February 2025
Month in review
February has been, largely, a difficult month. I won't go into all of it, but: UGH. I hope you are all as well, and safe, and warm as you can be.
I've been thinking a lot about building community in the library world. While I completely support the organizers of Storytime Underground in deciding to end that forum, I miss that forum and the work it did. The online library community feels more fragmented than it used to, and I don't yet see a sustainable and reasonable way to change that.
Made & Making
I finally finished a sweater for R that I started, um, I think sometime in 2022 or 2023? It's based on the Marcel cardigan, designed by Emilie Luis, although I didn't follow the pattern precisely. We're both happy with how it turned out and now I'm going to retire from knitting sweaters for a while.
However, I almost immediately started a Find Your Fade shawl. I'm not wild about the lace portions and may fiddle with them as I go on, but I'm happy to be knitting a shawl again!
I also made a little heart garland with tissue paper and washi tape. I'm quite pleased with it!
Garden updates
The first seeds of the year have been planted--onions, leeks, yarrow, and celeriac. Next will be poppies and peppers. I’m attempting to be more organized with seed starting this year--labeling everything properly and picking the right container and place for each type of seed. But we’ve already had a minor disaster--the container where I scattered the yarrow seeds tipped over and the seeds are so tiny that they can’t be spotted. We’ll see--maybe they’ll still come up!
The onions and leeks are sprouting now, which is exciting! And outside, there’s one snowdrop poking up from the mulch. I planted some last fall, so I’m hoping more appear as the weather warms up and the days lengthen. I pruned the fruit trees earlier this month and stuck the prunings into a vase of water, and now they’re sprouting tiny green leaves, which is a delightful surprise
I've also been thinking a lot about the doctrine of self-sufficiency, which comes up in gardening circles, and which I instinctively hate. We've had enough of every man for himself, enough of making our property, our land, into a defensible island, enough of distrust and paranoia. That mindset has been breaking the world for far too long.
Instead, I keep returning to the idea of giving out of what we have, encapsulated in Richard Van Camp's lovely board book May We Have Enough to Share. I love it because it binds together the wish that we will have enough ourselves, and enough to share. Rather than philanthropy, it's mutuality. Rather than hostility, it's love and care.
So that's my wish for the garden this year: may we have enough to share with friends, family, neighbors, even the animals who live in our spaces.
Books & Reading
This month, I read the new Library of America edition of Five Novels by Ursula K. Le Guin, which collects The Lathe of Heaven, The Eye of the Heron, The Beginning Place, Searoad, and Lavinia, plus some related essays. I skipped reading Lavinia, as I reread that one relatively recently. I've read Eye of the Heron before, but the others were new for me.
Le Guin is a writer who I tend to admire, although she has definite flaws. Of the books collected here, I found reasons to like all of them, some more than others. But Eye of the Heron is solidly my favorite–I find the through line about power and resistance interesting and rich, and the repeated image of the round eye is really well done. It comes back with different shades of meaning, like a poem.
The Beginning Place is intriguing and a little melancholy, but here's where I run into Le Guin’s limitations a bit: I simply don't believe in the ending. Irene and Hugh living together is one thing, but changing that into marriage doesn't feel earned for me, and so it deadens the rest of the book, which had felt quite alive.
Of the essays, I liked “The Fisherwoman’s Daughter” the best in the sense that it delves into what writing domestically–in the middle of everyday, family life–looks like and the value in it. I loved the ways Le Guin talks about Jo March as a model for this, and I wish so much that she could have revisited the topic after seeing Gerwig’s version of Little Women.
But it also hit me in tender places. Motherhood is something I want and currently cannot have. I take Le Guin’s point that mothers are used as rhetorical props and not people, when they're considered at all (and agree!). And I liked the ways she includes Alcott and Austen as examples of writers who didn't have their own children but who were still enmeshed in family life. And yet, and yet. It still hurts, every time worth and creation are made synonymous with the ability to physically bear children.
Orr slept. He dreamed. There was no rub. His dreams, like waves of the deep sea far from any shore, came and went, rose and fell, profound and harmless, breaking nowhere, changing nothing. They danced the dance among all the other waves in the sea of being. Through his sleep the great, green sea turtles dived, swimming with heavy inexhaustible grace through the depths, in their element.
From The Lathe of Heaven
Quarter 1 Releases
Young Adult
Honeysuckle & Bone by Trisha Tobias (January): “Carina Marshall is looking to reinvent herself, and what better place to do it than Jamaica, her mother’s alluring homeland where she conveniently has access to an au pair gig for the wealthy and politically powerful Hall family.” I read this one and enjoyed it!
Middle Grade
Radiant by Vaunda Michaux Nelson (January): “As school begins in 1963, Cooper Dale wrestles with what it means to “shine” for a black girl in a predominantly white community near Pittsburgh.”
Will’s Race for Home by Jewell Parker Rhodes (January): “It’s 1889, barely twenty-five years after the Emancipation Proclamation, and a young Black family is tired of working on land they don’t get to own.”
A World Worth Saving by Kyle Lukoff (February): “Covid lockdown is over, but A’s world feels smaller than ever. Coming out as trans didn’t exactly go well, and most days, he barely leaves his bedroom, let alone the house.”
Space Chasers by Joe Caramagna and Leland Melvin with Alison Acton (February): “When a team of brilliant kids-turned-astronauts find themselves in serious trouble in outer space, they must work together to get back home.” (graphic novel) I just read this one and it’s a neat start to a new graphic novel series!
Vanya and the Wild Hunt by Sangu Mandanna (March): “Eleven-year-old Vanya Vallen has always felt like she doesn’t fit in. She’s British-Indian in a mostly white town in England, her parents won’t talk about their pasts, and she has ADHD. Oh, and she talks to books. More importantly, the books talk back.”
A Song for You and I by K. O’Neill (March): “Rowan knows exactly what they want: to be a ranger, protecting their village alongside their trusted flying horse Kes. But when Rowan’s eagerness to show off their worth gets Kes injured, Rowan is suddenly unsure if they’re capable of being the protector they’ve always dreamed of becoming.” (graphic novel)
Adult
Wooing the Witch Queen by Stephanie Burgis (February): “Queen Saskia is the wicked sorceress everyone fears. After successfully wrestling the throne from her evil uncle, she only wants one thing: to keep her people safe from the empire next door.”
The Shots You Take by Rachel Reid (March): “After moving back to his hometown ten years ago, Riley Tuck thought he had left his major league hockey career—and his broken heart—far behind. But when an unexpected tragedy strikes, it brings ex-teammate and former best friend with benefits Adam Sheppard back into his life.”
The Tomb of Dragons by Katherine Addison (March): “Thara Celehar has lost his ability to speak with the dead. When that title of Witness for the Dead is gone, what defines him?”
Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite (March): “Near the topmost deck of an interstellar generation ship, Dorothy Gentleman wakes up in a body that isn’t hers—just as someone else is found murdered.”
Recipes
How good can a cucumber avocado salad be? Well, I made this Cucumber avocado salad recipe from Smitten Kitchen earlier in the month and have now made it at least three times since! It’s amazing as written, but I’ve also mixed up the seasonings a bit--cayenne pepper and lime juice, or apple cider vinegar and mustard--with excellent results.
You can find more recipe notes here!
Where to find me
Wishing you all the happiness of a cat sleeping in the sun,
Maureen