April Showers & Flowers
Blue skies, a Crayon box of flowers, and so many shades of green
It’s hard to believe a month has passed, but here we are. April showers and flowers were impressive. The air smells clean and fresh. Pollen is like a golden dust (sorry allergy sufferers!) and the scent of new growth is rich and invigorating.
Those spring skies—azure? cerulean? cobalt? china? I like the musical sound of the word cerulean—the way it rolls off my tongue.
Heart Full of Gratitude
The cover of my book, Force of Nature, has been receiving praise from all directions. Readers are taken with the vivid colors and the way the photo pulls them into the wild space it depicts. It has energy! It’s like an invitation to step into the scene.
A deep bow of gratitude goes out to the brilliant graphic artist who created the cover for me—Laurel Mathe of Mystic Design. We sat down to talk about the design for several hours in spring of 2023—almost exactly a year ago. I had vague ideas about foreground & background, about vanishing points & atmospheric perspective, about grand granite mountains & green meadows. I even had a little yellow sticky note version of the cover I imagined! You can see how helpful I was!
And I had photos, lots of photos from our JMT adventure—none of which had the necessary pixel density needed for the cover. We ended up purchasing a photo of the Rae Lakes Basin, a gorgeous place Cappy and I especially loved hiking through, from iStockphoto. (Thanks to Pam Adams, who joined me in looking through over a thousand photos online to find this perfect one!)
Laurel then used her magical powers to add tiny photos of Cappy, Jane, and me to the Rae Lakes Basin photo. And voila! A cover was born! Can you see us there by the river? That’s Cappy in front, Jane in the back, and me in the middle.
Thank you, Laurel!
Springtime Flower Field Trips
April’s flowers have been riotous in the wild and in the gardens. Hints of color came early as poppies and daffodils popped up between rain (and snow) storms along my usual walking paths. By the second half of the month, flowers of all sorts became more bold, flinging their petals toward the sky. Butterflies swarmed some and ignored others. Bees and other pollinators have been very busy. Let me share some photos from my April flower walks, though they will hardly do the flowers justice.
The Buttermilk Bend Trail along the South Yuba River in Nevada County is one of my favorite springtime walks. The views of the river canyon are spectacular, and there are multitudes of flower species creating rainbows of colors. The butterflies were positively drunken on the nectar, ignoring my presence entirely as they imbibed.
The grand tulip gardens—the Crystal Hermitage Garden—at Ananda Village up on San Juan Ridge in Nevada County never disappoints. Gardeners plant over 20,000 tulips and masses of other flowers each year on the terraces that drape themselves down the hill.
I’m looking forward to visiting the Horton Iris Garden in Loomis and Lily’s Garden Park in Cedar Ridge in the next few days and one or more of the lavender farms in the area after that. These glorious flowers make all the rain and snow we experienced this past winter worth enduring!
Do you have ideas for more spring field trips?
Strong Female Characters
I read eight books in April—two nonfiction, four contemporary fiction, and two historical fiction.
Nonfiction: Daniel H. Pink’s Drive was a fascinating and inspiring look at what motivates us. American Woman, about the 21st Century First Ladies was really interesting. I am obsessed with all things First Ladies, so this was a perfect read for me. (For those interested, I plan to bring back my popular First Ladies series of classes at OLLI at Sierra College beginning in Spring Semester 2025.)
Contemporary Fiction: Face of Greed by James L’Etoile has a terrific female detective as its main character, Emily Hunter (great name, too). Highly recommend! I enjoyed hosting a dynamic interview with L’Etoile for my OLLI Spotlight on Local Authors series in April. Iris Glazner Leigh’s Liza’s Secrets and Lucille Guarino’s Elizabeth’s Mountain were written by authors at Black Rose Writing (my publisher). Both are engaging stories about strong women finding their way in the world.
Historical Fiction: Copy Boy by Shelley Blanton-Stroud came highly recommended to me. Written by a local author, it’s set in Sacramento and the Bay Area during the Depression. I loved the strong young woman main character and enjoyed seeing local landmarks back in the day. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride has received rave reviews from every quarter—I agree.
I read a lot of books from a variety of genres. I love a few, like a lot, and reject a tiny minority. The Bee Sting, by Paul Murray, fell into that third category for me.
You can find my complete reviews of all the books I read on the Goodreads website.
Do you have book recommendations? I’m always looking for a new book to read.
Book Clubs
I’ve really been enjoying visiting book clubs lately—in person and via Zoom. I’ve met with interesting groups in Pennsylvania and Oregon and several local groups to talk about Force of Nature, about hiking, about reading. It’s been really fun meeting so many new friends and catching up with old friends.
If you have a book club and would like me to join your group, just reach out. There’s more information in a Book Club Kit on my website, too.
A Sailing Tale - Riding the Wind
You may know that years ago, when I was much younger, I used to race sailboats, catamarans to be more precise. I’m busily writing my next book, another memoir. It’s in its very early stages, so I’m doing a lot of throw-it-at-the-wall-and-see-if-it-sticks writing of random stories. The one I just finished is a sailing story. It’s too long to fit here, but I’m going to share a bit of it. If enough of you like it, perhaps I’ll share more as installments.
