Rilla knows we don’t water the plants when the sun is shining full on them. Shortly after I began work this afternoon, a note came sliding under my door:
IT IS THE SADE PORT AF THE DAY
As I was deciphering it (yellow crayon on white paper: tricky), a second note whooshed in:
SO SH I WODR MY PLANS
There was a new watering can awaiting her, you see. (Hot pink, of course, as everything must be, including draneyoms.) I opened the door, found her bouncing (because that is how one waits). Yes, you should water your plants now, and mine too, if you wouldn’t mind.
She didn’t mind. š
First up: Into the Thicklebit | Overheard.
Next thing: We’re talking books in the comments of this post—Kristin Lavransdatter and Papa’s Wife. Got other Scandinavian favorites?
Next thing, for San Diego locals: My signing’s on Saturday! Yellow Book Road @ beautiful Liberty Station in Point Loma, 3pm. Come! Say hi! Eat cookies! Listen to me attempt a Scottish accent! (Serves me right for writing characters in dialect.)
Other shareworthy links in my sidebar.
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We have an excursion to City Farmers Nursery planned for this afternoon. Rilla is planting her own butterfly garden. (The one that spans the width of our backyard isn’t enough for her, evidently.) š She’s making a list. Excuse me, I mean a LEIST. So far, she’s got:
1. MiLKWED
2. HOT PENK DRANEYOM (hot pink geranium)
I can’t wait to see what’s next. š
From Tiina Nunnally‘s introduction to her translation of Kristin Lavransdatter:
Sigrid Undsetās great gift as a writer might best be described in her own appraisal of Charlotte BrontĆ«, whom she much admired: “[Her] sense of self is grounded in her awareness that her art is bitterly true, that her talent is merely the courage to look honestly into her own heart. [She] wished to depict life and reality the way they areālife and reality as they existed in her own heart, in the limitless possibilities of her heart, in her dreams and yearnings, in the mirages of hunger and thirstāand in all the tiny gray-pebble days over which life flows.”
And this:
Undset had been an avid botanist. As an eighteen-year-old she described in a letter her love of nature as āthat hypnotic immersion in the corolla of a rose when you have stared at it for so long that all outlines are erased and you become dizzy with crimson.ā She said that she longed to ādisappear into nature so that you cease to feel or think, but with all your senses you greedily draw in the light and colors, the rustling of leaves and the trickling of underground streams, the sun and the shifting shadowsāthat is happiness, nirvana.ā
…back up to speed. Scott’s home, had a great time, has excellent brothers. I am working this afternoon, and it is delicious. Can’t blog yet, too much to catch up on, but today’s Thicklebit is another glimpse of the behind-the-scenes here in the Bloody Glen. BONNY. I meant Bonny, of course.
Comments are off
Coming up fast! Please join me on Saturday, Sept 29, at The Yellow Book Road bookstore in San Diego’s Liberty Station (2750 Historic Decatur Road) to celebrate the launch of Inch and Roly Make a Wish, Fox and Crow Are Not Friends, and The Prairie Thief.
Hope to see you there!
Scott’s out of town, ergo I am out of steam. All I can do today is link to the new Thicklebit. This is the one for which one of Scott’s panel descriptions read:
Mom is working in the kitchen. There’s a bunch of fruits and veggies on the counter. (This is the least realistic panel description I have ever written, and two days ago I wrote a shot description in which the Hulk picks up Thor and hurls him into the sky.)
Next week after he comes home, I will totally think of a witty comeback. For now, I have to go fold some laundry. LAUNDRY, you guys. Preposterous. Frederick the Mouse never had to do laundry, is all I’m saying.
The artist, working extremely hard
Remember when you ordered that gorgeous set of maps to go with the Holling C. Holling books? You know, the ones on printed creamy cardstock, ready and waiting for the giant set of Prismacolor pencils you got for a steal at Timberdoodle? And your oldest child dutifully filled in about half of Paddle-to-the-Sea’s route before everyone’s interest wandered elsewhere (a new set of timeline stickers arrived, most likely), leaving the poor little canoe to spend the next decade bobbing in the middle of the lake that looks like a pickle?
Yeah, that set of maps.
Your youngest children want you to know they really appreciate the purchase. That sturdy cardboard storage tube totally lives up to its marketing copy.
If you’re looking for the maps, they’re under the old Brio train table covered in Cuisenaire rods.
Last night I rashly agreed to help Rilla cut out some paper “decorations” for a Brambly Hedge scene she wants to create. In my head, decorations meant some flowers, maybe a ladybug or two? That is, things within my extremely limited skill set.
My daughter’s vision is somewhat bolder. Here’s the list she presented me with:
1. Berries
2. Hawks and eagles.
3. Butterflies.
4. Flowers. (I wasn’t totally delusional, at least.)
5. Bees and (to spell it like she pronounced it) wasp-es.
I’m hoping she’ll agree to do the heavy lifting—the drawing—if I promise to wield the scissors. š
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p.s. New Thicklebit today! And I don’t think I linked to last Thursday’s, either.