Braiding the garlic

Here's the big mound of garlic plants we brought in from the garden. First we cleaned them all... getting dirt out of the roots, cutting off excess roots, stripping off the dead leaves. Then on to the braiding....
I've always loved people's hands. Writing, hammering, cooking, wrapped around a small child... just love watching people use their hands. Both Dorothea Lange and my dad photographed people's hands, so I guess I learned early to notice them. Felix started off the braids by picking three garlic plants and tying them together, then he would add new garlics as Sasha braided. He held tight to the heads so they would make a firm braid.

Flipped over to tie off.... and success! Now on to the next couple dozen. Sasha and Felix stayed up long after I'd gone to bed, braiding and tying.

Malcolm Gladwell, weekends in the apple orchard

I just watched an incredible interview with Malcolm Gladwell at the Guardian, UK. He's someone I admire tremendously for his ability to stand back and analyze the way things work. [The Tipping Point, and Outliers are two of his books.] He ends his interview talking about journalism and journalists: "The human need to be told stories is universal. We're like people growing food. What we do, there is always going to be this fantastic market for it."

Watch the interview with Gladwell by Sarfraz Manzoor here.

We've spent the last few weekends working in our garden/orchard. We put beet seeds in for a second time (it was too cold this spring for them to germinate), harvested fava beans, and dug up half the garlic, cleaned it up, and Sasha and Felix made garlic braids. Takes teamwork. We got the orchard mowed (again, all that rain made for lush grass and weeds) and thinned off many of the tiny apples on our young and tender trees so they will keep growing and not stop to put all their energy into fruit. Tom wheeling some of the garlic up to the house. Picking fava beans in my favorite new T-shirt. My dad getting the low hanging beans, with a little help from our dog.
Taking a break. And yes, my dad really does dress like this. Those are his old sixties ties he uses for suspenders.

My latest manuscript has been edited, re-edited, copy-edited and rewritten every one of those times by me. I love this stage of a book. It's this consuming sprint to the finish, lungs bursting, as every little bit is done just-one-more-time.

I'm also totally wrung out. I just can't seem to get my mind to think one more thought. I'd rather be outside watering, or watching the bees fly from flower to flower. When I'm inside, I do crazy tasks like clean out the pantry. Do the wash. Fold. Put away. Wash the dog. Sit on the back porch with the dog to both dry off. I've been wondering lately why I don't have a lounge chair in the back yard like other poeple do, so I could just lie down and do nothing. Read maybe, that would be the max.

Garlic braiding pictures tk.

Eggs and Awards

Two amazing things happened to me this morning:

1. Hen laid an egg right in my hand. (Yes, this requires patience. Lots.)

2. The Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards were announced. Marching for Freedom won for nonfiction.

Unlike waiting for an egg, which is a very solitary occupation (believe me, Hen wishes it were a little more solitary), winning an award like this is because many, many people worked incredibly hard to pull this book together. I thank the people whom I interviewed for their heartfelt stories, the photographers who took the photos, and all the people at Viking Children's Books.

Children's Literature New England: Secrets Told and Untold

It was a couple weeks ago, but I still have my hand-scrawled notes from the CLNE colloquy sitting right on my desk. I gave a talk on non-fiction, and helped roast our wonderful new National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, Katherine Patterson. My part was easy -- I did a riff off the outgoing Ambassador's recent open letter in the Hornbook to the new Ambassador. The roast was fun, and she was a very good sport about it. Here's a great interview with Patterson by Roger Sutton from several years ago.

Here's Peter Sis at dinner one night: not exactly shy. And I love a guy who'll wear checks. And a striped hoodie.

All the speakers at CLNE were terrific. But my notes are still humming and vibrating next to me because I want to share how amazing Ashley Bryan's presentation was. It was in the evening, and all the lights were turned down low, except at the podium. He recited, by heart, a group of poems. He'd put on his glasses, check the title of the next poem, whisk off his glasses, and sing/shout/whisper a poem. We heard the voices of wise old grannies, gleeful children and sad, gravelly-voiced old men. Ashlely's whole body was part of the poem as he reached and spun and swayed. Sometimes he'd ask us for "help" and draw us into being part of the poem as we recited refrains with him. He did more than forty poems, and what I remember is is love of the poetry, and his pleasure in making the poems fill the room and sweep us into their magic.

As we wrapped up the colloquy, Ashley put his love of poetry so eloquently: "When I read a poem," he said, "I am living it all again. The poems will make it of the moment again."

More photos from CLNE on facebook.com/elizabethpartridge