Summer of My Discontent

SUJATA MASSEY

I have a sentimental relationship with summer. To me it’s a season where certain traditions find their way into three months. I have grand expectations for June to August. I'll know that I'll eat a few dozen ears of corn on the cob. I anticipate getting at least my toes into the ocean or bay or a lake, with good company beside me. I look forward to a few roadtrips with a packed cooler of good food. Riding in my car, I expect to keep hearing a pop song that’s mysteriously caught on with so many deejays that it’s become the de facto summer anthem. During my singleton days, there would also often be a summer romance that would begin in May or June and end before Halloween. Summer always brought tastes of peach cake, berry pies, and homemade ice cream.

I’m older now, and if you asked me two days ago about how things are lining up with expectation, I'd say the only consistency is that the corn has been good. In the midst of a heatwave, my husband and I left 90-plus Baltimore on a strenuous drive to move our son to Nashville, where the weather was even worse. This summer, we got no closer to a body of water than driving by the Baltimore Inner Harbor.  

Oh, this summer does seem to be the one which rebels against pattern. Covid walloped me coming home from a late spring trip to Greece. The good news was I only felt ill for one day—and as far as I know, none of my contacts caught it. But a month after Covid, two insect bites appeared on one arm, both ringed with round scarlet rashes. I didn't think tick bites ever came in twos and was ready to believe it was spider bites, but muscle and joint aches and brain fog followed. I went on Doxycline for two weeks. Yesteryear's summer romance had morphed into a dangerous one-night stand with someone who wanted to leave me with Lyme Disease, Ehrlichiosis, Babesiosis or Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. All over the US in 2025, tick-borne illness is exploding, and I remain very grateful to have been prescribed medicine which actually fought the infection.  I recovered, re-emerging from health anxiety into a city where the heat had stayed brutal from its late June on set into early August. 

When I read a weather forecast and know the day will be miserable, I rise at 5 a.m. to experience a few pleasant hours.One of my great pleasures during these times is reading the Sunday New York Times with morning coffee on my front porch, which has a gently whirring ceiling fan. I tried to keep the tradition going, but reading the papers these days makes me anxious. Famine and death and invasion of Gaza, and more than 60,000 people in America dragged off to detention, mostly without due process. And then I see articles about  discontinuing vaccines, shutting down science research, firing government service workers, and shackling universities to censorious oversight. The Voting Rights Act is at risk, and the National Guard have already been sent by the president to break up protests in Los Angeles and remove the homeless from Washington DC. 

I don't know if there is a pop song that’s evocative of this summer; it would probably be too profane for me. I’ve been busy listening to podcasts, though. Favorite are The Ezra Klein Show, We Can Do Hard Things, Rick Steves Travel, and, to fall asleep, Nothing Much Happens. One day, I heard a cookbook author being interviewed on the PBS radio cooking show, Splendid Table. The author, Nicole Rucker, was describing elements of her unorthodox pastry and cake recipes to show host Francis Lam, and I started to salivate. I realized that I hadn’t had a single piece of pie yet. Poor me!

A few days later, I got blueberries and blackberries at the Saturday farmers' market, and I also bought the cookbook. Fat+Flour. I got going on a Monday, right around the time I should have been making a sensible, sugar-free dinner. But I had a couple of sticks of Kerry Gold butter and was going for broke. 

Straight off, I’ll say that the book's subhead promises "a simple bake," and the recipe I followed for Blueberry-Lavender Pie involved many hours of work—starting with making a crust dough that needs chilling to set up before it’s rolled. My freezer was opened and shut for various processes, including freezing half the fruit for the pie, chilling the liquid that goes into the crust, which and then chilling the pie pan with a crimped crust, and later the fully assembled pie with its tasty cream-cheese-butter-flour crumb topping. With oven time of one-hour, the entire process took me almost 5 hours. I found that I really didn’t mind cooking for so long, just for myself, in a quiet, air-conditioned kitchen. The process of following steps was so complicated that allowed me to focus. I've heard of moving meditation. Is there such a thing as a cooking meditation? 

I waited almost the recommended hour to cut into the warm pie. The butter-flour-sugar-salt-cider vinegar crust had strength and tenderness and a great flavor. The berry filling—different from the recipe because I added blackberries, and a lavender-lemon syrup instead of culinary lavender—was tartly glorious. This pie reminded me of the mythical marvels I’ve tasted at roadside diners and pie shops in small-town Wisconsin and Northern Minnesota. But no Crisco in this pie--just Irish butter, three different kinds of sugar and berries from Black Rock Orchard, a steadfast fruit farm I've known for decades.

