Field thistle, cutleaf coneflower, mullein, Baldwin's ironweed, woodland sunflower.
** [ Also tall boneset, white sanicle, richweed. "Exercise caution. This plant contains a toxin called tremetol which causes a potentially fatal illness. What's more, if animals who are lactating eat white snakeroot the tremetol can be passed on to humans who drink the milk. Many early European settlers are suspected to have died of this so-called 'milk-sickness' before they understood the plant's hazards."] Read more about milk sickness and the pioneer woman physician who identified the toxin here.
On Saturday we went to Hawthorn Hollow on far west side of Kenosha. It had been a couple of years since we'd been there. There was a wedding that I was able to walk around -- such a lovely setting!
My finger points to the location on the map.
The Teuscher sisters, Kenosha schoolteachers, acquired the property. Over the years the farmland was reclaimed to woodland and prairie along the Pike River. (Kenosha means pike.)
Lower left: a big "grove" of horsetails.
Lower right: a pet cemetery. The oldest marker was 1944.
The children's author Florence Parry Heide and her husband helped preserve the buildings. One of her books is set in the new schoolhouse.
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I've been reading a lot! After these afternoon walks I sit out on the patio with my book and enjoy the fresh air and sunshine.
589 pages is a long book -- but this one was so good I read it in four days!
How far will people go to escape their pasts? For some, to the ends of the earth.
In 1914 when twins Marian and Jamie Graves were only a few months old they survived a shipwreck. Their mother drowned and their father disappeared. They were sent to Montana to live with their uncle, a brilliant but unstable artist who gave both of them tremendous freedom. For Marian that led to a passion for flying. During Prohibition she ferried alcohol for a bootlegger. She escaped an abusive marriage to become a bush pilot in Alaska. She signed up as a transport pilot in World War II, ferrying aircraft across the Atlantic. After the war she embarked on her grand adventure: circumnavigating the globe over the poles. She got within hundreds of miles of her goal -- and the aircraft crashed. Only her logbook was found.
A century later: actor Hadley Baxter is escaping, too. After two successful long-term series she wants to break out. She is cast as Marian Graves in a bio-adventure movie based partly on a novel in turn based on Marian's log. Hadley digs deeper to understand her character and learns more about the mysterious disappearance.
"I think sometimes people hope if they amass enough scraps eventually the whole picture will become clear," Hadley says. (p. 568) All the scraps of Marian's life do come together, startlingly and exquisitely.
In 1914 when twins Marian and Jamie Graves were only a few months old they survived a shipwreck. Their mother drowned and their father disappeared. They were sent to Montana to live with their uncle, a brilliant but unstable artist who gave both of them tremendous freedom. For Marian that led to a passion for flying. During Prohibition she ferried alcohol for a bootlegger. She escaped an abusive marriage to become a bush pilot in Alaska. She signed up as a transport pilot in World War II, ferrying aircraft across the Atlantic. After the war she embarked on her grand adventure: circumnavigating the globe over the poles. She got within hundreds of miles of her goal -- and the aircraft crashed. Only her logbook was found.
A century later: actor Hadley Baxter is escaping, too. After two successful long-term series she wants to break out. She is cast as Marian Graves in a bio-adventure movie based partly on a novel in turn based on Marian's log. Hadley digs deeper to understand her character and learns more about the mysterious disappearance.
"I think sometimes people hope if they amass enough scraps eventually the whole picture will become clear," Hadley says. (p. 568) All the scraps of Marian's life do come together, startlingly and exquisitely.
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Poet Aimee Nexhukumatathil writes part memoir, part natural history in poetic prose essays. She describes what it was like to grow up in diverse places in the U.S. in a multi-cultural (Philippine and Indian) family that were often the only Asians in the community. Serving as context and metaphor for her experiences are a host of creatures -- from fireflies to narwhals, whale sharks to axolotls, flamingos to ribbon eels. "For me, what a single firefly can do is this: it can light a memory I thought was long lost in roadsides overrun with Queen Anne's lace and goldenrod, a peach pie cooling in the window of a distant house...might be the spark that sends us back to our grandmother's backyard...back to splashing in an ice-cold creekbed, our jeans rolled up, until we shudder and gasp [in delight]...In that spark is a slowdown and tenderness...reminding us to make a most necessary turn-- a shift and a swing and a switch --toward cherishing this magnificent and wonderful planet...A kind of love? You'd be right." (p. 160).
Marine biologist Helen Scales writes with passion and erudition about the marvelous beauty and bounty in the deep-sea world. She went out in the field (as it were) on research trips, interviewed the scientists, and cites current (2020) studies and reports. She emphasizes that new discoveries are constant. She then writes about the perils of overfishing, plastics pollution, and the prospect of ocean-floor mining. (The U.S. has not signed the U.N. International Seabed Authority agreement.) There are only eight pages of photos so I kept my phone at hand so I could look up the creatures she described. (Purple socks (more here and a photo) and Yeti crabs (more here) !)
Quilt news in the next post!
Good morning beautiful post Enjoyed the lovely flowers, and thank you for the book references I love to read too
ReplyDeleteAgain you've recommended a book that I now just have to track down and read. Great Circle sounds so interesting.
ReplyDeleteYour flower pictures are always so pretty!!