I finished reading a book gifted to me by a long-time friend when she discovered my favorite book in the whole world is Gene Stratton-Porter’s LADDIE–a book my mother read to me an my sisters more than once.
I enjoyed every minute of reading THE KEEPER OF THE BEES which my friend sent to me. This novel was Stratton-Porter’s last novel–written before her automobile was hit by a trolley in Los Angeles in 1924, where she was working in the film industry due to the success of her writing.
My friend and I were born in 1944 and 1945 during WW2, which was only a little over 20 years from Stratton-Porter’s 1924 publishing of THE KEEPER OF THE BEES. Her novel LADDIE was among her earlier books.
My friend and I were Air Force “brats” who lived in military communities that had strong ties to the world Stratton-Porter details in her novels. It was an era of patriotism, belief in God, strong families, sacrificies made for “doing the right thing,” honesty, truth, character, sturdy educations in the classics and reading, and so on. Her protagonists have very strong connections to nature, and she writes in a time when there are a lot of small communities where people are strongly connected to each other. In Stratton-Porter’s novels, bad men and women fail dramatically. And shame does not just affect a person who didn’t “do the right thing”; shame falls too on those nearby–on families, communities, the innocent, and so on.
I miss much about that world, that country.
My son and DIL gave me a camellia and a Texas Sage plant for my birthday this year. Both are planted now and are thriving. I went out to water the Texas Sage and its adjacent plants the other day, and it was COVERED with pink flowers!
I had some help digging out the liriope plants in this bed–planted before I bought this house. This bed gets direct, really hot morning sun, and the liriope was so not happy there. While at the nursery with DIL Corinne, I also got a phlox (Intensia) and a Veronica that hopefully will take the heat in this bed. The white pipe is the discharge pipe for my water filtration system. These plants will spread and fill up this space.
I am still playing with the Cat’s Cradle rulers. I wanted to see if the 4-inch and 8-inch blocks would play nice with each other.
They do. These 4 rows are sewn together and make a big block that will be 1/4th of a quilt top that will meaure 64 by 64, like the first top. Butting up the seams between the blocks has been an issue and I’m exploring whether or not I can press differently when sewing the block parts together. Can all those seams be pressed open?
The second block is now organized, and I’ll sew it together later today and connect it to the first block. (On the left is the finished first top and its backing, waiting for the longarm.). Then it will be on to the other side and its two blocks.
One grandson is now home from his travels (Thailand). The other one landed in Laos yesterday and will be in Asia for the rest of June. My granddaughter leaves on her sail in a wooden boat to Spain this next weekend. Everyone else has their feet on American soil, LOL.
The Japanese beetles seem to be slowing down now. I have picked at least a thousand off my roses and nearby plants. Next spring I’ll put down something around the roses that the Japanese beetle grubs will hopefully eat–Bacillus Thuringiensis, which is a naturally occurring soil bacterium that is toxic to some insect larvae, but not to humans or mammals in general.
The weather is beautiful, though we have storms coming through again. We always already need rain here in the tropics. My grass got fertilized and is thriving. It is so pretty this year.
And now it is time for my main meal on the back porch, where I will start the next book in Jan Karon’s Mitford series: HOME TO HOLLY SPRINGS. I’m baking some cod and stir frying some spinach in butter with some garlic. The seedless watermelon has already been cut up, and my pears on the counter are almost ripe. There will be no starch today as I have picked up two pounds–from all the summer fruit of course.
Have a great week next week!
Louisa Enright's Blog 