the heat presses down equally everywhere
Hello my friends,
Summer is my enemy; a long, hot season in which the world blooms around me and I determinedly huddle in my home. I am not a creature of heat. I am most comfortable in a room that is just this side of too cold, an atmosphere that encourages me to don a sweatshirt, a blanket, socks. Summers in Virginia do none of those things, and despite that fact that I have spent nearly every single summer of my near-37 years of life here, I remain in awe of the season's ability to hound me. So it is with something like chagrin that I find myself emerging from a bad depression just as the seasons tick over into the one I like least.
Last fall, I bought 2 fig trees. I had just visited a friend in Washington, D.C., who has the world's most impressive balcony garden, and she had fed me figs grown right on a tree in a pot. I love figs and growing plants in posts, so surely, I thought, if someone can manage a fig tree on a balcony in DC, then I can manage one with my yard in Virginia. So I got 2 trees--one a Brown Turkey and the other a Chicago Hardy. I doted on them, even as they started dropping leaves. I moved them around the outside of the house, trying in vain to find a place which would make them happy. By the end of the fall, they were both barren. I was convinced I had killed them. When we brought all the plants in from the porch for the winter, I left them there, too sad to do anything else.
In April, they roared back to life. They sprouted leaves, and then--miracle of miracles--fruit! I moved them into the full sun and thought--if I do nothing else this summer, if I can only just manage to pull myself through each day, then I will also do this: I will keep these trees alive. I will not let the sun scorch them. I will let them soak up the rain and give them water on each hot, hot day. I will protect them from foragers passing through the yard. And maybe, at the end of it, I will eat the fruit that they've produced.
Dog Thing
Mixed Media
It's been a while but I'll try not to drown you in recs!
good reads: I have been in a major reading slump, but have managed a few good books. A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers is the first in a new series of novellas about a monk in a post-industrial world who befriends a robot which has been sent by its people to make contact with humanity. It's a beautiful odd couple story and, as always with a Chambers book, the way she imagines that humans have the capacity to live with one another is the best part. I read The Long Game by Rachel Reid, the sequel to one of my favourite romance novels. Loved it. Ilya is there, and he gets a dog. Continuing in the low-stakes trend which I am only just now recognizing, I read Legend and Lattes by Travis Baldree, about an orc who retires from adventuring and opens a coffee shop. It's lovely, and it's getting a release from Tor, which you can preorder at that link.
good film: I saw Everything Everywhere All At Once, which is as great as everyone has said and you will experience the full range of human emotions. I was fortunate to see it in a cinema full of people also experiencing those emotions, which greatly added to my enjoyment. Just a stunning, brave work of film. I saw The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, mostly because of this thing I have where I think Pedro Pascal is very handsome, but I genuinely loved it! It's a sort of love letter to movies that you don't see often in film--valuing them not only as works of art, but for their potential to connect people. It's also very funny and Pedro Pascal is at his handsomest, I think (I am an expert). Finally, I watched Fire Island, and adored it. Beautiful, joyful, queer film and I think the best modern adaptation of Pride & Prejudice.
good tv: I have been deep in the Star Treks. I finally watched Star Trek: Discovery season 4, which I loved but think it did suffer from Covid filming restrictions (lots of people very clearly in different rooms from one another), and then started Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which is head-to-toe a delight. It's funny, there are primary colors, everyone is extremely good looking. That's my pitch. In between new SNW episodes I have also been watching Star Trek: Deep Space Nine for the first time, and loving it. My favourites are Kira, Odo, and all of the mugs. In non-Trek tv, I watched all of The Owl House which is currently available streaming and am now sitting consumed with impatience waiting for the rest. Good show.
good games: After playing my original Hades game for REDACTED hours, I decided it was time to bring it to an end...and then promptly started a new game. It's been very fun reliving the early days of playing this game, which I know so well now, and a surprisingly different experience this time around! I have also been replaying Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, mainly due to watching the new Obi-Wan show and seeing the similarities and thinking "I could be doing this but with a small friend on my shoulder."
good fic: Convergence Zones by glimmerglanger. Clone Wars, Obi-Wan/Cody. A modern/fantasy AU in which Jedi hunt monsters and the clones are a sort-of robot army designed to prevent the end of the world. I read this all the way home on a cross-country flight and it kept me rapt.
Ten Degrees Below Zero by kianspo. Star Trek, Kirk/Spock. This is an AU set just slightly to the left of trek movie canon. Spock is reassigned to serve as a weather office on a remote base, where he meets Kirk, the head of engineering just barely holding the place together. A fun romp of a mystery that also scratched the competency porn itch that's always lurking in the back of my brain.
Gentle Antidote by x_los. Lord Peter Wimsey, Peter/Harriet. This is a soulmate AU, which I don't frequently go for, but it works perfectly for Peter and Harriet, who have a (one-sided) love-at-first-sight meeting in canon. Wonderful banter. Just a delight.
baseball AU by jimmytiberius. Clone Wars, Obi-Wan/Cody, Gen. I've been reading/rereading this series in which jedi are recast as pitchers in an impressively complex AU.
Lastly
If you occupy the same online spaces that I do, this will not be news to you, but if you do not you must allow me to tell you about Dracula Daily, a newsletter sending out (not quite daily) missives from the novel Dracula, which is epistolary, so perfectly formatted for just this. I've never read Dracula, so I am having a grand time. It started on May 3rd and is currently on a pause (because of when things are dated in the novel), so if you want to jump in it's the perfect time.
A small personal project: I have been working on a blog featuring the work of Félix Vallotton, a Swiss painter who worked in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and is a personal favourite. Follow it here.