The Cadottes: A Fur Trade Family on Lake Superior

The early history of the Great Lakes depicts the interactions between Europeans hoping to exploit the natural wealth of the New World and the indigenous population. The first to establish permanent trading posts were the French Canadians. They took native wives in "the Indian way" to cement relationships and enhance trade. Later, the British replaced the French. When the Europeans returned to the East they broke off with the native wives.

But some traders' families remained intact and flourished. Silbernagel offers us the Cadottes whose family presence on Madeline Island in western Lake Superior were important figures for two hundred years.

The Cadottes: A Fur Trade Family on Lake Superior is an interesting family history that also illuminates the history and geography of the region, the Ojibwe culture, the life of the colorful voyageurs and early fur traders, and the rise of the lucrative fur trade that produced the first multimillionaire in America.

When Silbernagel viewed the gravestone of Michel Cadotte on Madeline Island he became motivated to learn more about his life and the history of the area. He spent fifteen years researching five generations of Cadottes fur traders and interpreters for business and political ventures.

I was particularly interested in learning more about the interactions between Europeans and the Ojibwe. My husband recently donated an heirloom bible to a museum; the book had been given to his second-great-grandmother by John Riley whose father was a New York State-born trader and his mother an Ojibwe chief's daughter. I was very interested to learn that the Cadotte children were sent East for their education since one oral tradition said Riley was educated in New York State.

I enjoyed learning more about wild rice and maple syrup. I was horrified to learn about the Sandy Lake Tragedy, the forced migration of Great Lakes natives that resulted in more deaths than the Sand Creek Massacre or Wounded Knee.

The Cadottes is more than a family history. It will appeal to a wide range of readers. Through the history of one family, readers gain a well-rounded and detailed understanding of the times, people, and culture of the Colonial Great Lakes.

The book's illustrations include maps; historical depictions of voyageurs, Ojibwe, and the settlements; photographs of places, events and personages; and even snowshoe styles and beaver hat styles by era.

I was given access to a free ebook by the publisher through Edelweiss in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

from the publisher:
The Great Lakes fur trade spanned two centuries and thousands of miles, but the story of one particular family, the Cadottes, illuminates the history of trade and trapping while exploring under-researched stories of French-Ojibwe political, social, and economic relations. Multiple generations of Cadottes were involved in the trade, usually working as interpreters and peacemakers, as the region passed from French to British to American control. Focusing on the years 1760 to 1840—the heyday of the Great Lakes fur trade—Robert Silbernagel delves into the lives of the Cadottes, with particular emphasis on the Ojibwe–French Canadian Michel Cadotte and his Ojibwe wife, Equaysayway, who were traders and regional leaders on Madeline Island for nearly forty years. In The Cadottes: A Fur Trade Family on Lake Superior, Silbernagel deepens our understanding of this era with stories of resilient, remarkable people. 

About the author:Robert Silbernagel studied journalism at the University of Wisconsin and spent his newspaper career in Colorado. He writes a bimonthly column for the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel and has published on Aldo Leopold and Colorado history.

To learn more visit
http://thecrite.com/coloradomesau/criterion-advisor-signs-book-deal/

The Cadottes: A Fur Trade Family on Lake Superior
by Robert Silbernagel
Wisconsin Historical Society Press
May 29, 2020
Hardcover $28.95 USD
ISBN 9780870209406, 087020940X

Restaurants Remembered

It began with a Twitter post asking if you could go to a restaurant that no longer exists, which one would it be?

Memories of so many popped into my head. I asked my husband and we went on a trip down Memory Lane.

Our last time eating out would have been in early March or late February. I don't even remember. We do order delivery from a local restaurant every week just to give them business.

Neither my parents or my husband's folks took the family out to eat. In Tonawanda, NY, my folks couldn't afford to eat out. Dad ran the gas station his father had built. It supported our family and his mother. I remember sometimes going to a place down the road for a burger and fries where we sat on stools at a counter.

