Archives - Weekly Update

The peony buds have burst into flowers. I have never seen them as lush as this year. I think the mild winter may have something to do with it. And they are not shedding their petals as quickly as they usually do. I have been cutting some and arranging them around the house. They look like delicate snowballs.

I am crazy about the plants that the boys gave me for Mother’s Day. Greg gave me the pink and white dahlia, and I dashed out to get one to match it. Cory’s gift was a pentas plant, and it too has pink flowers. Last year, I planted some seeds; at the end of the summer, there were some green stems growing, but they did not have any buds on them. I left it outside, they wintered over, and it’s Sweet William flowers. Who knew? I also bought two clematis plants, and I am trying to figure out where I want to plant them.

There are authors whose work I love as they capture a time and place in history for me that I might never explore. My reading of Lisa See’s books started with SNOW FLOWER AND THE SECRET FAN. For those of you who read it, who immediately googled “bound feet”? I know; that is what Lisa does. She brings a culture that you know nothing about to you --- and from there, you can see it vividly.

These days, there are moments when I find myself wondering what time of year it is. Maybe it is because we had a milder winter than usual. Or maybe it is because the pace seems to be on some über speed these past couple of years without natural ebbs and flows, so the months are squishing together more.

April and May always are super busy around the office. Yesterday we watched authors previewing their books and being interviewed from 9:30-5:30 during Library Journal’s Day of Dialog. I wrote pages and pages of notes about upcoming titles, as we listened to one more interesting panel than the next. And with all of this, we only watched half of the programming, so I am going to carve out time to see the rest in the next few weeks.