Book Reviews

 Here are a few things I've been reading recently.

The Paris Assignment by Rhys Bowen, Adult historical fiction, 2023.

What it's about: The Paris Assignment follows Madeline during WWII when she becomes a spy for Britain in France after her husband is missing and her son is supposedly killed in a train bombing.

What did I think? Overall, I liked the book. I especially liked the descriptions of the training and missions, which are the major part of the story. However, I found Madeline's hardships and victories to be a bit melodramatically written. 

What did others think? Good Reads and Amazon readers give it an A-.

Flora and Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo, children's fiction (elementary ages), 2013.

What it's about: Flora Belle, who is a self-described cynic and has read every Terrible Things Can Happen to You comic, finds a squirrel, Ulysses, with superpowers after he is sucked up into the neighbor's vacuum cleaner. Her parents are divorced, and her mother wants to kill Ulysses, and her father tries to help Flora save the squirrel. Chaos ensues as they sneak the squirrel away to save it. Throw in quirky neighbors to add to the amusing romp. Through it all, the characters learn about each other and themselves.

What did I think? I enjoyed the book. It was humorous, with heart. The book had numerous pencil drawings, and sometimes the story was written in panels, like the comic books Flora reads. These enhanced the story.

What did others think? The book won the Newbery Award in 2014. The award is given annually for the most distinguished children's book in America.

Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid, Adult fiction, 2022

What it's about: Carrie Soto, a world record-holding tennis player, decides to make a comeback at age 37 after a five-year absence from the game. She is coached by her father and practices with an older male tennis player who is trying to stay in the game. Romance eventually ensues. Carrie is brash and ruthless on the court and off, earning her the nickname of Battle Axe. The second time around, she learns more about herself and empathy for other players she didn't have before.

What did I think? I liked the book, and I think someone would appreciate it even more if they were a tennis player.  Most of the book is about the game of tennis and the tremendous amount of skill and practice that goes into making a championship player. Tension builds throughout the book, as Carrie plays her various matches. I will say that towards the end, I started to skim the details of the matches because I was impatient to see who won.

Reid has a way of making her stories seem like a documentary more than a novel, and this was no exception.

What did others think? Carrie Soto is Back had universally positive reviews (at least the ones I could find) and was #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list.

Magnolia Wu Unfolds It All by Chanel Miller, Children's fiction (elementary age), 2024.

What it's about: Magnolia is lonely and spends every day in her parents' laundry mat. At the laundromat, Magnolia has been pinning up loose socks she finds on a bulletin board, hoping they will find their mates. When Iris moves from California to New York City, Magnolia makes a friend, and they set out to find the socks' owners. They travel around their neighborhood in New York City and learn new things about themselves, their parents, and their neighbors. Also, the girls have to deal with racism along the way.

What did I think? I enjoyed the book and found the premise of looking for socks interesting. The book has many life lessons that are illustrated during the story, and I thought those were well done. For example, Iris is overwhelmed by the busyness of the city, and, in particular, by a flock of pigeons one day. Madeline tells her to pick out just one pigeon and pick out one feature on that pigeon and focus on that to calm herself. 

What did others think? This book was on many bestseller lists and was Amazon's best children's book for 2024. It was also a Newbery Honor Winner.

Until next time...

Thankful Sunday

Happy Father's Day 

I am thankful for my father and Ward. 

My father and mother, and my oldest sister, who first made them parents.
My father was home on leave from the army in this picture.

My father didn't have the easiest time growing up. After some setbacks, his father became an alcoholic to deal with his troubles. My father was the oldest boy and was often the brunt of my grandfather's bad moods. However, he made the dysfunction stop with him, and he provided a stable and loving home. And for that, I am thankful.*

Ward is a good father to Wally and Theo, and for that, I am thankful. It has made my job as a parent much easier.

 Here is an interview I did with Ward a few years ago about his thoughts on being a father.

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Ward is a great father, so I thought I would interview him this Father's Day to get his perspective on the important job of parenting.  I didn't time things very well and waited until he was in the middle of a work project to talk to him. Oops! I very kindly thank him for the time he was able to give me during my interruption.

Tell me about being a father. 

Newborn Wally.
This is when the doubts began.

It's spending your life not being sure what you are supposed to do. How much do I help my kids? How much do I protect them? How much do I give them? How much do I let them fail to learn? Even now that Wally and Theo are adults, I still worry about those things.

As you mentioned, Wally and Theo are now young adults. What do you see when you look at them?
I see responsible, kind people who can have an intelligent conversation and who know how to handle disappointment. Also, I see good drivers, and I am thankful that all of that stressful time of teaching them how to drive seems to have paid off.