In 1963 my family moved to Royal Oak, Michigan. Mom's break from cooking came on Friday nights when we piled into the car and went down the road a mile to Peppy's Hamburgers in Clawson, where I live now.

Peppy's Hamburgers in Clawson, MI
next door to Famous Chicken

I was assigned the task of going into the restaurant and ordering the burgers and fries and drinks and bringing them back to my family. After eating in the car, we tossed the trash onto the parking lot. The burgers cost 15 cents. They came with catsup, mustard, relish, and chopped onions. My little brother only liked catsup so they had to make his burger special.

Sometimes Mom would pick up broasted chicken from Famous Chicken next door to Peppy's, just visible behind the Peppy's sign in the photo above.

At Adrian college my friends and I sometimes scraped together a few dollars and went into town to Pizza Bucket. I am thrilled to say it's still there, serving brick oven baked pizza.

At the Pizza Bucket in Adrian, MI.
I am on the left and my roommate is next to me.

Early in our marriage we would literally save our pennies for the $1 repertoire movie theater in Delaware, OH, gong to a pizza place for dinner.

We moved to Philadelphia in 1975. During our fifteen years there the city was blooming with a restaurant renaissance.

Right after our move, we celebrated our third wedding anniversary at Old Original Bookbinder's. I wore a long skirt and heels and looked very out of place. The dressier men wore denim leisure suits. We had lobster for the first time. We were given plastic bibs to wear. We also had clam chowder with lovely, big, crunchy oyster crackers. And cheesecake for dessert.

We first lived in Bucks County and ate at the local chain Seafood Shanty. We took my in-laws there for a special treat--their first lobster meal. My father-in-law's verdict was it wasn't worth the work to get the meat out.

Our first visit to New York City was to see Isaac Bashevis Singer's play Yentl. We took the train to Grand Central Station and ate a bag lunch at Central Park before the show!

the Reading Terminal building. It was a train station.
Below was the Reading Terminal Market.

Before it closed, we went to Horn & Hardart on Broad Street to eat from the vending machines.

It was in Philly that we first ate the foods we came to love.

We had our first Tabouli at a restaurant counter in the Reading Terminal Market. I recently learned that the family that owns the Oasis Gourmet Cuisine in Royal Oak knows the family that ran that counter!

We had our first pesto at a bar/restaurant near Rittenhouse Square that had a pasta bar. You chose a pasta and a sauce: Alfredo, Marinara, or Pesto. We went to food festivals; we ate samosas sold on the street and small cups of a soup we learned was made with duck's blood.

"In Society Hill, dozens more restaurants are set to throw open their doors lor the 12th annual Old City Street Festival and Block Party on Sunday and Monday from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. each day....Almost all the Society Hill restaurants will operate outdoor concession stands at their front doors and will be able to seat customers inside. This allows them their third advantage. Alcoholic beverages will be available in those restaurants that have liquor licenses. Without the Fairmount Park Commission rules that forbid such things on the Parkway, beer and wine on the sidewalks, as well as dancing in the street, have been an observed part of past Old City festivals."

El Metate was located across from the Academy of Music. We liked to eat there after an afternoon concert. We liked the Chicken Mole.

Dickens' Inn, situated in New Market, was run by the author's great-grandson, Cedric Charles Dickens. We remember the green beans were still crisp. We had grown up with canned, mushy vegetables.


The Monk's Inn was on Second Street along the Delaware River where we feasted on steamed mussels.


Once Upon a Porch on Head House Square in Old Town was a favorite place for ice cream sundaes. I liked the Gibson Girl--vanilla ice cream with caramel topping and peanuts. The perimeter of the seating area was comprised of 'porches'.

We went to Eden Restaurant for burgers with alfalfa sprouts. The owner also ran the upscale Frog restaurant which we went to once. Le Bec Fin was way out of our price range, but we dined there one. My husband ordered steak tartare.