I wasn't planning on blogging when I was baking and eating last night. I wish I had a picture to show you of the whole pie . . but this is what I’ve got left. I’ll eat a bit more every day. And I will bake another pie, using this book, no matter how complicated it might be. Pie-making brought summer back to me, it's just that simple. 

Summertime in Tokyo

 -- Susan, every other Sunday

One of the many things I love about living in Japan is the way the country changes with the seasons--and it's not only the weather that changes. Everything from menus to clothes to decorations shifts to mark and harmonize with the changing temperatures.

Tokyo's rainy season "officially" begins in early June--and given the weather the last few days, I'd say it's now upon us. From now until the end of July, we'll have showers and/or thunderstorms just about every day, though fortunately they don't normally last too long. (On a lot of days, they'll come and go all day, though.)

While I'm not that fond of the heat and humidity of Tokyo summers, I do love taking walks in my neighborhood under the fresh, green canopy of new leaves on the cherry trees.

Fresh green leaves in Meguro

Earlier this week, I bid a sad farewell to hot coffee...for the most part, I'll be drinking the iced version until fall.

Goodbye, old friend. I'll see you soon. (Though not soon enough, if I must be honest.)

The local wildlife loves the warmer weather. The turtles at the shrines, and in the parks, have come out of hibernation and are soaking up the rays when the sun is shining.

Welcome back, little guy! Did you have a nice sleep?

While walking through Ueno Park a couple of weeks ago, I noticed the swan boats are also out of hibernation, and back in service for the summer. A paddle on the lake is a popular way to escape the summer heat--and yes, this park is in the center of downtown Tokyo.

Swan Boats in Ueno Park - a sure sign of summer.

The last of the cherry blossoms fell several weeks ago, but on the day I took this walk, a few "late bloomers" were still scattered on the ground.

"dove" in Ueno Park.

For the most part, though, the trees are brilliant green.

In a few months, this pond will be full of giant lotuses

I also saw a cormorant sunning himself at the edge of the lake - a rare sight in central Tokyo, though the birds are not that uncommon in other parts of Japan.

Even cormorants love the summer sun

As the summer stretches on, the days will get hotter and muggier. By August, when we've reached the "drinkable air" portion of the summer, I know I'll be desperate for autumn--and not only because it's my favorite season of the year. But now, with the bloom still (literally) on the rose, I can't help but welcome summer's vibrant colors, pleasant warmth, and tasty treats. Any day now, the shops will start selling kakigori (traditional Japanese shaved ice), and with tourism poised to reopen (and already starting, slowly and on a small scale), I'm looking forward to friends and family returning to Japan as well.

Like the swan boats, I'm out of hibernation and ready for some summer fun!

Hello, summer!

  How do you welcome summer in your part of the world? I'd love to hear!

White Wine in the Sun

It's sand not snow for Christmas in New Zealand

Craig every second Tuesday

Kia ora and gidday everyone. 

"Sleigh bells ring, are you listening, In the lane, snow is glistening ..."

With more than 200 cover versions, ranging from classics like Big Crosby and Ella Fitzgerald to modern takes from Michael Buble and Radiohead, since it was first sung in the 1930s, those first lines of "Winter Wonderland" have become synonymous with Christmas across films, television shows, radio, and just shopping at this time of year. 

Growing up in New Zealand it was always kind of amusing that so much of the Christmas theming was wintry - snow, sleighs, chestnuts roasting over open fires, Jack Frost nipping at toes. And yeah, folks dressed up like 'Eskimos' (Inuit, if Nat King Cole had written "The Christmas Song" nowadays rather than in 1961). 

Because in New Zealand (like for our friends in Australia, South Africa, and other Southern Hemisphere climes), the holiday season was far from snowy. The only soft white stuff under our feet was sand on the beach. The nights were light until late, a great time for swimming up the river or at the beach or hanging out with friends, and barbeques were a favourite evening meal. So maybe "sausages roasting over open fires, sand flies nipping at your toes."