Even though you were unsure of what you were doing, you have successfully raised two boys to adulthood. What advice do you have for new dads? 
I'm not sure. I still don't know if I have parenting figured out. But I'll give it a try. Educate yourself, but also use your common sense. Spend time with your kids and let them learn from your examples.

But here's something that Wally said the other day that may be the real key to successful parenting. He said that the best thing we did as parents was to keep trying. We'd try one thing to solve a problem, and it wouldn't work. And then we'd try something else, and it wouldn't work. We'd try another thing, and it wouldn't work either. But finally, we'd try something, and it would work! He is very grateful for the many times we didn't give up when it would have been a lot easier. So for new dads, I'd say, just keep trying.

Thanks. Next time, I'll make an appointment, and we'll have another conversation about some of the details of raising Wally and Theo.

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*Of course, my mother was an important part of this equation.

Until next time...

Throwback Friday

 In yesterday's Throwback Thursday post, I showed the difference between a bumblebee and a carpenter bee. There was some discussion about a bee vs. a wasp, so today I am rerunning a post that I did about that. This one is from May 2015.

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A Second Look Update--Bees

Smaller bee with larger ones to the side

I admit that, as far as bees go, I have very limited knowledge. To me, anything that buzzes and looks like it could sting is a bee. But as most of you know, not everything that looks like that is a bee. Some of them are wasps. And no matter how many times I try to learn the differences between the two, I don't remember for very long what they are. So here it goes again.

A papery, yellow jacket wasp's nest that I found
in the ground while I was weeding.
Yes, I did get stung.

Bees and wasps come from the same Order, Hymenoptera. After that, they differ in their Family, Genus, and Species. (Remember the taxonomy classifications for biology?) If you can get close enough to look at them, there are some physical differences. Bees are hairy, and wasps are smooth. Bees usually have a fatter and rounder abdomen than wasps. And if the buzzing insect is chasing you, it's probably a wasp. Wasps are more aggressive than bees. Find a papery nest in the ground; it belongs to a wasp. Bees make waxy hives. All bees are social insects, but not all wasps are. Some are solitary. Bees eat nectar, but wasps usually eat other insects, unless, of course, you have a can of soda around. 

And the list goes on. There are over 20,000 different species of bees and over 100,000 different kinds of wasps, so if I'm playing the odds, wasps should be my first guess when I'm trying to identify one or the other.

Even though I refamiliarized myself with some basic bee and wasp knowledge, I was at a loss to explain what I saw about a month ago during a Second Look. I saw a smaller bee/wasp attach itself to the bottom of a different kind of bee/wasp. So it was time to go for help. The first place I turned was my bee expert--a friend who raises honey bees. I sent her pictures and asked her what was going on. She had no idea, so she sent them to her local county extension agent. The extension agent had no idea what was going on, either, so she sent them to an entomology professor she knew at a large university. He didn't have a good answer, so he showed the pictures to all of his colleagues. And none of them could give a good explanation of what they saw. 

Smaller bee attached to the bottom of larger bee

However, here is the information that they did provide for what they saw in the pictures above.

The responses I have gathered from my colleagues agree that this type of interaction with carpenter bees* is unusual. Bees sometimes get in territorial disputes, but this doesn't appear to be the case in the pic.  Everyone agrees that the bee on the carpenter bee is probably not doing any harm.  Based on what they could tell from the photo and the host plant they are on, they believe the other bee is in the genus Osmia (e.g., blue orchard bee).  Why they are interacting like this is unclear. 

So I didn't get a definitive answer to my question, but I did learn a lot while looking for an answer. Now, let's see how long I can remember it. :)

*I called the big bees bumble bees in the original post, but they're not. They are carpenter bees as evidenced by their smooth abdomen. If they had been bumble bees, this area would have been hairy. Live and learn.

But Wait There's More:
--Did you know that male bees don't sting? The stinger is a modification of an ovipositer--an egg layer, so male bees have never had one to modify. This may be common knowledge for those of you in the know, but it was fascinating news to me.
--A good paint job is a good deterrent to the carpenter bees.

Sources:
http://www.diffen.com/difference/Bee_vs_Wasp

http://animals.pawnation.com/there-kind-bee-doesnt-sting-10377.html

http://www.everythingabout.net/articles/biology/animals/arthropods/insects/bees/

And some others that disappeared when my computer crashed. :(

Throwback Thursday

 Today, we're going back to June 2015, when I showed the difference between bumble bees and carpenter bees. I have since also learned that the carpenter bees usually show up earlier in the season than bumble bees, and they like the wooden bench on the front porch. Some day, the bench is going to fall down with all of the holes in it. As soon as we plug up one hole, a new one is drilled.

So, here's the throwback to June 18, 2015, which BTW was also on a Thursday. 