When we lived in Kensington, we would go to a pizza place in Port Richmond, Philadelphia, that made pizzas in a wood oven and a bakery where I always got Hamentashen. And on Allegheny Avenue we went to a Chinese restaurant for the fresh  handmade egg rolls.

The Magic Pan in The Gallery mall had a lovely split pea soup served with a dash of sherry and a spinach salad with mandarin oranges and almonds.

We loved the ambience of the City Tavern, reopened for the Bicentennial.

Dining was always fun on the Moshulu, a ship docked on the Delaware River. I had eaten Oyster Rockefeller but was very naive about food. I ordered oysters and when they came raw, I was shocked. I had one and my husband ate the rest.

We went to Old Town and ate at the Middle East Restaurant which had a belly dancer, finishing off with the small cup of strong coffee.

One year for my July birthday we went to Fish & Company and I had an amazing poached salmon with dill sauce.

One day after walking Philadelphia from river to river and back again we stopped at Rib-It and my husband ordered the all you can eat ribs. He ate two servings!

For lunch in Center City we loved Saladalley's huge salad bar and Bread & Co. where we ordered soup and a basket of delicious breads. I went with coworkers to lunch at Corned Beef Academy for the thick sandwiches with Russian dressing and coleslaw.

Saladalley

Once when my brother visited us in Philadelphia we took him to dinner at Cafe Nola on South Street. Our bill came to $100. That was a very expensive evening out!
 

We loved to go to Chinatown for the food. I would stop at a shop and buy the simple black Chinese slippers that I wore in summer.


When the China Gate opened in 1984 my husband was working for a charitable trust company and got tickets to the opening day banquet. Most memorable was the delicious sweet and sour bass, cooked whole. We went to the opening ceremony pictured in the news clipping above.

Our son was born in 1987. Having a child was expensive and we no longer frequented the Center City restaurants. As a toddler his favorite restaurant was Roy Rogers. We ate at an Italian place in downtown Olney with live music or ate at the Oak Lane Diner on Broad Street, a few blocks from where we were living. After church on Sundays we would eat at Friendly's or the Taco Bar at Wendy's.

The Oak Lane Diner in recent years

We left Philly in 1990. We lived in a small town with few restaurants. But we liked The Wedge in downtown Hillsdale where we lunched on a vegetarian wrap.

In Lansing we enjoyed more options, including national and local chains. Our favorite place was a small Middle Eastern restaurant not far from the shopping mall. The owner told us he had run a big construction company in Iraq. When his son, who was studying in America, came down with cancer, he sold his business and used the money to pay his medical expenses. The son was studying to be a doctor. And now his dad ran a restaurant. After we moved, we always stopped in when driving across state, until one day we found it was closed.

Some of our regular places closed during the last recession, including Troy's Anita's Kitchen. When we came to town we always ate there. The waitress would greet us with a cup of lentil soup. She knew we always ordered it!

We have been ordering delivery from local restaurants during lockdown. Our small city has some of the best. I pray they survive. I don't want to add them to this list.

Big Summer by Jennifer Weiner

I've been in lockdown for two months, reading books on environmental justice and refugees and war; it was time to pick up something completely different. So, I snatched up Jennifer Weiner's newest novel Big Summer.

With some trepidation, having learned the protagonist is a plus-sized beauty with self-doubt. Could strike a little too close to home, or could make me seethe with stereotypes.

Daphne has built a career as an influencer and her latest sponsor is a fashion designer who wants to expand into plus sizes. Leela's clothing makes Daphne feel glamorous and confident.

Perfect timing, as Daphne has a wedding to attend.

Out of the blue, Daphne's high school friend Drue called with a request to be her maid of honor. Daphne was doubtful at first.

Drue was wealthy and had been a mean teen who took up, used, and dropped friends. But their adventures together were always exciting. And Drue seemed to genuinely admire Daphne's relationship with her folks, especially her dad.

