Review: Olive, Mabel & Me

 

Olive, Mabel & Me: Life and Adventures With Two Very Good Dogs

By Andrew Cotter

Very amusing little account of the author’s mountain hikes with and without his two Labradors, and its interruption by the Covid pandemic and shutdowns thereof. It appears—although that’s not the subject of the book—that during the pandemic he turned from covering sports events to filming and posting sporting event parodies starring his two dogs. But his book is more about his various climbing adventures with them.

 Don’t expect anything deep or revealing, but just a heartening reminder of why we love dogs so much and they, inexplicably, love us more. Even when we drag them out on long, cold hikes. In the snow. (Which they love)

 

 

review: The Serviceberry

by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Everyone should read this book now. And maybe read it twice. Or even put it on a regular rotation—say, once per year. It’s short so that’s not going to take up too much of your time. Oh, but what it will take of your thinking!

Taking the humble serviceberry as an example, Ms. Kimmerer roams to economics and examples of how small local solutions can bring on very much happiness. Because, as she says, and we should all know, an economic system based on ever increasing growth, ever-increasing depletion of finite resources, is doomed to fail. “…it is an engine of extinction.”

And she gives lot of little examples of how we can progress beyond that fallacy and eventually arrive at an economy based on mutual respect and reciprocity.

On top of all that “philosophizing”, she writes some heart-achingly beautiful prose. It’s just lovely, like all her writings. (Except the gut-wrenching ones.)

Gardening In My Roots, end-April edition

 Some things in the garden are doing really well, like the peppers (hooray!), but others are just struggling. These beans are good, not great,

A little basil in between the tomato plants,

And a first harvest!  Actually, I've been getting snap peas for a couple of weeks, but this is my first and very delightful banana pepper.

Review: The Heart-Shaped Tin

Love, Loss and Kitchen Object

I really enjoyed this…until I didn’t. Let me explain.

She started off writing about personal things, like her mother and ex-husband and family and all the memories that get left inside of ordinary kitchen objects. It was deep and thoughtful, and almost singing in the way she wrote about things. And some things were imbued with dark or sad energy, and she wrote about having to get over her dislike of them or the way she had to repurpose items left by her husband to prevent them from depressing her every time she saw them.

It's organized with one chapter per item—short enough to read two or three chapters a day and stop/start at any time. And I found it all very pleasant.

About two-thirds through, some of the chapters became very impersonal and seemed to be mostly all research, or stories from the lives of different people she’d met. Still interesting, but it started to get old. And toward the end, with one notable exception (the story of the Heart-Shaped Tin), I started to get bored.

So I apologize for my short attention span. It’s still a very, very good book.

 

Gardening In My Roots, still mid-April

 

 

 

 

 Most everything looks pretty miserable, but the tomatoes and peppers were delighted to receive a layer of compost. It hid all (most of) the weeds.

Those yellow things are marigolds. I'm trying to attract pollinators.

No tomatoes yet but I do have a good number of baby peppers.
 

Review: Dying Cry

By Margaret Mizhushima

She’s done it again! Another great adventure for Mattie and Robo. And of course, her new husband Cole and his family get to play a part. There’s something very enjoyable about revisiting characters you know and love and getting to see them tackle new adventures. Snowshoeing; avalanches; riding snowmobiles although they called them something else; and even the gruesome spectacle of the dead body was rendered most enjoyable.

I’m ready for the next one!

 

Review: Where’s the Next Shelter

By Gary Sizer

One of the better of the AT thru-hike books I’ve read. He has a lot of health problems along the way—dizziness, for one, and he more-or-less trashed his feet by wearing hiking shoes that were too small. Apparently that’s a common malady among new hikers. They don’t realize that their feet expand by a size or so, so they end up with blisters and pinched nerves and stuff.

Poor guy. What I liked best about him, and this, is that he doesn’t let the suffering and the human interactions dominate the book. There are a lot of minutes for appreciation of the world around him. And some triumphant moments when the obstacles are conquered, the peaks are surmounted, and he can sit on the top and wonder. (Or hurry down to warmer, less exposed climes below the tree line)