Weekly update: flowers, stars, reading

 My mother loved gardens and flowers, whether hers or someone else's.  (1995 photo.)  

(I still have shelves of family albums in the front closet but now there is one fewer. I tore out pages with 'keeper' photos from this 1994-95 scrapbook and actually tossed the rest. Good for me!) 

I remember her telling me about a field trip to Volo Bog once upon a time.   We took advantage of the beautiful day yesterday for another visit.   It's 27 miles from where we live (30 miles from where she lived, but another direction).  

  

From the website  "Formed in an ancient glacial kettle hole lake, Volo Bog features a floating mat of sphagnum moss, cattails and sedges surrounding the open pool of water in the center of the bog. Further from the open water, the mat thickens enough to even support floating trees!"   

Top: prairie smoke, black choke cherry, Jacob's ladder.  Center: sensitive fern, wild geranium, viburnum.  Bottom: golden Alexander, pitcher plant, wild arum (calla).

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Did you see the Northern Lights this weekend?  My neighbor Renee and I went down to the lakefront at 9:30 Saturday night. Lots of people but no aurora.  I woke up at 3 a.m. Sunday and tried again. No aurora.  I'll just have to enjoy everyone else's photos.  

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I was more successful with stars in my studio.  The flimsy is finished.  7 yards used. 

I'm not wild about the huge slab border. (Wrinkles are because it's large enough to be unwieldy to iron.)   I followed the pattern instructions.  My goal was to use the fabric that I won in the guild raffle.  

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I checked this book out on a friend's recommendation and finished it in a day and half.  It was very good 

Tan Yunxian was a woman physician in Ming Dynasty China (late 15th/early 16th centuries).  She is known to history because she kept notes about the women she treated. That book was preserved and has been the subject of academic research and publication in recent years.  Lisa See uses that research as the basis for imagining the cultural and social milieu in which Yunxian lived and worked.    Her father was an elite bureaucrat (providing status and wealth).  Her paternal grandmother was a physician, a very unusual role, and she passed her knowledge to Yunxian.  There are glimpses into the Imperial court and the tradesmen class (Yunxian's best friend was a midwife).    

Some descriptions are difficult to take.   Footbinding played a significant role.  Women were socially inferior to men but there was a strict hierarchy to the household:  the mother-in-law was supreme, and she may or may not have liked her daughters-in-law.  Taking a concubine was a regular procedure in even the most loving marriages.   It's hard to imagine the seclusion in which these women lived, not allowed to leave the family compound.  

To add to the fascinating and informative history there's a bit of dramatic mystery -- and Yunxian is the victor.

Linking up with Design Wall Monday Oh Scrap!  Sew and Tell