Their relationship ended badly when Drue took Daphne clubbing where an arranged 'date' was to give her a night to remember. Daphne learned of the arrangement and had a melt down--recorded on a cell phone. The video became a social media sensation.

Daphne used the moment to rebrand herself into a fierce fat woman promoting self-acceptance.

Drue pleads she is a changed woman, making amends for her teenage terror years. Daphne gives her another chance.

At the wedding, Daphne learns that Drue isn't as excited as a bride should be. The over-the-top wedding costs big bucks, and Drue's dad interrupts the party with a meltdown. There's trouble in paradise.

The first section of the novel is typical women's fiction, its well-developed characters dealing with issues readers will relate to.

Then comes a sexual encounter between Daphne and a wedding guest. Warning: it's a bit of a sex manual about how to use hands, etc. The next morning he is missing.

Everything changes when Drue is discovered dead. Daphne and her mystery lover are prime suspects. The rest of the novel is the unraveling of Drue's family secrets and the identity of her killer. I didn't put the novel down. I loved the unraveling of the mystery.

Weiner nicely incorporates the current online culture of social media, living one's life online. Followers want genuineness, but how does one keep a boundary between the personal and the public?

At first I didn't relate to Daphne's relationship to Drue on a personal level. Then...I remembered...

When I was fourteen a girl from Eighth Grade took me up as a friend. She lived in the posh neighborhood in an amazing house her father designed. My dad was an auto mechanic and we lived in a modest, working class house. My friend encouraged me to lose weight and loosen up, have fun. (I was a serious kid who read the classics and played the classics etc.) Then, a year later, she pushed me away by being mean. I invited her to some parties over the years, but we were never again close. Years later she called my mother and admitted she treated me rotten.

Big Summer is branded as a 'beach read,' a term I don't quite understand since I don't do beaches. (Sunshine give me hives.) So, maybe a sit in the shade on the patio read? But in true Weiner style, it incorporates deeper themes of self-image, class, and social media issues.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Big Summer
by Jennifer Weiner
Atria Books
Publication Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 9781501133510

Sensational Quilts for Scrap Lovers: 11 Easily Pieced Projects; Color & Cutting Strategies by Judy Gauthier

Seeing the vibrant quilt on the cover, I couldn't resist looking into Sensational Quilts for Scrap Lovers. The author and designer Judy Gauthier writes, "Playing with my fabric scraps is my all-time favorite sport," and she can't stay away from devising new ways to use them. 

Gauthier shares tips for creating and storing your scraps, including odd shapes and scraps with bias edges. She offers advice on storing scraps by color. A brief course on color theory helps you decide on scrap selection for your project, including how to transition colors.

Along with her basic go-to Keystone block, Gauthier includes instructions on piecing curves.

I was pleased to learn that Gauthier stores her scraps in 3 1/2", 4 1/2" and 5 1/2" squares. I have been doing that for years! I store mine by size in baggies in a shoe storage tower similar to the one pictured below. (I have a second one filled with fat quarters!)

The eleven quilt projects include:

• Frontal Boundaries, which uses 4" blocks to make a 68 1/2" x 97" quilt. Gauthier transitions color to flow across the quilt. Detailed instructions ensure you can recreate your own version.

Frontal Boundaries

• True North's color transition starts in the center and extends outward. The two blocks offer an impression of a compass. The 8" blocks finish to make a 91" x 91" quilt.
• Argyle Sweater uses 8" blocks to make a 74" by 85 1/2" quilt. It was made with scraps left from True North. The overlapping on-point squares against a solid background recall the classic sweater design.

Argyle Sweater

• Split Screens' 16" blocks finish to a 48 1/2" x 64 1/2" quilt. It uses her Keystone block with a dark neutral allowing the colors to pop.

