Today’s harvest

This is the earliest raspberries I’ve ever harvested my raspberries. Usually I get maybe three berries before the fourth of July. Today I picked a few in the morning and a lot in the evening. Must have been all the rain. It sure as heck wasn’t the sun. There were a few red raspberries too, […]

Shades of ripe

I seem to be doing pretty good at growing fruit. The yard is full of promise in many different shades of ripe.

Yet another strawberry

I’m shocked. I was right. The mystery volunteer opened a characteristic white flower and confirmed that it is indeed a strawberry. And now that I’ve been flinging half-eaten berries up the hill, I think I know how it got up there. I wonder how many more there are?

Re: Truth

I was totally suckered me in by the sense of mystery in Robert Reed’s “Truth“. The mystery is at first embodied in a prisoner the narrator is watching in preparation for interrogating him. Ramiro, if that’s his real name, is endlessly intriguing: his effortless smiles, his persistent attempts to engage his guards in conversation, and […]

Re: The Occupation of the Architect

“The Occupation of the Architect“, by Jason Heller starts off with a conceit that pulled me in: The buildings pulled themselves out of the ground one morning and decided to speak.

Summer?

Come onnnnn, summer! Daylilies mean summer, right? The solstice means summer, right? What happened to summer?

Re: The Erdmann Nexus

“The Erdmann Nexus,” by Nancy Kress has the trademark detailed descriptions and well-drawn characters, but I have a problem with its One Impossible Thing. The story opens with a slightly confusing passage about a spaceship that’s not the spaceship Dr. Erdmann imagines it to be. Then we actually meet Dr. Henry Erdmann, a physicist retired […]

Pollinator Week

It’s National Pollinator Week. So take a pollinator to lunch this week. In their nests and in the ground Native bees are all around. Hummingbirds and bats and bees Will multiply your fruit with ease. Plant some flowers, plant a bunch, And take a pollinator to lunch! http://nativeplants.msu.edu/

That’s Mr. James Madison to you

Sue is still pretty. He’s still the star of the guppy tank with his flaring red tail all fanned out. The sons of Sue are indeed sons. They’re not quite as big as Sue, but each are clearly chips of the rainbow-sided block . And they’re all doing their best to become dads.

Slow motion juggling

I recently hit a milestone: a rejection that actually said something specific about the story. Which is nice, but the important thing about getting a rejection is it means I submitted a story. That was scary, but it wasn’t nearly as hard as finishing a story.