This time, I wasn’t crew, first mate, second fiddle. I was skipper.
And my good friend Betsy was my crew. We were sailing a Prindle 16—a fast, lightweight, sixteen-foot catamaran—on Mission Bay in San Diego, in the 1983 Prindle Women’s National Championship Regatta. Betsy and I had been practicing for this big regatta for months. Previously, we’d each raced as crew, or first mate, to our skipper husbands.
It was a gorgeous sunny day—a perfect California beach day, worthy of a movie set. A fresh breeze skittered lightly across the flat water of the sheltered bay, just enough to gently toss Betsy’s curls around her face. Though the air was mid-summer beach-weather warm, the water was Pacific Ocean chilly.
Betsy and I were “dressed for success” in lightweight, black, long-john-style wetsuits. The neoprene would protect us against both the chill of the water and the rough texture of the mesh trampoline stretched between the catamaran’s two slender hulls. My hair was pulled securely back out of my eyes in a ponytail, then smoothed back even more with a bandana knotted at the nape of my neck. I wore fingerless suede gloves, a special countdown-timer wristwatch, and a sturdy sunvisor.
I glanced at the big black timer on my wrist as the seconds ticked by.
“Forty-five,” I said whisper soft, so just Betsy could hear me. I sat far back on the starboard hull, tiller in my left hand, mainsheet, the rope controlling the mainsail, in my right. Betsy sat on her knees in the center of the trampoline, jib sheet in hand, poised and ready to move. Our four eyes were scanning the sails above and the water ahead.
Halyards clanked an un-musical metallic serenade, as boats squeezed closer and closer to the line and to one another. Sails fluttered and luffed—synthetic fabric swishing and slapping against itself and the hollow aluminum mast. Still the seconds ticked by.
“Thirty,” I whispered.
The key was to arrive just in time—neither false-start-early, nor dead-in-the-water-late—and not get trapped behind or between other boats.
Our cat was on starboard tack—the wind coming across the starboard (right) side of the boat—so we had the right-of-way over boats pointed opposite on port tack. In slow motion, we wove and dodged between and around other boats, running along a zig-zagging parallel to the invisible starting line, only a few yards behind it. We’d started out, seconds earlier, near the far starboard buoy, and we were working our way towards the port end of the line, calculating that the starting horn would sound just before we reached the red buoy marking the end of the line.
“Fifteen,” I whispered.
I watched the other boats, all aggressively maneuvering for perfect placement along the same line, each hoping to pair that with the momentum of a perfectly timed jump start. I watched our relation to the line, as I kept track of the seconds counting down to the horn.
“Ten.”
My left hand guided us with the tiller. My right hand managed our speed, easing in and out the mainsheet, controlling the tightness and shape of the mainsail, our engine. I still kept my eyes on the moving boats that surrounded us.
Betsy handled the jib-sheet, controlling the jib—the small, triangular, front sail. Still at the center of the trampoline, she kept watch on the boats and the starting line and her sail, too. We were both deep in silent concentration, alert to all the moving objects around us, aware of the line and the time and all the other boats, ears primed for the horn.
My plan was to, moments before the horn sounded, pivot smoothly towards the line and “sheet in,” or tighten the sails. I hoped we could fill the sails and shoot across the starting line at the instant of the start, with not an inch of our hull across before the signal. The moment the starting horn blared and the race began, Betsy would slip smoothly from the center of the boat to the starboard hull. There, she’d clip the hook on her harness into her trapeze wire, so she’d be ready on the very edge of the starboard hull. Timing was critical. Teamwork was essential. Luck would be vital, too.
“On my count,” I whispered just loud enough for Betsy to hear, but not our closest competitors.
“Five... Four...” While I counted the seconds, the jostling and clanking around us intensified as all the boats began to shift.
“... Three... Two...”
“Now!” I hissed.
I carefully spun the boat. In unison, we drew in the sails with a smooth quickness that kept them round and full.
The boat seemed to leap forward—gaining speed and rising in the water.
I checked the starting line—we had only a few feet to go.
“Beeeeeeeeeep!” screamed the horn.
We flew across the starting line near its port end, with only one other boat at the far starboard end of the line timing it with equal perfection. The crowd of boats behind us were jammed and jostling together—stealing one another’s air and struggling to gain momentum.
Telltales—thin strips of fluorescent-orange fabric attached high on the sails like miniature flags—flew smoothly with barely a flutter, signaling the sail was precisely shaped and generating maximum speed. The hulls skipped across the gentle waves of Mission Bay and gave off a humming-shushing sound.
(To be continued… maybe…)
Happy Spring, my friends!
I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Looking forward to your new book on sailing..... loved Force of Nature. You have a gift with words....and my new favorite snack is dried mangos and pecans! LOL!! Take care!
Colfax Garden Club-Sat-May 12-8am-Noon-Downtown Colfax by Railroad Tracks-plants, scrubs, gardening items on sale-conversation with local gardeners