• Precious Metals, 60 1/2" x 70 1/2", is made of 5" x 10" blocks. The bias edges must be handled with care, but it's worth it for the affect. Gauthier's quilt of gold colored blocks interspersed with colored bars is stunning.
• Sleepy Tiny Tepee Town, 62 1/2" x 78", is made of blocks that look like camping tents or teepees. The bias edges need to be handled carefully, but the construction is quite easy.
• The Knit Stitch is composed of 10" x 5" blocks, 60 blocks creating a 50 1/2" x 60 1/2" quilt. Gauthier says the pattern leaves little waste. It could make a lovely gift for a knitter friend!
• Fractured Four-Patch is made of a four-patch triangle and finishes to 78 1/2" x 93". It is one of my favorites in the book, very scrappy, with value contrasts creating lots of movement. 

Fractured Four-Patch

• Circle gets the Square is made with 21" square blocks, nine making a 63 1/2" square quilt. Pieced low-contrast backgrounds made of squares are set with centered circle blocks. The piecing technique is for advanced sewers...but frankly, I would applique the circle!
• Aerial View finishes to 58" x 70 1/2", using 100 5 3/4" x 7" blocks. It is the color and value placement that recreates a feeling of fields from an airplane. It is a very Modern quilt.
• Sunrise, Sunset is the cover quilt and finishes to 77" x 80 1/2". It is constructed of half-hexagons set together with an appliqued central circle.

Learn more about Judy Gauthier at her websites

https://studioefabrics.net/judy-gauthier-1/

https://www.bungalowquilting.com/

Gauthier is a nurse and offers a tutorial for the mask pattern sold at her shop

https://www.bungalowquilting.com/tutorials/home-made-ppe/

I was given a free ebook by the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Sensational Quilts for Scrap Lovers: 11 Easily Pieced Projects; Color & Cutting Strategies
by Judy Gauthier
C&T Publishing
Book $27.95; eBook $22.99
ISBN 9781617458682
eISBN 9781617458699

The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner

That there might be a place where people were not constantly competing against each other for their very sustenance, but were instead helping each other survive through war and injury and poverty and pain, seemed as much something out of a Jane Austen novel as anything else she could have hoped to find.~from The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner

Natalie Jenner's The Jane Austen Society delighted this Janite reader!

The village of Chawton after the war is filled with diverse, lonely individuals.

Frances Knight no longer leaves the grounds of the Knight estate. Her father is dying upstairs but still rules with an iron fist.

Adam Berwick's dream of university was ended with the deaths of his brothers during the war, leaving him his mother's soul support. She presses him to find a suitable wife, but love eludes him, and if found, would be dangerous.

Dr. Gray is not coping with the early loss of his beloved wife, even to the point of self-medicating. Adeline Lewis is pregnant and widowed, her childhood sweetheart killed in the war.

And even the visiting Hollywood star, a fading beauty, wonders about the unreliability of her fiance and the future of her career.

Bookended by the two worst wars the world had ever seen, they were ironically the survivors, yet it was beyond him what they were surviving for. ~from The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner

A character talks to another about Jane Austen, and then another pair open up about the books that inspire them. Books and reading and Jane Austen feed their souls. Friendship--and love-- blossoms on what had been thought barren ground.

Their readings are insightful and deep, some even surprising this old reader of Austen. Huh. Why didn't I think of that? It's all delivered through the action and dialogue and a part of the characters opening up to each other.

The idea of saving Austen's legacy gives them a goal and brings something positive and hopeful into their lives. They become a community bound by a common love.

The love stories are inspired by Austen's novels, the quarreling pair who resist their mutual attraction, the couple past their prime rekindling a love squashed by their separation of class.

Reading this book during a COVID-19 lockdown was balm for the soul. These war-wounded people who discover reasons to go on are inspiring.

They turn to books for healing, to "disappear into fictional worlds of others' making," "hoping to find some answers." As we do today, isolated in our homes and searching for community, turn to books.

Books are bridges. In Jenner's story, they bring solace and community and wholeness.