A more typical Kiwi meal during the festive season

I have a lot of fond memories of this time of year growing up in New Zealand. Unlike our friends in the UK and US, not only was it the 'opposite' season to what we saw on Christmas cards and in festive movies like Home Alone or National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, it was also the end of the school year. The time between one school year and another, actually occurring at, you know, the end of the calendar year rather than in the middle. So Christmas was part of a six-week long summer holiday (longer when I was at high school or university). 

With the long days full of sunshine and the light nights were the outdoors was still a playground until late, it was a time when you felt you had plenty of time: to relax, to explore, to spend with friends and family. All of this felt completely normal, but as young Kiwis we were aware that things were different in the US, UK, and elsewhere in the northern hemisphere - thanks to the Christmas cards, Christmas songs, and Christmas movies. 

My first full-on Christmas in the snow, in northern Finland in 2012

So when I had my first 'northern' Christmas in 2009, in Koln, Germany, it wasn't too jarring. It was a fun, different, experience. Ditto my Christmas in Lapland in 2012, where I made snow angels and went reindeer sledding, along with cross-country skiing, dog sledding and nightly hunts for the Northern Lights. I've also had wintry Christmases in Belgium (great markets and tours of the Western Front) and the UK in recent years. 

But even when I spent Christmas itself in the wintry north, I would most often still have many weeks of summer in New Zealand either side of that (either because I was living there, or more recently to visit family and friends during the holiday season, even if I spent Christmas Day and that week itself in the UK - eg volunteering with Crisis, a tremendous charity fighting homelessness - before heading 'home' for some summery times.)

Summery Santa in 2013 - a run through by the vineyards to kickstart Christmas Day 

The funny thing is though, that while I've found most Kiwis and Aussies I know quite enjoy a Christmas or two in the north - getting to experience all those wintry things we grew up seeing from afar in movies and books - even if we prefer the summer festive seasons of our youth, that many of my northern friends get completely discombobulated by spending the festive season Downunder. 

Even if they like it, it's just 'too weird' for them to grasp. 

I guess that makes sense, given that while we've experienced wintry Christmases vicariously as kids, while enjoying the realities of summery Santa time, the idea of a summer Christmas with beaches and barbecues and sunshine and heat is just so very foreign for more of my American and European friends. It's not like you get summery Santa cards or films to watch as kids, even though a good chunk of the world actually has a non-wintry Christmas. 

I was reflecting on the whole 'summer Christmas' thing over the weekend, when an Aussie pal of mine, the terrific crime writer Emma Viskic (award-winning series starring deaf private eye Caleb Zelic) tweeted about the Tim Minchin song "White Wine in the Sun". I'm a fan of Tim Minchin, from his silly songs to his more thoughtful ones - well many are both -  he's a rather brilliant composer and artist (he was a musical comedian who more recently has written the musicals for Matilda and Groundhog Day). So I was aware of this song, and it was a Christmas favourite in recent years. And a rarity: an antipodean Christmas song about a summery version of this time of year. 

Unfortunately due to the pandemic, I once again won't be spending the holiday season with friends and family back in New Zealand, which is a bit tough, to be honest. In the first forty years of my life, while I had several Christmas Days abroad, I only had two years where I wasn't back 'home' at all over the southern summer months - once when I was doing a yearlong backpacking trip through the Americas and had Christmas in southern Patagonia, and my first year in the UK when I was waiting four months for a visa decision so couldn't travel at all. Usually, even if I'm volunteering with the homeless in London on Christmas Day I'll be on a plane back to New Zealand soon after to spend New Years and a few weeks more with friends and family. Not this year, unfortunately. Three in a row now. 

A Kiwi books pal, who used to run Penguin publishers in New Zealand, gave me a few 'Kiwi Christmas' kids picture books for Miss Almost-Seven when she was Miss One (eg A Kiwi Jingle Bells, A Kiwi Night Before Christmas), so we'll enjoy re-reading those again this year, to get a wee taste of summer Christmas along with plenty of Zooms with friends and family. Classic Christmas songs adapted for a summer setting, quite fun and clever. 

A summery twist on the usual Christmas carols

So, to finish up, I hope you all have a really wonderful festive season, wherever you're spending it. If you get to be with those closest to you, cherish and enjoy it, despite any bickering or holiday stresses. If you're in Aotearoa or Australia or anywhere else south of the equator, enjoy the beaches and barbecues and raise a glass of white wine in the sun, for me. Hopefully we'll be able to join you next year. 

