the Smith-Waite version.
This version, with drawings by Pamela Colman Smith under the direction of Arthur Edward Waite, is most commonly used now and its fascinating imagery grows out of early twentieth-century theosophical thought.
In the scene, I had Pamela draw three cards from the deck—the cards are face down and the seeker uses his or her left hand, thought to be more in tune with the unconscious mind.
Readers of the Knit & Nibble mysteries will know that an ongoing subplot involves Pamela’s romantic prospects, so I decided that the three cards she chooses would give some insight into her relationship with one romantic possibility, her neighbor Richard Larkin.
Earlier in the book, Richard Larkins asks Pamela to keep her eyes open for a cat that he might adopt, specifically mentioning that a black kitten would be fine. On the occasion of the Tarot reading, the Wiccan character’s cat has just given birth to kittens, including a black kitten.
I of course chose the cards for the reading quite consciously (no left hands involved) with the goal of having them indicate exactly what I wanted in the scene.
But I was surprised and delighted to discover that the image for the Queen of Wands, the card I chose to represent Pamela, includes in its design a small black cat.
Coincidence . . . or is it? Perhaps I will become a believer after all.
Postscript: I’ve definitely had St. Patrick’s Day on my mind lately. No sooner had I finished the manuscript for IRISH KNIT MURDER than my editor at Kensington invited me to contribute a St. Patrick’s Day-themed novella to a novella collection scheduled for release in January 2024. Since I’m a fairly literal-minded person, perhaps you can guess what the murder “weapon” is in the novella I contributed to IRISH MILKSHAKE MURDER.
In between comes St. Patrick’s Day, an occasion for feasting and celebration. I look forward to making a traditional St. Patrick’s Day meal every year, with corned beef, cabbage, boiled potatoes, and homemade soda bread.
Coincidentally, my editor at Kensington suggested I add a St. Patrick’s Day theme to the Knit & Nibble mystery I began work on last spring, given that it had a spring 2023 release date. IRISH KNIT MURDER, with not one but two St. Patrick’s Day feasts, is now out.
The first feast is a luncheon featuring corned beef with all the trimmings, organized for the seniors group in Arborville, New Jersey, the town where the Knit & Nibble mysteries are set. Unfortunately the feast ends on a less than festive note! A local eccentric, Isobel Lister, has just finished presenting a concert of Irish songs when she is found dead.
The second feast has no such distressing climax. Bettina Fraser, who is the best friend and fellow sleuth of my series protagonist Pamela Paterson, invites Pamela to join her and her husband Wilfred for his annual corned beef extravaganza.
Besides the corned beef, cabbage, potatoes, and homemade soda bread, he serves a dessert created just for the holiday: Irish Coffee Trifle. The recipe is included at the end of IRISH KNIT MURDER, and many photos of the treat are up on my website’s IRISH KNIT MURDER page: https://peggyehrhart.com/knit-and-nib...
Working out plot complications for IRISH KNIT MURDER, I decided to bring in the old Celtic nature religion that survives in present-day Wiccan beliefs. St. Patrick, to their way of thinking, isn’t a hero but rather something of a villain—because he discredited their belief system when he introduced Christianity to Ireland.
My Wiccan character is a suspect in Isobel’s murder, but she’s also a fascinating person. She’s a fount of information about the old nature-based calendar that gave us holidays like Christmas, Easter, Halloween, and others when the Christian calendar was superimposed on celebrations that had been observed for, probably, millennia.
I also made my Wiccan character adept at the Tarot, a system of divination that uses a deck of special cards not really to tell fortunes—though some people believe that’s the point—but rather to help seekers understand situations they find themselves in and choices that confront them.
At the end of IRISH KNIT MURDER, my Wiccan character does a card reading for Pamela. I myself am not a believer, but in doing research for this scene I read a book about the Tarot and I bought a set of the cards, the Smith-Waite version.
This version, with drawings by Pamela Colman Smith under the direction of Arthur Edward Waite, is most commonly used now and its fascinating imagery grows out of early twentieth-century theosophical thought.
In the scene, I had Pamela draw three cards from the deck—the cards are face down and the seeker uses his or her left hand, thought to be more in tune with the unconscious mind.
