FF: Sidetracked!
DreamForge Among the Identified Mystery Plant
While looking for a completely different gardening book, this week I got sidetracked. But, happily, most of the time my reading isn’t homework, so I can switch as I wish.
For those of you unfamiliar with this column, the Friday Fragments lists what I’ve read over the past week. Most of the time I don’t include details of either short fiction (unless part of a book-length collection) or magazines. The Fragments are not meant to be a recommendation list. If you’re interested in a not-at-all-inclusive recommendation list, you can look on my website under Neat Stuff.
Once again, this is not a book review column. It’s just a list with, maybe, a bit of description or a few opinions tossed in.
Recently Completed:
Into the Land of the Unicorns by Bruce Coville. First book in the four volume Unicorn Chronicles. Audiobook. I enjoyed enough that I’m now on to Book Two.
A Place at Mother Earth’s Table: Edible Wild Plants of the Rio Grande Region by Lisa W. Huckell. This slim book—probably technically a booklet—was so well written that I read all of it and in the process identified one of the plants in our yard as “Green Thread” aka “Indian Tea” or “Navajo Tea.” We’d just been calling it “that pretty plant w/the yellow pom-poms.” I now have some drying to try. And the bibliography led me to read…
In Progress:
Wild Plants of the Pueblo Province: Exploring Ancient and Enduring Uses by William W. Dunmire and Gail D. Tierney. Centered around four parks in New Mexico, this books looks at various plants and how they were used by a wide variety of indigenous peoples. Since one of the parks—Petroglyph National Monument—is very close to my house, I also ended up identifying several more of the plants in our yard, including scorpion weed, which is a far easier name to use than “that annoying plant that, although it has pretty purple flowers in the spring, gets all prickly and, worse, sticky, so let’s pull it.” I started with the chapter on types of plants, but found the book so well-written, I’m reading the whole thing.
Song of the Wanderer by Bruce Coville. Second book in the Unicorn Chronicles. Audiobook. So far, I’m enjoying.
DreamForge Magazine, issue six. My copy arrived and is part of my relaxation reading.
Also:
I’ve finished my read-through of SK4, and am now doing lots of line edits. I hope to finish and give Jim his copy later today.
