Vicki Lane's Blog, page 534

A Fine Easter Weekend

It was a great weekend with perfect weather, lots of friends and family . . .
Easter eggs were hidden and found ...
The barn was full of food and the air was full of music ... And various good times were had...
 

Easter Greetings!

Happy Easter, Pesach, Spring . . . 
 (Make that Happy Autumn to my friends in the southern hemisphere . . .)

Oh, Spring!

 Our annual Easter party and egg hunt is tomorrow and today will be full of preparations, not to mention lots of family in town for the fun.   I'll leave you with pretty pictures for the time being ...
Phacelia . . . azalea ...
Swallowtail... buckeye ... Trees in new green ... And  polished iris buds, poised on the point of bloom . . .

Earth Day

 
Earth Day -- a  time to be thankful for the beauty and bounty Earth provides her children ...
 
From buckeye blooms to bustling biddies...  The lavish fragrance of romantic sweeps of wisteria ...   And maybe it's time to think about our impact on this great mother of us all. 
When we were planting potatoes, look what turned up. That little piece of bright blue plastic below is a tab from a paper diaper  and I'm embarassed to say I was the litterer -- back in 1973. At that time we were camping out in the barn  just above the potato field with our not quite one year old and cloth diapers seemed pretty much out of the question. The plastic is dirty but (unlike parents and baby) un-aged. It's good for anothe thirty-something years. It's not going anywhere. Now think about all the plastic that doesn't get recycled but instead ends up in our landfills, our waterways, our roadsides, our beaches, our oceans.
It's enough to make a Mother cry.

From My Collection...

  Another anonymous comment left here recently -- for some reason I just adore these dada-esque messages
Hello everybody subservient to the bronze knick-knacks
That's eager of the note
I'm concomitant to here
Thrilled as pummel to equivalent to of thinking you all
Well-received to my blog.

While I don't consider myself subservient to the bronze knick-knacks, I am, however, thrilled as pummel to find this favorite -- and oh, so apposite! -- Monty Python sketch on YouTube.

Morels!

Oh, joy! While mowing the orchard, John discovered a pair of morels! We had found some there about ten years ago but haven't seen any since -- until now.

Only two little morels -- I decided to stretch their flavor by putting them into a cream sauce.

They're hollow . . .
I sizzled them in a tablespoon of butter with some garlic chives . . .
Then I added a tablespoon of flour, about a cup of hot milk, and salt and pepper to make a cream sauce. Piled onto a toasted ciabatta, it made an fine breakfast.  (About four times as many morels would have been nice ...)  My Carolina Kitchen has another wild mushroom recipe (and far more elegant presentation) HERE.

FAQ

Q: In your writing classes, what is the most common mistake that beginning writers make?
A: The thing that I find myself writing the most often on my students' pages is "Show, Don't Tell."
Show is like watching a drama on TV. Tell is like reading someone's synopsis of what happened in that drama.  Guess which is more interesting...

Here's an example from The Day of Small Things.   I could TELL the reader that Aunt Belvy insisted that Dorothy drive her to the graveyard because she was worried about Birdie. That would have been quick and easy -- probably why it's so tempting to do rather than SHOW.  And there's nothing wrong with TELL for some information -- mundane, daily stuff. No need to SHOW your protagonist shopping for a bag of apples and some cereal unless there's something REALLY important about that shopping trip. But if you use TELL when there's an opportunity for a dramatic scene, a scene that SHOWS your characters, then you've missed a chance to draw the reader in.Here's my SHOW example.
                                     ***     ***        ***She said she needed some fresh air but where in mercy's sake can she have got to?            Dorothy stepped out to the front porch and looked through the trees to the path running up the mountain. There was still no sign of Miss Birdie, not in the yard nor out on the road where she usually took her walk.            "Up in the grave yard, that's where you'll find her."            Dorothy started and whirled around. A moment ago Aunt Belvy had been sitting on the plastic-covered sofa, seemingly lost in a prophetic trance. Or asleep. Now she was standing, tall and imposing, in the doorway. And she was saying- no, the old woman was confused. Dorothy silently cursed Marvella for leaving this ancient, obviously crazy woman in her care as the spoke slowly and loudly into the ear of the prophetess.            "Why, you've had you a bad dream, Aunt Belvy. Birdie's not in the graveyard; she's just gone for a walk. I reckon you got a little confused-"            A bony hand grasped Dorothy's arm. "Git in your car and crank the engine, young un. I want you to take me up to the grave yard where Birdie is. She'll be talking to that old woman and I got to go protect her."The fingers held her in a pincers grip. "And I ain't one lick confused."

Time to Plant the Taters

Fifty pounds of seed potatoes have been riding around in the back of my jeep for over a week now. But the weather finally cooperated and the ground dried out and John and Justin and I got the cut-up taters in the ground.
Some folks plant by the signs; some plant on Good Friday ( in hopes of a sure resurrection, I suppose;) we plant when we can. It's an important yearly event for us but it's a movable feast.
These are Kennebecs -- ordinary white potatoes -- and, if nothin' don't happen, they'll yield plenty to keep us all well supplied through the year.  I'm going out today to try to find some Yukon Golds and some red potatoes as well to plant down at the lower place.
It was a beautiful day -- perfect for this Spring ritual we've enacted for thirty five years now.   Back at the house for an omelet that included the first asparagus and shitakes, we felt truly blessed in this country life.
 

Spot the Ringer

To quote Douglas Adams, "Space is BIG! I mean, really mind-alteringly BIG!"  The Hubble Telescope has been sending beautiful pictures of some of what going on in that immensity.  As always, click on photo to biggify.  Amazing.  For the complete collection, go HERE.

Into Every Life ...

The clouds rolled in yesterday bringing chilly, blustery weather. And 'they're givin' rain' for today.

No matter -- we know what April showers bring... Two small chuckles I'd like to share.  (I think I've mentioned that I'm easily amused.)

One, as I was eating lunch yesterday, I was startled to hear a news report that seemed to say three concubines had exploded... never did get that one sorted out.

And then, oh joy, I was editing a paper from one of my writing students and came to the line that said a rapist had been found dead with his tentacles removed. . .