Readers of the Knit & Nibble mysteries will know that an ongoing subplot involves Pamela’s romantic prospects, so I decided that the three cards she chooses would give some insight into her relationship with one romantic possibility, her neighbor Richard Larkin.
Earlier in the book, Richard Larkins asks Pamela to keep her eyes open for a cat that he might adopt, specifically mentioning that a black kitten would be fine. On the occasion of the Tarot reading, the Wiccan character’s cat has just given birth to kittens, including a black kitten.
I of course chose the cards for the reading quite consciously (no left hands involved) with the goal of having them indicate exactly what I wanted in the scene.
But I was surprised and delighted to discover that the image for the Queen of Wands, the card I chose to represent Pamela, includes in its design a small black cat.
Coincidence . . . or is it? Perhaps I will become a believer after all.
Postscript: I’ve definitely had St. Patrick’s Day on my mind lately. No sooner had I finished the manuscript for IRISH KNIT MURDER than my editor at Kensington invited me to contribute a St. Patrick’s Day-themed novella to a novella collection scheduled for release in January 2024. Since I’m a fairly literal-minded person, perhaps you can guess what the murder “weapon” is in the novella I contributed to IRISH MILKSHAKE MURDER.
December 17, 2022
A Christmas Tree Hung with Memories
After several decades of collecting Christmas tree ornaments, I could easily decorate four or five trees, though we never put up more than one. Fetching the boxes from the basement and choosing which ornaments will go on the tree in any given year is a meditative process, a trip into the past rather like reading old journal entries.
We still have the box of old mercury glass balls we bought shortly after we moved into the house we still live in. They were old even then, worn clear in spots, but we were delighted to find them cheap at a garage sale. The down payment on our house had sorely taxed our finances and our monthly mortgage ate up a large part of our take-home pay.
Other ornaments are reminders of our travels—a shiny pretzel ornament from Milwaukee, a tiny Mardi Gras mask from New Orleans, a Russian doll from a trip to Russia back when that was a place people wanted to visit. Still others are gifts from family members acknowledging hobbies—miniature guitars for me and an elaborate wire bicycle sculpture, all of three inches long, for my husband, as well as shiny ornaments in the shape of cameras.
We still have two hand-sewn ornaments, mice wearing dresses, made by my youngest sister when she was in high school. One Christmas we happened to be cat-sitting and, of all the ornaments to bat off the tree to play with, the cat chose one of those mice.
I’m unable to resist rummage sales, estate sales, garage sales, and thrift shops—all of which are fertile hunting grounds for vintage ornaments. Sometimes I feel that I’m rescuing lovely hand work, like the festive constructions made of felt and decorated with sequins and beads I once found.
Other times I just can’t resist an ornament that’s old or charming, even if it’s scarcely one of a kind. I might already have several gilt birds that clip onto branches as if they’ve just alighted, but I love them.
One of my favorite thrift shop finds was two boxes of very old glass ornaments shaped like fruits: strawberries, plums, pears, apples—sixteen ornaments in all. I found them at a thrift shop near where my parents lived while they were still alive. I carried them back to my parents’ house, so happy and amazed that the whole two sets were intact after all this time, though so old and so fragile.
And as I was showing my wonderful find to my mother, I picked up one of the strawberries and it hopped right out of my hand onto the kitchen floor, which was made of ceramic tile. Needless to say, it did not survive, and I still look at that one empty compartment in the box with sadness.
If the ornaments in my collection carry my own memories, I sometimes reflect that the vintage ornaments I find at an estate sale or thrift shop carried memories for their original owners. If that Santa head, angel, or Rudolph could talk, what stories would it tell about long-gone Christmases in other houses?
CHRISTMAS SCARF MURDER, Kensington’s 2022 Christmas-themed novella collection, is now out: https://www.amazon.com/Christmas-Scar.... It includes my Knit & Nibble novella, DEATH BY CHRISTMAS SCARF.
And I put up a Christmas-themed Yarn Mania post the other day. It’s at https://peggyehrhart.com/a-very-merry...
Happy Holidays to all!