Oh and PS, every year Tim Minchin donates all proceeds from any sales of his "White Wine in the Sun" song that occur during the festive season (November-January) to an autism charity. So if you like it too, nab it on Apple Music, Amazon, or wherever, and support a good cause. It is a time of giving, after all. 

Happy holidays, and Meri Kirihimete everyone! 

The pohutukawa, or 'New Zealand Christmas tree'

Hot Enough To Fry a Pancake

 Sujata Massey

 

A little more than a week ago, I was lying in a darkened bedroom at 4 pm on a Friday afternoon—wracked with fatigue, weakness and thirst. 

 

The day had started splendidly. I’d driven about 40 miles to the Washington suburbs to visit with my new author friend Shauna Singh Baldwin, a Wisconsin based writer who was visiting a school friend who lived there. Shauna and I’d had a been chatting with me the night before about my new book. It was cool at 8:30, when we walked—Shauna, her friend Ruma, and me. I wore a hat, sunscreen and sunglasses and took a sun protection supplement. Oh, yes--the top below is my favorite 50 SPF rashguard. I have to take extra precautions due to medication-induced sun sensitivity. I'm on Shauna's left.

 

 

Because I was making this drive, an opportunity rose in my mind for GOOD FOOD. Specifically, South Indian food. In Baltimore, the South Asian diaspora is mostly represented North Indian and Nepali restaurants. The Washington D.C.  suburbs have both more diverse cuisines. I'd been longing for a dish called uthappam, a pancake of fermented rice and lentil flours that’s studded with tiny bits of vegetables and chillies. Next to dosa, uthappam is one of South India’s most popular exports served all around India. There’s a special magic to its fermented sour taste. If you’ve tasted dosa, you’ll recognize uthappam as a less glamorous, heartier cousin.

The picture below is how Wikipedia defines uthappam.

 

 

The ladies and I had a glorious time on the walk through shady neighborhood streets. I told Shauna's friend, Ruma, about my desire for uthappam. To save time, Ruma recommended that I save time by foregoing the restaurant I'd planned to drive to in Gaithersburg. She was a fan of a restaurant called Chettinadu in Rockville, a suburb near Bethesda. 

 

I said goodbye to my friends, applied more sunscreen, and took off. Due to roadwork and closed lanes, the drive through suburban streets to Rockville took as long as my earlier drive from Baltimore to Bethesda. This translated to about 40 minutes of one-way driving, with the mid-morning sun blazing through my windshield. I felt it. had the brim of my hat pulled low and sunglasses on and a surgical mask covering my lower face. As the sunlight intensified, and the car moved along at ten miles and hour, I thought to myself, I’m doing all of this for a spicy pancake?

Chettinadu's storefront marquee was at the back of a large shopping center parking lot. I've come to take this as an auspicious sign, when it comes to small international restaurants. I exited my car under a cloudless sky and walked a couple of agonizing, overheated minutes to the restaurant. Still fully shielded by hat, mask and dark glasses, I slunk into the restaurant like a too-obvious spy and sat down to wait for my order to finish cooking. You see, in addition to uthappam, I’d ordered a plain pancake known as appam, a mixed vegetable curry, a chicken curry, vadas, and rasam. 

 

The sun didn’t give me a break on the ride home, and I didn’t feel well when I got inside. I drank more water, ate a little vegetable curry and ate a quarter of the uthappam. Then I toppled into bed. I felt strange. It’s hard to explain, but I was thirsty, and very, very tired, in a way that didn't feel restful, though I did fall asleep. 

Fortunately, it was not actual sunstroke, in which I might have sprung a temperature. This sun exhaustion was almost surely caused by a drug reaction, I learned as I looked at the profiles of two meds I'd taken the day before my car trip.  I was so much better the next morning and attacked the uthappam again at breakfast and lunch. I didn’t have any left the day after, and I wanted more.

 

But not that drive.

I told myself that if I could make my own uthappam. Many uthappam recipes are in South Indian cookbooks and online. There also are myriad websites where Indian home cooks are sharing healthier versions of classic recipes. 

I was more confident than wise.

 

I attempted a classic uthappam batter, which ferments up to 20 hours and is made with soaked urad dal and parboiled rice. Both ingredients soften in water for 6 hours and are then ground together with their soaking water into a batter. The batter then ferments from eight to twenty hours. 

