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A Letter from Caitlyn Paxson
Dear Reader,
Last weekend I woke up to a summery Sunday morning, so I put on a yellow dress and an absurdly large hat and went for a ramble around the farm. I checked on the poppies I planted back in April (tiny), said hello to the tulips (just passed their prime but still beautiful), pondered the veggie garden (mostly bare except for the peas), and picked several rhubarb leaves that were overshadowing some spinach I’m trying to encourage. With everything in the garden slowly ramping up to glory, this last week of May feels like a promise.
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Image Description: Me in a yellow dress and absurdly large hat, holding rhubarb.
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Reading
This month, I’ve been busy with a lot of reading for roundup articles for NPR that will be published later in the summer and fall, but I did have a little time to read for pleasure and I discovered a couple of gems:
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Image Description: A book nestled in white flowers.
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Nicola Griffith’s historical fiction is a must-read for me. If you haven’t read Hilde, her story about an early medieval mystic who becomes a saint, I hope you’ll take this as the sign you need to run out and get your hands on it immediately. Griffith understands that to write historical fiction from this period, you have to world-build, just like you would for a fantasy or science fiction story set in an imagined setting. Her medieval characters don’t think like modern people cosplaying as historical figures. Their every thought and action is influenced by the nuances of their material culture, language, and beliefs. Her new book, Spear, is an Arthurian tale that turns the Grail Quest on its head. It’s short and gorgeously written and pretty much perfect.
And while we’re talking about books that are pretty much perfect, let me tell you about Paladin’s Grace by T. Kingfisher. As you’ll know if you’ve been following along, I’ve recently been delving into the romance genre as I try to write my own romantic fantasy novel. Last month I reviewed Nettle & Bone, T. Kingfisher’s most recent book. I loved it, so now I’m happily investigating her backlist. Paladin’s Grace is the story of a paladin who’s god has died and a perfumer trying to escape her traumatic past and what happens when they get tangled up in a series of crimes and conspiracies.
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Image Description: A book nestled in purple flowers.
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It’s basically a cozy murder mystery romance that happens to take place in a world that feels like the setting for a Dungeons and Dragons campaign. I absolutely adored every page of it. As someone who has played a lot of D&D, I’ll confess that paladins have never held much allure for me – one tends to think of them as the team’s boring killjoy do-gooder. But asking the question of what happens to a holy warrior when their god dies and leaves them all alone completely changed my perspective. Somehow funny, gruesome, and comforting all at the same time, T. Kingfisher’s books are fast becoming new favorites.
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Crafting
Flower season is finally here, my friends! In the last week, spring flowers have been bursting forth all over.
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Image Description: A bouquet of dark purple tulips, narcissus, and bleeding hearts in a mason jar, crown-making in progress.
The Queen of May crown is a half circlet of tulips and narcissus, secured with a ribbon tie. Since these flowers have sturdy stems, I just wired them to each other rather than to any sort of base and then attached the ribbon with more wire. The result was very ostentatious. And of course, our neighbor the farmer turned up to feed his cows just as I was flitting around the apple tree that borders his laneway, trying to get pictures. Reader, I hid in the bushes until he went away. But you’d never know any of that from looking at the pictures!
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Image Description: Me with an elaborate flower headpiece, amongst the apple tree branches.
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Growing
May is the month of garden preparations here on this windy northern island. I added compost, I weeded, I built trellis structures. A few things have sprouted up since I took this picture, but this is still basically what the garden looks like:
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Image Description: An empty garden, beds all ready.
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She looks so empty now, but just you wait until the June newsletter! You won’t even recognize her! All the seeds I started are getting huge. I’ve been hardening them off for a couple of weeks (which means getting them used to outdoor things like direct sun and wind). They are so ready to go out there and get their little roots in the ground, but our last frost date isn’t for over a week yet, so wait they must. This year I’ve had them on a weekly fish emulsion fertilizer regime, and I’ve noticed a real difference in their health and size compared to last year’s seedlings. Carrying trays in and out and mixing jars of fish water may not be the glamourous part of gardening, but it’s what makes the languid strolls through the flowers and bountiful tomato harvests possible!
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Image Description: Tons of seedlings. A week ago, and yesterday.
Enthusing
My mom’s amazing pottery shop on Etsy is back in full-swing as she just had a new kiln installed! She’s posted some absolutely gorgeous pieces, and I hope you’ll go have a look here.
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Image Description: Sea-green mug with a squid handle.
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Interpreting
Last week, we started reopening the site that I manage in the summer months – The Green Park Shipbuilding Museum and Yeo House. It consists of a an exhibit that tells the story of the shipbuilding industry on PEI in the 1800’s, a house built in 1865 by one of said shipbuilders, a blacksmith shop, and a one room school house.
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The Shipbuilding Museum, the schoolhouse with Yeo House in the distance, and Yeo House.
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The site is only open June, July, and August, so it’s always an adventure getting things ready once summer arrives. One of the programs we offer is a ghost tour called The Haunting of Yeo House, which I created last summer. We’ve only been back at the museum for a week and we’ve already had our first haunting incident of the year, which you’d better believe I’ll be adding to the tour! You’ll have to visit and take the tour to hear the whole thing, but let’s just say that one of the house’s many reoccurring antics is to steal items of clothing and then return them in creepy ways. I sometimes joke that this job is kind of like Parks and Rec meets What We Do in the Shadows, as made by the CBC. It’s funny, but it's also true. (Opinions expressed in this newsletter are my own and do not represent the museum, etc.)
And now, I think I’d best wrap things up, because the sun is shining and I’m heading to the Frosty Treat for this season’s inaugural twist cone. I wish you could join me! In the meantime, I leave you with a view of the sea and a promise to return soon with even more flowers, books, and creative antics!
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Image Description: A view of the sea at Cabot Beach.
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Wishing you the best books and the most berry-full brambles,
Caitlyn
I write this from the traditional unceded territory known as Mi’kma’ki. Two books by Indigenous authors that I really enjoyed recently are The Summer of Bitter and Sweet by Jen Ferguson and Mi’kmaq Campfire Stories of Prince Edward Island by Julie Pellissier-Lush.
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