We still have the box of old mercury glass balls we bought shortly after we moved into the house we still live in. They were old even then, worn clear in spots, but we were delighted to find them cheap at a garage sale. The down payment on our house had sorely taxed our finances and our monthly mortgage ate up a large part of our take-home pay.
Other ornaments are reminders of our travels—a shiny pretzel ornament from Milwaukee, a tiny Mardi Gras mask from New Orleans, a Russian doll from a trip to Russia back when that was a place people wanted to visit. Still others are gifts from family members acknowledging hobbies—miniature guitars for me and an elaborate wire bicycle sculpture, all of three inches long, for my husband, as well as shiny ornaments in the shape of cameras.
We still have two hand-sewn ornaments, mice wearing dresses, made by my youngest sister when she was in high school. One Christmas we happened to be cat-sitting and, of all the ornaments to bat off the tree to play with, the cat chose one of those mice.
I’m unable to resist rummage sales, estate sales, garage sales, and thrift shops—all of which are fertile hunting grounds for vintage ornaments. Sometimes I feel that I’m rescuing lovely hand work, like the festive constructions made of felt and decorated with sequins and beads I once found.
Other times I just can’t resist an ornament that’s old or charming, even if it’s scarcely one of a kind. I might already have several gilt birds that clip onto branches as if they’ve just alighted, but I love them.
One of my favorite thrift shop finds was two boxes of very old glass ornaments shaped like fruits: strawberries, plums, pears, apples—sixteen ornaments in all. I found them at a thrift shop near where my parents lived while they were still alive. I carried them back to my parents’ house, so happy and amazed that the whole two sets were intact after all this time, though so old and so fragile.
And as I was showing my wonderful find to my mother, I picked up one of the strawberries and it hopped right out of my hand onto the kitchen floor, which was made of ceramic tile. Needless to say, it did not survive, and I still look at that one empty compartment in the box with sadness.
If the ornaments in my collection carry my own memories, I sometimes reflect that the vintage ornaments I find at an estate sale or thrift shop carried memories for their original owners. If that Santa head, angel, or Rudolph could talk, what stories would it tell about long-gone Christmases in other houses?
CHRISTMAS SCARF MURDER, Kensington’s 2022 Christmas-themed novella collection, is now out: https://www.amazon.com/Christmas-Scar.... It includes my Knit & Nibble novella, DEATH BY CHRISTMAS SCARF.
And I put up a Christmas-themed Yarn Mania post the other day. It’s at https://peggyehrhart.com/a-very-merry...
Happy Holidays to all!
October 14, 2022
My First Post-Lockdown Adventure: Mechanicsburg Mini-Con Getaway
I hadn’t slept in a bed other than my own for two and a half years—and Kensington’s East Coast CozyClub Mini-Con on October 10 seemed an excellent opportunity for a post-Covid getaway.
Until the program was interrupted by Covid in 2020, Kensington sponsored four of these Mini-Cons every year, each co-hosted by a bookstore in a particular region of the country: East, West, Midwest, and South. Focused on cozy mysteries, the Mini-Cons offer readers a chance to meet their favorite cozy authors for an afternoon of chatting, refreshments, games, and prizes--and of course buying books and having them signed.
Now the Mini-Cons have started up again, and the East Coast one in Mechanicsburg PA, rescheduled twice, was finally happening. I live in Northern New Jersey, four hours from Mechanicsburg, and the Mini-Con was scheduled to start at 11:30 a.m. So my husband and I decided it would be fun to make the drive the day before, arrive in time for a leisurely dinner, and spend the night in a hotel.
The event was a great success, with eleven Kensington authors taking part—from as far away as Michigan—and nearly 100 readers. It was a pleasure to meet people who had read and enjoyed my Knit & Nibble mysteries.
The bookstore co-host was the Mechanicsburg Mystery Bookshop, but since more space was needed for the large turnout, the event was held in a church hall on a street lined with charming brick buildings from the nineteenth century.
The bookshop itself is located on the outskirts of Mechanicsburg and specializes in mysteries, spy, thriller, suspense, and horror with a touch of sci-fi, selling both in person and online. The website explains that owner Debbie Beamer “has been a fan of mysteries ever since she read her first Nancy Drew book. She opened this store in 1990 with a goal to ‘provide customers with exemplary customer service.’” For more information about the bookshop, visit https://www.mysterybooksonline.com/
Thank you to the Mechanicsburg Mystery Bookshop and to Larissa Ackerman from Kensington for putting together such a wonderful event—a lovely reintroduction to life after the Covid lockdown.