 

It turned out that my air-conditioned house is too cold for this batter to ferment, and my screened porch simply too hot to do anything except grow blue and yellow bacteria spots on the surface. I concluded. For this kind of cooking, you need a mother, aunty, or South Indian chef looking over your shoulder.

 

It wasn’t time to quit. I could attempt one of the new, instant uthappam recipes from the armies of Indian food bloggers. They are instant in the sense that they use a little yogurt or baking soda to get the batter bubbly. Here are the ingredients before mixing and the finished batter below.

 

 I defaulted to easy by picking a recipe calling for ingredients that were already in my house. Indians are increasingly health conscious and making changes to traditional dishes. Several uthappam recipes using oats as the main flour caught my eye. I decided to try “oatmeal uthappam," in which rolled oats are ground into a kind of flour or left whole if they are instant oats. the batter doesn’t ferment overnight like classic recipes, but it has a good bacteria boost from probiotic plain yogurt. 

 

The pancake was quite thick, as the recipe author warned, and it took three tries till I could get it to semi-uthappam shape—although it was uneven. Quickly I discovered less is more with the vegetables toppings, and given the fibrous quality of oatmeal, water must be added to make the batter suitably thin.  Spreading the batter had to be fast and the vegetables needed to scatter within the next 30 seconds and be gently pressed down. I arranged everything right next to the frying pan and worked as fast as I could. 

In India, uthappam are fried on a tawa, which looks like a large round frying pan, typically cast iron or aluminum. I found cast iron worked better for me than stainless.

Broken pancakes would never be served at Chettinadu, but they were at my house. And there was a pleasant tang. I at the second pancake, because the first was an. utter run, and by the third pancake, I had one that flipped out of the pan and into the plate without breaking. Although it still wasn't round.

In a way, making these pancakes was a lot like trying to write a book. My pages are a mess at first--I've just got to keep returning to the work and learning my way through the story. With practice, we inevitably get the skills.

I judged my uttapam a 6 out of 10, and my husband gave it a 9.

So the third one was better! 

Here's the recipe I tried by food blogger Swasthi from  Indian Healthy Recipes.

Plum Passion

Sujata Massey

A book I owned and adored as a child

In Maryland, strawberries mean spring, and peaches and plums mean summer. These aren’t the only fruits that prosper due to our excellent fruit-growing climate, but they are ones that are truly ravishing and worth only eating in season. 

I feel especially passionate about plums this summer. They are so varied—my farmers market had at least five varieties last weekend. The sensual experience of looking inside a plum reveals gold, pink, or purple or red flesh. The taste ranges from tart to tangy to sugary sweet. Sizes range from slightly bigger than a cherry to palm-sized. It carries a rose-scented perfume, because the plum is actually linked to the rose family...stop laughing. I am not talking about sex, okay? I am talking about a healthy, anti-oxidant rich plant.

Despite its obvious allure the plum is regarded as the slightly odd cousin to most stone fruit. Perhaps this is because some raw, ripe plums are still tart--and after cooking, plums take on a deep flavor. If the plum is dried, it becomes a prune—and there are no end of jokes about the medicinal benefits of prunes.  

I have a special affinity for plums because my German mother introduced me to them. In fact, she considers them the highlight of summer baking. I still remember my mother carrying crates of prune plums into our Minnesota house every August. These were not Minnesota plums—the weather there is too cold to plant plum orchards. But these California plums with tart interiors that were only in the supermarket for a few weeks were treated like treasures. Once the plums were free of stones--a tiresome process that could take hours--they became the stars of Pflaumenkuchen: neat rows of plum slices arranged atop a yeast dough stretched across a cookie sheet. Warm Pflaumenkuchen was served with coffee to adults, because very few children were excited about a sour fruit dessert topped with plain whipped cream. You could say that plums are the Cabernet Sauvignon of fruit. Big, bold, mind-blowing.

Other plums from the crates were boiled down into a dark, thick plum jam that would be eaten year round on toast. I liked this, too. After a childhood of plum jam, most jams made from strawberries and raspberries taste too sweet.

I live a thousand miles from my mother now, so we cannot make plum desserts together. But I am set on carrying the plum torch, and I have sampled all the different kinds of local plums that show up at my farmer’s market. This past weekend, I got a $6 container of Methley plums, doll-sized, purple globes that are slightly bigger than cherries. They are sweet and much juicier than the plums used in German confections; I understand the Methley originated in Asia, where plums are much juicier than the varieties native to Europe. 

