Laura Benedict's Blog, page 17
June 7, 2017
Daily Handbasket: Trouble’s Coming…
(Someone is watching. But she’s not allowed outside to stir up trouble for the neighborhood bunnies and birds.)
Usually in the months between finishing one novel and beginning a new one, I write at least one short story, and some non-fiction. It feels important to me to flex my writing muscles in other genres and forms. (But don’t expect any poems, okay? It’s for your own safety.) This spring I wrote a short story, and I’m going to write another short novel before I move on to a new suspens...
June 5, 2017
Daily Handbasket: Early June Garden
Welcome back to the garden. More perennials are blooming, plus most of the annuals. The endless days of sunshine have made a real difference. Though both the garden and I could do without the 86 degree June heat. I find new flowers, new life inspiring, don’t you?
Coral bells.
Market basket Petunias and friends.
Coleus.
The Lantana is a bit poky this year.
Oak Leaf Hydrangea. I’m guessing there’s a snake of some sort sleeping under there. Here’s a complete description of these bushes. I’...
Daily Handbasket: Excuse My Wholesomeness
(I do adore Doris Day, still the reigning Queen of Wholesomeness)
My daughter has been tweaking me lately that this blog is…wholesome. That gives me pause. In uncool-mom parlance, “Dude, wholesomeness isn’t cool!” The idea of being wholesome appalls the rebellious teenager inside me. Wholesome is like…parents (mine, anyway). Wholesome is Mary Ingalls, not Laura. Wholesome is Melanie Hamilton, not Scarlett O’Hara. I would never want to be Melanie. Ugh.
It leads me to ask: What exactly is w...
June 3, 2017
Daily Handbasket: Sunday, 4 June 17– Sustenance
(A crusty loaf makes my kitchen feel like home.)
“Eating is so intimate. It’s very sensual. When you invite someone to sit at your table and you want to cook for them, you’re inviting a person into your life.” –Maya Angelou
Food feels like love to me. Providing it, cooking it, serving it–even eating it. For health’s sake, we’re often told not to live to eat but only to eat to live. The notion of eating only to live makes me sad. I guess we could look at it as just another way of setting b...
Daily Handbasket: Saturday Serendipity, 3 June 17
This and That
Living on a cruise ship full time is often cheaper than living in NYC. Would you do it? Talk about living minimalist.
Next Thursday would have been Frank Lloyd Wright’s 150th birthday. His buildings are getting lots of well-deserved recognition. Here is a Chicago-area tour. And MoMA in NYC is having a major exhibition. Excuse me while I geek out!
This guy got to spend the night, alone, in a museum, surrounded by Rembrandts. Sounds cool, but also terrifying.
June 1, 2017
Daily Handbasket: Blackberries: A Love/Hate Story (reprise)
(This is a re-post from a while back. It’s almost blackberry time, and we’re still fighting the annual blackberry battle, though there are fewer cane than in other years.)
I’m not terribly fond of blackberries. Their texture is too complex, their flavor unpredictable. When I was very young, I often confused them with raspberries because we rarely had either in our house. In Southern Illinois, where I live now, I don’t know that anyone grows them for sale. Really, there shouldn’t be any n...
May 31, 2017
Daily Handbasket: Rabbit, Rabbit, and Frog, Oh My
(Ribbit! Ribbit! Worst rabbit impersonation ever.)
Rabbit! Rabbit! Happy 1st of June.
The other evening Husband and I were walking down to close the gate. It was dark and humid, and the sky was clear and full of stars. I used to be afraid of being out in the dark in the country because I grew up in the suburbs, and I thought the country was too quiet, too mysterious. But Husband grew up on a dairy farm and loves nothing more to live surrounded by…nothing. We do have a few neighbors, a...
Daily Handbasket: In Which My Life Becomes Like LADYHAWKE (except I don’t get to be a hawk)
The Wednesday post is late today because I finally had to give up working at 2:45 this morning. I fear Husband and I are going to become like Isabel and Navarre, in the fantasy film Ladyhawke, only able to glimpse each other at dawn. (If you haven’t seen it, it’s a fun film that hasn’t aged particularly well. The soundtrack is madness. But it’s still worth a look for the story.)
I really need to stop complaining about going to bed too late, and decide whether I’m going to commit to the com...
May 30, 2017
Daily Handbasket: Daydreaming Williamsburg
Maybe it’s because yesterday was Memorial Day, a rather patriotic holiday, or that I’m doing our (extended) taxes, or perhaps that I’m thinking of vacations–but I felt a need to go back and look at the pics from our last trip to Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia. It’s definitely my favorite theme park, and very much appeals to the part of me that likes to make things up. All the docents and actors are in period dress–being there is rather like watching a setting in a book come to life. I can’...
May 28, 2017
Daily Handbasket: Memorial Day Edition, 28-29 May 17
(Tomb of the Unknowns, Arlington National Cemetery, 2011)
War isn’t just about bravery and courage and jingoism and patriotism. It’s also fundamentally about grief. And the people that go and do the fighting and the dying are never the people who actually benefit from the fighting and the dying. –Russell Crowe
When I was looking for quotes for Memorial Day, I never imagined I’d use one from Russell Crowe, who is known more for playing a brave guy in films, and for that awkward cell phon...