As a bonus, my husband's and my drive to Mechanicsburg took us through the Pocono Mountains. The higher elevation meant that the trees were much further advanced toward the reds and yellows of autumn than the ones back in our area, and so we had miles and miles of glorious leaf-peeping en route.
And on the way home, driving west in the evening, we watched the full moon turn from a pale disk in the twilight to a glowing golden orb against the night sky.
.
Until the program was interrupted by Covid in 2020, Kensington sponsored four of these Mini-Cons every year, each co-hosted by a bookstore in a particular region of the country: East, West, Midwest, and South. Focused on cozy mysteries, the Mini-Cons offer readers a chance to meet their favorite cozy authors for an afternoon of chatting, refreshments, games, and prizes--and of course buying books and having them signed.
Now the Mini-Cons have started up again, and the East Coast one in Mechanicsburg PA, rescheduled twice, was finally happening. I live in Northern New Jersey, four hours from Mechanicsburg, and the Mini-Con was scheduled to start at 11:30 a.m. So my husband and I decided it would be fun to make the drive the day before, arrive in time for a leisurely dinner, and spend the night in a hotel.
The event was a great success, with eleven Kensington authors taking part—from as far away as Michigan—and nearly 100 readers. It was a pleasure to meet people who had read and enjoyed my Knit & Nibble mysteries.
The bookstore co-host was the Mechanicsburg Mystery Bookshop, but since more space was needed for the large turnout, the event was held in a church hall on a street lined with charming brick buildings from the nineteenth century.
The bookshop itself is located on the outskirts of Mechanicsburg and specializes in mysteries, spy, thriller, suspense, and horror with a touch of sci-fi, selling both in person and online. The website explains that owner Debbie Beamer “has been a fan of mysteries ever since she read her first Nancy Drew book. She opened this store in 1990 with a goal to ‘provide customers with exemplary customer service.’” For more information about the bookshop, visit https://www.mysterybooksonline.com/
Thank you to the Mechanicsburg Mystery Bookshop and to Larissa Ackerman from Kensington for putting together such a wonderful event—a lovely reintroduction to life after the Covid lockdown.
As a bonus, my husband's and my drive to Mechanicsburg took us through the Pocono Mountains. The higher elevation meant that the trees were much further advanced toward the reds and yellows of autumn than the ones back in our area, and so we had miles and miles of glorious leaf-peeping en route.
And on the way home, driving west in the evening, we watched the full moon turn from a pale disk in the twilight to a glowing golden orb against the night sky.
.
August 15, 2022
Coexistence
I recently emailed my sister a photo my husband had taken on our street, with the subject line “New Neighbor.” The photo was of a deer.
Here in the suburbs of northern New Jersey, we share our lives with many wild creatures, but only recently have deer joined our local menagerie—though they’ve never been strangers to many New Jersey neighborhoods.
A few years ago I was visiting a town several miles to the west and I heard a woman shouting, “Scram! Scram!” I turned and saw what I thought was a huge brown dog bolting through her shrubbery. Then, with a shock, I realized it was a deer.
Why was she chasing such a lovely creature from her yard? I didn’t know the answer then, but now I do, because they’ve come to town. A parcel of undeveloped land where they used to live is being developed and they’re looking for a new habitat.
Deer have to eat. And suburban yards, with their lush and various landscaping, represent an all-you-can eat buffet, vastly appealing and there for the taking.
It’s not unusual to glance out a window and see two or three or even four of them placidly helping themselves to garden shrubbery.
(One might expect deer to focus on lawns, grazing like cows, but they don’t. They only eat grass if there’s nothing else around that they like better—and in the suburbs there are lots of things that they like better.)
March is pansy month here in northern New Jersey, because pansies tolerate chilly weather better than most other annuals. People look forward to seeing the “We have pansies” signs posted at garden centers, and buying pansy seedlings for outdoor planters is a spring ritual.