I remain cheerfully determined to introduce plums to the prejudiced. This week, I found an easy recipe for deconstructed plum galette on the Food52 website. It specifically calls for Methley plums. Preparing the fruit from pitting to cooking took less than fifteen minutes, because the plums are small enough to fit inside a cherry-pitting tool.  

The dough was sticky and a little tricky to work with. It baked up delicious and crisp and the perfect foil to warm, juicy fruit. as the recipe suggested, I used two rounds to create a kind of plum sandwich. They were the perfect counterpoint. With cooking, the very sweet plums I'd tasted raw had deepened to a nuanced, bittersweet flavor.

My son took one look and said, no thanks.

Summer on the Table

Sujata Massey

Summer is supposed to be done. I know this because I see big yellow school-buses on the freeway, and the Staples office supply store is full of families loading up on binders, notebooks, and pencils. But may I make a public service announcement that it's still summer out there? I only have to go to the farmer's market in Baltimore to know this. August and September are the peak months for tomatoes, peppers, peaches and plums. Just about everything is at its best, with the exception of delicate lettuces.

Baltimore and nearby suburbs are awash in farmers' markets, large and small. I usually shop at the big one that runs year-round in the neighborhood of Waverly on Saturdays, but I also adore the Kenilworth Farmers' Market in Towson on Tuesday afternoons, which is smaller but has a more "artisan" feeling.

I find it exciting that Maryland farmers are now growing specialty tomatoes like the ones famous from San Marzano, Italy. Though I'm sure Italians would not be happy to see the name of that terroir applying to bullet-shaped, meaty tomatoes grown outside of Italy. But wow! The transformation of these Roma tomato varieties into sauce and chutney is magically easy.

 Excellent cherry tomatoes went into this salad that is jazzed up with avocado, scallions and basil.


I rarely travel in the summer, because I dig very deeply into writing and revising. Fall is the time writers must travel for book festivals. I would ideally like to write-garden-cook all summer, but the heat drives me inside so I'm mostly writing and cooking.

My eyes are bigger than my stomach--how many things can you do with a gorgeous bunch of scallions before it wilts?

The smaller the zucchini, the more I want to eat them. But there are only so many ways to shred, slice, sauté and bake "courgettes", another name for them that is not used here.

I tried to tempt my husband toward kale by asking him to grill it. Result: interesting, but still pretty sharp. With summer's ease, these are experiments worth taking. If it doesn't thrill the palate, try something else.

This is a delicious variant on potato salad; grilled potatoes and fennel, pickled fennel fronts and a yogurt mint dressing. And look below to see a snack of grilled corn tossed with fresh herbs and topped with cornflakes! All of these recipes are weekend experiments taken from an excellent recipe collection of Kerala-inspired grilled dishes published in an early summer edition of Food and Wine.

An improvised apricot-blueberry-buttermilk cake that I concocted looked rather like a Matisse. Fabulous warm from the oven.



Cooking summer produce is a way for me to vacation into different countries without leaving my house. Still, all the fancying and fixing can't replace the perfect purity of what we can only eat in the summer, sometimes with a fork and often, just with the hands.

Summer in the City

Sujata Massey

In Spring of 2017, I hired a man to dig out the grass in front of my Baltimore, Maryland house. He thought I was crazy to pay him for that, but I had the idea of replacing the grass with a lot of perennials that are native to Maryland and Virginia. I wanted to plant food for the local bees and bugs (the good bugs, of course) and have the feeling of a full, lively cottage garden. Native gardening guru friends told me this kind of garden doesn't need much water, because the plants are used to the climate, and such laid-back flora grows happily without special attention.

I also heard a saying that was meant to encourage me: the first year plants sleep--the second year they creep--the third year they leap!

I was pleasantly surprised to see plants getting a nice, full shape the first year. But this year, WOW. I don't really think we can pretend anyone is creeping. The mountain mint is a monster stalking the entire space!

Lots of rain made these plants really grow, and it's amusing to see my short dogs wandering through their personal jungle while bees buzz gently overhead.