I was given a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Learn about the Jane Austen Society UK here and its formation here
See items from the Chawton House collection here including Jane's ring and topaz cross, which appear in the novel

The Jane Austen Society
by Natalie Jenner
St. Martin's Press
Pub Date May 26, 2020 
ISBN: 9781250248732
hardcover $26.99 (USD)

Perfume River Nights by Michael P. Maurer

Michael P. Maurer survived the Vietnam War. He needed to give a voice to the men who died. He worked on his novel for a dozen years and when it was published he donated the royalties to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund.

I was afraid of Perfume River Nights, afraid to know the drudgery and fear, the earnest naivety, the dark passions of war. But what better time to read it than for Memorial Day?

***

As a girl, I wrote in my diary that the boys were talking about the Vietnam War and fear of the draft. I felt bad, knowing my safety, and thought it unfair.

I didn't understand that war. I had not studied any war but the Revolutionary War; the teachers never seemed to get have time for the Civil War and certainly not the wars of the 20th c. The war movies I had seen, like The Bridge on the River Kwai, reinforced the wasteful stupidity of war.

Like most of my cohorts, I was anti-war. At sixteen, I wrote anti-war poetry. Such arrogance! What did I know to speak for veterans?

my poem in the school newspaper

A neighbor was drafted. Mom wrote him letters. He came home and told Mom he couldn't understand the way soldiers had treated the women. He had two sisters. In my innocence, I didn't understand then what he meant.

At college, young men were returning from Vietnam to complete their disrupted education. One man, who had been non-infantry, told how he learned never to wake his vet brother because his first instinct was to kill. I listened to his stories but did not suspect the unspoken.

***

Maurer's novel follows Singer, an earnest eighteen-year-old with patriotic dreams of glory. He bonds with the men and is eager to learn from them. When they are deployed he hears crying and wonders, Can it really be that bad?

Yes. It is that bad.

When he sees an unarmed enemy he doesn't shoot. The hate comes after his friends are killed.

Readers understand the physical, mental, and spiritual toil war exacts on Singer. We feel the desperation, the dirt in our face making its way into our nose and throat. We feel the paranoiac fear of the unseen enemy. The anger and hate.

And the profound guilt that accompanies the desire for revenge, the self-questioning when we know we have been inalteringly changed into someone we no longer recognize.

He had been innocent and naive then, younger and less angry. Now he was angry all the time. Angry at the deaths, the stupidity of it all, and at incompetent leaders who saw their men as pawns toward obtaining body counts and their next promotion, Angry at the things he'd done and at the knowledge that he would do more.~from Perfume River Nights by Michael P. Maurer

Singer realizes that the enemy likely felt the same way. Soldiers were all pawns in a game in which nothing seemed to be truly gained.

Singer grieves for the men who died and also for the boy he had been, the loss of his goodness and values. Revenge was just another lie.

He makes a choice, a crazy choice, but one that will save him.

***

My dad was to go to Korea until Mom became pregnant with me. I asked him about it once, and he said he would have gone to war. But I could never imagine it. Dad, who went hunting and never shot a deer. Dad who went fishing and threw the fish back into the lake. Dad who during WWII raised rabbits and then couldn't kill them for food. Dad, the soft touch. There were no war stories from my family, the last soldier having served in the Civil War. I can't imagine Dad killing a human being.

And yet, there is the story he told of first meeting my mother's grandparents when they were dating. My great-grandmother had tasked my grandfather with killing a litter of kittens. He asked my dad to do it. It shook dad. I supposed he did it because he never told a story about setting them free. Is there a killer in all of us, just waiting for instructions?

One man I know did have a war story to tell. Floyd Erickson, from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and a skier, volunteered for the 10th Mountain Division during WWII. (read about them in The Winter Army.) He was on the side of a mountain in Italy when his best friend died. He prayed to God, asking to be spared. In return, he would change his life. Floyd survived, and as his wife often said, he did change his life. His church and his God and his family were the bedrock of his life. Last I knew, he still could fit into his uniform.