This year I planted a lovely batch of pansies in planters along my driveway, all the colors that I like—orange, purple, lavender, and lots of two-toned ones with yellow edges and dark centers.
A few days later I looked out one morning to see that all the flowers had disappeared. When I inspected, I could tell by the way the stems had been bitten so neatly that the deer were to blame—just as the previous year they had visited my day-lily patch and nipped off all the buds right before they were to bloom. Hostas are one of their absolute favorite things, like big lettuce leaves to be devoured in a few bites.
Of course people try various stratagems to repel the deer, like bars of soap—especially Irish Spring—or strips of fabric softener. Human hair and human urine are recommended. One can buy commercially produced evil-smelling sprays or make one’s own, with ingredients like sour milk, garlic, and rotten eggs. Or one can plant things that deer supposedly don’t care for. Garden centers sell shrubs with hang tags that read, “Deer don’t like me.”
Nonetheless deer are beautiful, and of course they were here before we were, roaming freely in woods that have now shrunk and shrunk as the suburbs have expanded.
Their preferred times to venture abroad are morning and evening, when it’s not really dark but not really light. It can be magical to be taking an after-dinner walk and turn a corner to find a cluster of them glowing pale brown against a deep green lawn.
It’s especially magical if a doe has a fawn still with Bambi fawn spots in tow—or even a doe with twin fawns, a family group we see on and off in our yard.
Sometimes they are bold enough to come out at mid-day. Yesterday afternoon I looked out a window that faces our driveway and saw a good-sized deer loping by. I noticed it step over into my neighbor’s yard, still very close, and crept outside to get a better look.
It looked right back at me and turned its huge ears this way and that as I greeted it. From time to time it glanced to the side, back down the driveway in the direction it had come from.
Interestingly, the deer was a young buck we have come to recognize—very distinctive because he only has half a set of antlers, apparently having lost the other half in some mishap. He couldn’t be taken for a unicorn though because the remaining antler is forked, with two prongs.
“Are you looking for a friend?” I asked and his ears swiveled toward me. “Are you?” I asked. “Are you?”
I leaned over the porch rail to look down the driveway too, and standing about ten feet away was indeed a friend, another buck, about the same size but with a full set of antlers.
Here in the suburbs of northern New Jersey, we share our lives with many wild creatures, but only recently have deer joined our local menagerie—though they’ve never been strangers to many New Jersey neighborhoods.
A few years ago I was visiting a town several miles to the west and I heard a woman shouting, “Scram! Scram!” I turned and saw what I thought was a huge brown dog bolting through her shrubbery. Then, with a shock, I realized it was a deer.
Why was she chasing such a lovely creature from her yard? I didn’t know the answer then, but now I do, because they’ve come to town. A parcel of undeveloped land where they used to live is being developed and they’re looking for a new habitat.
Deer have to eat. And suburban yards, with their lush and various landscaping, represent an all-you-can eat buffet, vastly appealing and there for the taking.
It’s not unusual to glance out a window and see two or three or even four of them placidly helping themselves to garden shrubbery.
(One might expect deer to focus on lawns, grazing like cows, but they don’t. They only eat grass if there’s nothing else around that they like better—and in the suburbs there are lots of things that they like better.)
March is pansy month here in northern New Jersey, because pansies tolerate chilly weather better than most other annuals. People look forward to seeing the “We have pansies” signs posted at garden centers, and buying pansy seedlings for outdoor planters is a spring ritual.
This year I planted a lovely batch of pansies in planters along my driveway, all the colors that I like—orange, purple, lavender, and lots of two-toned ones with yellow edges and dark centers.
A few days later I looked out one morning to see that all the flowers had disappeared. When I inspected, I could tell by the way the stems had been bitten so neatly that the deer were to blame—just as the previous year they had visited my day-lily patch and nipped off all the buds right before they were to bloom. Hostas are one of their absolute favorite things, like big lettuce leaves to be devoured in a few bites.
Of course people try various stratagems to repel the deer, like bars of soap—especially Irish Spring—or strips of fabric softener. Human hair and human urine are recommended. One can buy commercially produced evil-smelling sprays or make one’s own, with ingredients like sour milk, garlic, and rotten eggs. Or one can plant things that deer supposedly don’t care for. Garden centers sell shrubs with hang tags that read, “Deer don’t like me.”