Another thing that surprised me about my impromptu native cottage garden is how long it is taking everything to flower. With these natives, varying shades of green are what I'm stuck with for a long time. I will have to wait till August to see yellow petals on these Black-eyed Susans below, and they are already approaching 6 feet tall.

One of my goals this summer was to "be in the garden" most mornings while it's still cool. An overdue book turned my mornings into writing sessions on the screened porch until today--July 17.

The middle of July is usually when most people stop gardening. But it's my start date. I had a bunch of weeds to pull.

But they easily gave way. Today I did a spot-check on a Virginia Sweetspire bush advertised as "good for poor soil" that I'd planted this May. I watered it a couple of days in the beginning and then I started writing overtime and let it go without extra watering.

I think the Sweetspire, below, got mad about that.

Can I make things better for the poor shrub this late in the season? And is there any point in planting anything more in the bare dry spots...or is that insane with the 90 degree heat that lies ahead?

If you ask me, is easier to plant a garden than to write a novel; but it's more tempting to disappear in a rewrite than to pull ivy.

The Writing Season: Which is yours?

Zoë Sharp

This year, winter seems to have passed into summer almost overnight. Very little by way of Springtime, just snow one day and a heatwave the next. At the moment, for the May Bank Holiday here in the UK, we are stunned to be enjoying good weather. Let’s hope, after the endless Game Of Thrones-style winter we’ve endured, the sunshine is here to stay. (For a little while, at least.)

winter went on and on this year...

I like writing in the winter, I have to admit. When the weather’s cold and (usually) either raining sideways or snowing, there’s something rather nice about curling up on the sofa in front of a wood burning stove, trying to juggle lap space between a MacBook and a sprawling cat.

Besides, the temperature and the early darkness of the winter does not encourage other activities, so a somewhat sedentary existence is no hardship. I make lists of jobs about the house ‘for when the better weather arrives’ without feeling a desperate urge to get on with them right there and then.

But equally, the winter brings on a kind of lethargic hibernation that no daylight lamps or extra doses of Vitamin D seem to shift.

Lulu, squeezing herself in alongside my laptop.

Summer, on the other hand, encourages me to get out and walk more, or finally tick off those jobs I was busily listing To Be Done over the winter. I’ve just finished plastering one of the upstairs bedroom walls and making a new window sill. Painting and cleaning and mowing of grass all calls to be done. There are fences to put up and veggies to plant and even though I’m sure I weeded the garden last year, damn me, it all needs doing again.

Not what most people have in mind when they
admit to being plastered at the weekend, I'll bet...

So, although I love nothing more than to bask on the veranda in shorts and flip-flops, with my laptop open in front of me, the bees buzzing nearby, and the cats sunbathing in the long grass, there are just too many other distracting things going on.

The winter may be more restrictive, but I think on balance I get more books read and more scribbling done. What about you? Are you winter or summer?

This week’s Word of the Week is eponym, which is a person after whom a discovery, invention or place is named, such as a malapropism, meaning the mistaken use of a word, usually to comic effect, named after the character of Mrs Malaprop in Sheridan’s play The Rivals from 1775. A proprietary eponym, on the other hand, is a trademark or brand name that, due to its popularity or significance, has become the generic name for a general type of product. Examples are Kleenex rather than tissue, Q-Tip rather than cotton swab, and Escalator.

Zoë’s upcoming events:

Thursday, May 10^th @ 2:00pm

Author talk at Ellesmere Port Library

Civic Way

Ellesmere Port

Cheshire CH65 0BG

Thursday, May 10^th @ 7:00pm

Author talk at Upton Library

Wealstone Lane

Upton

Cheshire CH2 1HB

Saturday, May 19^th @ 9:00 – 9:50am

CrimeFest

Marriott College Green

Bristol

‘W Is For Woman – Something To Prove?’

Sharan Newman (Moderator)

Jane Casey

Niki Mackay

Christine Poulson

Zoë Sharp

Saturday, May 19^th @ 2:00 – 2:50pm

CrimeFest

Marriott College Green

Bristol

‘Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang: Classic Thrillers’

Jake Kerridge (Moderator)

CJ Carver

Lee Child

Mike Ripley

Zoë Sharp

Sunday, May 20^th @ 9:30 – 10:20 am

CrimeFest

Marriott College Green

Bristol

‘The Indie Alternative’

Zoë Sharp (Moderator)

Ian Andrew

Karen Millie-James

Alison Morton

Debbie Young