When he was a kid our son watched To Hell and Back with Audie Murphy on tv and his obsession shifted from dinosaurs to WWII. He spent years reading everything he could, became an expert on aircraft and tanks, expanding his interest into other 20th c wars. At school a boy teased that he like war. No, our son replied. He hated war. He read about war because it was the scariest thing he knew, just like dinosaurs and big trucks had fascinated him earlier in his life.

And so I read about war, too. Because it is the most awful I can imagine. In the comfort of my home, even in lockdown during a pandemic, I am safe and protected. I want to understand what I have not experienced.

***

Perfume River Nights took me on the transformative journey of one eighteen-year-old soldier. It made me better understand what I don't know. I won't soon forget these characters.

Michael P. Maurer is a Twitter friend through David Abram's Sunday Sentence on Twitter. Learn more about Maurer at
http://www.michaelpmaurer.com/about.html
Read about Maurer and the novel at
https://www.twincities.com/2016/07/01/perfume-river-nights-michael-maurer/

I purchased the book.

Perfume River Nights
by Michael P. Maurer
North Star Press
Published June 2016
Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-68201-022-8

Covid-19 Life: Books and Quilts and Flowers, Oh My!

Last week we went to Tenhave Woods in Royal Oak, Michigan. The woods is next to the high school I went to, just two miles down the road from where I live.

The woods is a wildflower preserve. They maintain a fence to keep the deer out.

We do have deer in the suburbs. In fact, this week a friend saw a wild turkey a few blocks away! And another friend saw a coyote in her yard. And I have seen hawk and falcon and skunk and opossum. My dad once looked over the edge of the hot tub to see a raccoon. And of course, squirrels and chipmunks abound.

wild violets under our apple trees

We have wild violets in our yard but sadly no trillium. So we go to the woods.

 These close ups were taken by my husband. Below is a Jack-in-the-Pulpit.

 There are sections of the woods blanketed by trillium!

Tenhave as a vernal pond.

There are some very old trees. The woods was a farmer's woodlot, a preserved forest he used for fuel.

On our daily walks around the neighborhood we enjoy seeing the flowering trees and flower gardens. At the end of our street is a park created by the Rotary Club with this lovely tree. A Facebook friend thinks it is a yellow tulip magnolia.

I bought a new sewing machine, a Bernina 570 QE (Quilter's Edition). The quilt shop owners brought it to my car trunk after I bought it over the phone. So far, I love it! First up--binding my Yellow Roses Sampler quilt, just back from the machine quilter! Maggie Smith did a marvelous job. Here are some details.

While I bind it off I have my Lilac Lanes quilt on the bed, made early in my quilting days.

I won another book on American Historical Novels Facebook group, Eldonna Edwards; debut novel This I Know. And a magnate of Queen of the Owls by Barbara Linn Probst. Every week an author hosts, talking about her book and asking discussion questions.

From Dover Publications came Jane Austen Embroidery. Look for my review soon!

New to my NetGalley shelf:

• Missionaries by Phil Kay about America's Forever Wars
• Empress Alexandra: The Special Relationship Between Russia's Last Tsarina and Queen Victoria by Melanie Clegg
• Other People's Pets by R. L.Maizes, whose short story collection We Love Anderson Cooper I reviewed

I am currently reading:

• Miracle Country by Kendra Atleework, a lovely memoir set in Eastern Sierra Nevada
• Perfume River Nights by Michael P. Maurer, a novel about a soldier's experience in Viet Nam. The author is a Twitter friend through David Abram's Sunday Sentence.
• The Splendid and the Vile by Eric Larson, Churchill and the Blitz

Our small city of 11,900 had several weeks without new COVID-19 cases or deaths. But in recent days, five new cases brought the count to 63 and two more deaths means 11 people have died. These figures are only for test confirmed cases.

Although the state is opening up, we will continue to social isolate. We order groceries and delivered food. And expect to continue for many weeks. 

Stay safe.