Nonetheless deer are beautiful, and of course they were here before we were, roaming freely in woods that have now shrunk and shrunk as the suburbs have expanded.
Their preferred times to venture abroad are morning and evening, when it’s not really dark but not really light. It can be magical to be taking an after-dinner walk and turn a corner to find a cluster of them glowing pale brown against a deep green lawn.
It’s especially magical if a doe has a fawn still with Bambi fawn spots in tow—or even a doe with twin fawns, a family group we see on and off in our yard.
Sometimes they are bold enough to come out at mid-day. Yesterday afternoon I looked out a window that faces our driveway and saw a good-sized deer loping by. I noticed it step over into my neighbor’s yard, still very close, and crept outside to get a better look.
It looked right back at me and turned its huge ears this way and that as I greeted it. From time to time it glanced to the side, back down the driveway in the direction it had come from.
Interestingly, the deer was a young buck we have come to recognize—very distinctive because he only has half a set of antlers, apparently having lost the other half in some mishap. He couldn’t be taken for a unicorn though because the remaining antler is forked, with two prongs.
“Are you looking for a friend?” I asked and his ears swiveled toward me. “Are you?” I asked. “Are you?”
I leaned over the porch rail to look down the driveway too, and standing about ten feet away was indeed a friend, another buck, about the same size but with a full set of antlers.
June 27, 2022
A Family Drama
I’ve had great fun bringing the pleasant suburbs of northern New Jersey to life in my Knit & Nibble series. My characters enjoy their tidy homes and their gardens, and they share their lives with domesticated animals like Catrina and Woofus, who have become characters in their own right.
But here in the suburbs, we also share our lives with undomesticated animals: raccoons, possum, skunk, deer, wild turkeys, song birds, squirrels . . .
Recently our local squirrels offered us a drama as diverting as one that might be found between the pages of a book: It was time for the children to accept the responsibilities of adulthood—but would they???
One morning a few weeks ago my husband became aware of a squirrel rumpus taking place on an expanse of roof visible from our upstairs bathroom window. His first thought was that it was mating season and a few male squirrels were fighting over a female squirrel. But as we watched—we were quite transfixed—we came to a different conclusion.
The participants were three small squirrels and one large squirrel, who we came to realize was a female. The large squirrel would race from higher up on the roof to the very edge, with the small squirrels in hot pursuit.
She would then make a death-defying leap to a tree on the far side of our driveway, not exactly landing but instead clinging to—actually dangling from—a leafy twig no bigger around than a human thumb. From there she would clamber to a more substantial perch.
The small squirrels—her children, we also came to realize—would stare after her, teetering on the edge of the roof. Then they would retreat to a spot where a bit of roof overhanging from above creates a kind of shelter.
After a time the mother would reappear, climbing up a downspout rather than leaping back from the tree. Her children would cluster around her excitedly, nuzzling her and even seemingly trying to nurse—though they must have been weaned by now or the poor mother would have been too worn out feeding them to have energy left for all her leaping.
And leap she did. This routine—the dash to the edge of the roof, the death-defying leap, the staring children, their retreat, her return—was repeated time and time again for hours that morning. It resumed again later in the afternoon.
The next morning the rumpus woke us up at about six a.m. We went back to sleep, but the action was still going on when we got up a few hours later.
The next day the leaping lessons continued. It became obvious that the small squirrels had reached a very important point in their lives. The time had come to leave the nest, and in order to make their way in the world they had to learn how to leap. Their mother had scouted out a roof with a tree just the right distance away for their lessons.
As the lessons went on, she began to grow impatient with her brood, given that despite all her effort none had been brave enough to leap after her. Sometimes, instead of letting them nuzzle her when she returned to the roof after one of her leaps, she would bite them! And sometimes they would bite her in return!
Side note: It occurred to us that perhaps they had been living in our attic, accessing their nest through a hole that led right onto the piece of roof being used for the leaping lessons.
Squirrels in the attic are one of the banes of suburban life, but as it happened we had to consult a roofing company for an unrelated issue while this drama was going on and we were relieved to learn that no squirrel holes were visible. So we never figured out where they came from.