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More about Bees

I have explained before that I don't have much knowledge about bees or wasps, but I'm very slowly learning. This week, I was finally able to document one of the differences between carpenter bees and bumble bees. Before this year, big, yellow, and black striped bees were all bumble bees to me. As it turns out, I learned that carpenter bees look similar to bumble bees; however, carpenter bees are larger and have smoother abdomens, while bumble bees have furry abdomens. And from my experience, bumble bees move a lot faster and more often from bloom to bloom. So for a few weeks now, I thought I had been seeing bumble bees instead of carpenter bees, but they wouldn't hold still long enough to know for sure. Yesterday, I finally got a picture that confirmed my suspicions.

Notice the fuzzy abdomen of the bumblebee on the left and the smooth abdomen of the carpenter bee on the right.

So my knowledge is slowly increasing. Who knows? Maybe soon I will be able to reliably tell a bee from a wasp at first sight. Or maybe not. :)

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Until next time...

Live and Learn

I think we all learn something every day. That's just part of living. Sometimes it's big, and sometimes it's small. From time to time, I think that I should do a regular feature here about things I've learned, you know, because I have Live and Learn in the name of my blog. However, my follow-through is not always the best.😏 But today, I'm going to make it happen. Here it goes. Some things I've learned recently.

It took way too long to put this sticky straw
around the tomato plants.

1. Straw made for covering up grass seeding is very sticky. Occasionally, we buy a bale of straw to mulch around various plants. Last fall, we bought a bale at our local Southern States like we always do. However, it was very difficult to pull apart. Annoyingly so. It turns out that we got straw coated with something sticky to be used for seeding, so that it won't blow away. You can be sure that we will be very careful when we purchase straw again to know what kind we're buying.

Costco chicken

2. Costco's Kirkland Signature brand is 30 years old, and the worldwide celebration for this is happening at a Maryland depot. (Knowing these kinds of things happens when your son works there.) I think the most popular Kirkland product is the $4.99 rotisserie chicken. Costco sells enough of them that they raise their own chickens, and last year, they sold over 157 million. However, I consulted with Theo, and he said that if you didn't count gasoline, the most popular item is probably toilet paper. :)

3. Speaking of Costco, their stores are called warehouses, and their distribution centers are called depots. Theo works in a depot. I confused the two when I first learned this.

It's been over a month, and
I'm still waiting on this parsley to sprout.

4. If it's important or takes a lot of prep work, it pays to use newer seeds. I planted 6 packages of old seeds, and only two (seeds, not packets) of them sprouted. There were some flowers, some veggies, some in pots, some in the ground. All of these were a hopeful experiment, and luckily, the lack of results is not of much consequence. On the things that really mattered to me, like tomatoes, I used newer seeds.

These peas have been good both for pod eating and shelling.

5. Peas come in purple and yellow varieties. Uncle Billy gave me some extra pea seeds he had that have purple and yellow pods. I've only seen green ones before. The peas are doing well (new seeds), and it's fun to see the new varieties.

This is what the peas look like on the inside--more like the peas I know.

Well, nothing earth-shattering in this list. It's funny how I know that I'm processing new information all the time, but nothing much came to mind as I was writing this. Maybe I should keep a list. We'll see how I do with follow-through on that. 😀

Until next time...

Thankful Sunday

 I am thankful for the kindness of strangers.

Last Tuesday, Ward and I went with friends to see a John Prine tribute concert at Wolf Trap. Wolf Trap is a National Park for the Performing Arts in Virginia. The stage is surrounded by open-air covered seating and lawn seating, and is a magical place to watch a concert (if the weather cooperates, which it did).

When we made our way back to our car, we found the battery was dead. After a bit of asking around, we found someone with jumper cables and someone else who gave our car a jump. Soon, we were finding our way home.

So, for the kindness of strangers who helped us start our car, I am thankful.

Throwback Thursday

 It's time for another Throwback Thursday, when I will visit a post from the past that was from the same week. (As an aside, when I think about it, Throwback Thursdays were popular years ago, so maybe the concept of doing a Throwback Thursday is a throwback in itself.😄)

Today, we're going back to June 2011 when we had been strawberry picking. I haven't noticed local strawberries being available yet, but I should look around because the season is short.

Without further ado...

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Strawberries for Now

It's strawberry season. That time when the aromatic, sweet, and juicy strawberries are ripe. We were very fortunate this year because Aunt Martha had a lush strawberry patch that she shared with us. We quickly consumed the first batch of berries we picked, but luckily, we were invited to pick more.

Strawberries from Aunt Martha

Wally was excited with this prospect and started discussing everything we could do with them—make strawberry shortcake, make smoothies, make jam, and the list went on. 

So we set off one afternoon to go picking. As we were picking, Wally asked me if I remembered one of his favorite books from when he was a child, called Blueberries for Sal. 

