Hawkweed

Lately these leggy yellow flowers are all over the coneflowers. They look a bit like dandelion flowers, but the dandelion flowered in spring; it’s high summer now, totally the wrong season. Plus there are candelabra of flowers on each plant, and it’s a lot taller. Hawkweed. So, any guesses why I’m interested in it?

Re: The Cosmic Express

Not so long ago, Beam Me Up dusted off the old hand-crank and sent the wayback machine chugging to 1930 with a reading of “The Cosmic Express,” by Jack Williamson. Mr. Eric Stokes-Harding, a writer of men’s adventure stories, lives in a 25th century completely devoid of adventures. In fact, the world is just as […]

Re: Matter

Usually I enjoy Iain M. Banks, so I was excited to see him return to the Culture with Matter. I was not so excited to see how thick it was. I was even less excited to plow through palace politics with a lost heir, an evil vizier, a naïve prince, and a superhuman warrior sister […]

What Butterfly Bush?

You know you’re obsessed with bees when you buy a Butterfly Bush (or Buddleia) because there are gigantic bees buzzing all over it. Meanwhile, there was a plant sprouting in my yard that I half-knew what it was but couldn’t quite name it, until I plunked down the storebought Buddleia. I took one look and […]

Re: The Great Warming

Before the Little Ice Age, there was the Medieval Warm Period. In Western Europe, the centuries around the first millenium were a time of mostly long, warm summers and a steady rise in prosperity. But of course, climate is global, and most of the rest of the world didn’t fare so well. In The Great […]

Re: Family Values

In a wonderful example of graceful worldbuilding,”Family Values“, by Sara Genge plunges you into an alien society without stopping to explain. An alien society where females gain power by bearing children and keeping house, and teachers are high status? That’s different. An alien society where males aim to ingratiate themselves with breeding females? That’s familiar. […]

Re: Journey Between Worlds

Just in case you don’t have enough summer reading, the Rocket Girls Reading Club offers science fiction featuring girls in space. One that draws a vivid portrait of life on Mars is Journey Between Worlds, by Sylvia Engdahl. Unlike most scifi heroes, the last thing Melinda Ashley wants is to leave home. At first, when […]

Goldenrod

The coneflowers have been feeding bees for weeks now. So have the veronica, the wood sorrel, the St. John’s wort, and the bladder campion. It’s starting to get boring, all that growing and flowering and growing and flowering. Even the squash blossoms are getting familar. So it’s nice to see goldenrod join the crowd, complete […]

Re: Crazy Glue

Like “The Spray,” one magical object says something about fickleness and love in “Crazy Glue” by Etgar Keret. The story is so short, this animation of it might take longer to watch than just reading it. But a lot happens between the lines, as in this early exchange, when the narrator argues with his wife […]

Squash lift veil of mystery

Which mystery squash do you pick?