I never actually saw any of the small squirrels leap, though my husband did, and he later reported that only the very smallest squirrel was left, with the patient mother still demonstrating the technique. Finally that squirrel was gone too and the drama was over.
One of the small squirrels was of a type, seemingly a random mutation, that my husband calls the rat-tail effect. This effect is visible in several of the full-grown squirrels that frequent our neighborhood. The tails aren’t exactly like rat tails but they are considerably less bushy than most squirrel tails.
Now we are seeing a small rat-tailed squirrel in our yard doing the usual squirrel things and we are sure that he—or she—is from the brood whose leaping lessons we observed.
I put up a new Yarn Mania post on my website the other day, featuring a woven-square baby blanket I found long ago at a garage sale. Here’s the link: https://peggyehrhart.com/so-sweet-wov...
But here in the suburbs, we also share our lives with undomesticated animals: raccoons, possum, skunk, deer, wild turkeys, song birds, squirrels . . .
Recently our local squirrels offered us a drama as diverting as one that might be found between the pages of a book: It was time for the children to accept the responsibilities of adulthood—but would they???
One morning a few weeks ago my husband became aware of a squirrel rumpus taking place on an expanse of roof visible from our upstairs bathroom window. His first thought was that it was mating season and a few male squirrels were fighting over a female squirrel. But as we watched—we were quite transfixed—we came to a different conclusion.
The participants were three small squirrels and one large squirrel, who we came to realize was a female. The large squirrel would race from higher up on the roof to the very edge, with the small squirrels in hot pursuit.
She would then make a death-defying leap to a tree on the far side of our driveway, not exactly landing but instead clinging to—actually dangling from—a leafy twig no bigger around than a human thumb. From there she would clamber to a more substantial perch.
The small squirrels—her children, we also came to realize—would stare after her, teetering on the edge of the roof. Then they would retreat to a spot where a bit of roof overhanging from above creates a kind of shelter.
After a time the mother would reappear, climbing up a downspout rather than leaping back from the tree. Her children would cluster around her excitedly, nuzzling her and even seemingly trying to nurse—though they must have been weaned by now or the poor mother would have been too worn out feeding them to have energy left for all her leaping.
And leap she did. This routine—the dash to the edge of the roof, the death-defying leap, the staring children, their retreat, her return—was repeated time and time again for hours that morning. It resumed again later in the afternoon.
The next morning the rumpus woke us up at about six a.m. We went back to sleep, but the action was still going on when we got up a few hours later.
The next day the leaping lessons continued. It became obvious that the small squirrels had reached a very important point in their lives. The time had come to leave the nest, and in order to make their way in the world they had to learn how to leap. Their mother had scouted out a roof with a tree just the right distance away for their lessons.
As the lessons went on, she began to grow impatient with her brood, given that despite all her effort none had been brave enough to leap after her. Sometimes, instead of letting them nuzzle her when she returned to the roof after one of her leaps, she would bite them! And sometimes they would bite her in return!
Side note: It occurred to us that perhaps they had been living in our attic, accessing their nest through a hole that led right onto the piece of roof being used for the leaping lessons.
Squirrels in the attic are one of the banes of suburban life, but as it happened we had to consult a roofing company for an unrelated issue while this drama was going on and we were relieved to learn that no squirrel holes were visible. So we never figured out where they came from.
I never actually saw any of the small squirrels leap, though my husband did, and he later reported that only the very smallest squirrel was left, with the patient mother still demonstrating the technique. Finally that squirrel was gone too and the drama was over.
One of the small squirrels was of a type, seemingly a random mutation, that my husband calls the rat-tail effect. This effect is visible in several of the full-grown squirrels that frequent our neighborhood. The tails aren’t exactly like rat tails but they are considerably less bushy than most squirrel tails.
Now we are seeing a small rat-tailed squirrel in our yard doing the usual squirrel things and we are sure that he—or she—is from the brood whose leaping lessons we observed.
I put up a new Yarn Mania post on my website the other day, featuring a woven-square baby blanket I found long ago at a garage sale. Here’s the link: https://peggyehrhart.com/so-sweet-wov...