In this book, a little girl named Sal goes blueberry picking with her mother but finds herself eating the berries faster than they can fill the bucket. He said he was reminded of the book because he was doing something similar. However, we did end up with some to take home.

When we poured our berries into a container, there weren't as many as we had hoped for, but we still planned to make strawberry jam. However, when I returned to the kitchen a couple of hours later, all of the berries were gone. I guess the fresh berries were just too tempting.

Now you see them.       Now you don't.

I started to be annoyed, but changed my mind. We could enjoy the strawberries now, or we could enjoy them later, and I guess now was okay. I reminded myself about the practice that is hard for me—being in the moment. That helped. Then I didn't feel so guilty about my part in the disappearing berries.

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Until next time...

Visiting with Sea Creatures

Recently, Ward's cousin, Cynthia, was visiting from Guatemala. One of our outings during her stay was a visit to the National Aquarium in Baltimore's Inner Harbor. It's been several years since we last visited, and we were pleasantly reminded of how much we like it. Below are pictures from our outing. Probably more than you want to see, but the animals were just so darn interesting. 

First up are the jellyfish, perhaps my favorite exhibit. They floated and glided so effortlessly that I found them mesmerizing. 

Fluorescent flower hat jellyfish

Egg-yolk jellyfish

Upside-down jellyfish that lie on the bottom with their tentacles up.

Tiger jellyfish

Not sure what kind these are, but we got to pet similar ones in a petting pool. They felt firm with a squishy layer on top.

Spotted jellyfish

And the giant display of glass jellyfish. 😉

On the top floor of the aquarium, you leave the water and enter the tropical rainforest. Cynthia felt right at home here, as many of the plants featured grow where she lives.

This banana tree, with its blooms and bananas forming, reminded me of the one time we got bananas from our tree in New Orleans. (Look to the right of the big yellowed leaf near the top to see the bananas.)

There were colorful birds, including parrots...

and scarlet ibis.

The real star of the rainforest display was the sloth. 

The poison dart frogs were not allowed to roam freely like the rest of the rainforest animals, so we saw these brightly colored frogs behind glass. It was pretty dark, so not the best pictures. The frogs ranged in size from about 1/2 inch to 2 inches.

This tiny frog had a very big voice.

A few other things we saw:

Green moray eel

Puffins

And no visit to an aquarium would be complete without seeing sharks.

After our visit, we made it home in time to go line dancing. A busy, but fun day.

Until next time...

Thankful Sunday

 I am thankful for my father-in-law.

Ward's cousin, Cynthia, decorated the cake.

Yesterday, we celebrated my FIL's 93rd birthday. It was a typical family afair in his backyard with family and friends. With fans, plenty of shade structures, and cold drinks, the 90-degree temperatures weren't too bad. Add to that music and little kids running around, and it was a festive time indeed.

The family band. Ward's father is playing the bongos.

My father-in-law has lived a good life despite some tragedies and contributed positively to the lives of so many others. And as part of this life, he and my mother-in-law raised four amazing children, including Ward. I have definitely benefited from this.

So, for the wonderful human being my father-in-law is and the excellent example he set for Ward, I am thankful.

Until next time...

Catch up or Throwback Thursday, the Recent Edition

 I see that it's been a week since I've posted, so instead of Throwback Thursday, looking back to something years ago, this one is going to look back to last week.

A new rose bush bloomed in time for our guests.

Ward's cousin, Cynthia, is visiting from Guatemala. In preparation for her visit, we've been cleaning and sprucing up things around the house since this was the first time she has visited us here. You know, dusting the baseboards that you usually don't see, hanging the pictures you forgot you had and meant to hang, fixing the two faucets that broke in one day, weeding the flower beds, etc. By the time we were done, things looked pretty good.

Cynthia is on a two-week visit and visiting with various family members throughout that time. Last Saturday, she came to our house, and we had a party for her. Ward smoked a pork shoulder, and I made a big pan of jambalaya, among other things. It also happened to be Theo's birthday, and he requested a pineapple upside-down cake. I hadn't made one in years, but luckily it turned out well.

Cynthia and Ward looking at a binder of some of his woodworking projects while we're waiting on some other family members.

After the party, she stayed with us for a few days, and we were busy from early in the morning until late at night. We showed her some of the sights and took her shopping for things she can't find in Guatemala. Yesterday, we did a handoff to the next set of people she will be visiting. And on Saturday, we will all gather for a 93rd birthday celebration for Ward's dad.

Cynthia was an easy house guest, and luckily, she has pretty good English. That was fortunate because the only Spanish I know is from what I learned from Sesame Street years ago. 😄

Today, we have been playing catch-up, and I have almost put away everything from the party, and the guest linens are washed. Then it's time to switch gears and prepare for Saturday's big birthday party.

Another time, I'll show you some of the places we visited, but I gotta get back to work now.

Until next time...