The Ginger Tree , by Oswald Wynd is book number two in my read-every-summer series. I was surprised at how much I had forgotten.

The story takes place in China and Japan from 1903-1942. The book is in journal and letter form written by a Scotswoman, Mary MacKenzie, telling about living in the Far East. In the beginning, she is on her way to Peking to marry Richard, who is a military attache. She carries a frugal trousseau and naive ideas about marital bliss. Once married, she sees little of her husband and is abandoned by the European community when she has an affair with a Japanese nobleman. Her daughter, Jane, is taken from her and is sent to England to be raised by Richard's mother. Mary is taken to Japan under the direction of Kentaro ( her lover) who takes her as his mistress. So, her life involves surviving as a Westerner, and a woman in cultures that have little tolerance for women. Her story describes life during two world wars and the Tokyo earthquake of 1923.

Since I have visited Japan, I look for descriptions of places I have been. And, I'm always interested in other cultures and the woman's role there. This is an easy read and has some unpredicted turns of events that I haven't included. On to the next book!

It's called Catchfly or None-So-Pretty. This magenta flower is all over my garden and I have been wondering what is was. I found out not too long ago when KFOL had it's annual Garden Walkabout.

I was incharge of a garden which was touted as a planted-from-seeds garden. What a pleasant surprise! Along a dirt road, you would notice the gardens right next to a nicely made stone column and rail fence. This was impressive, but not so glorious as the 20x40 or so garden hidden behind the house. This was a mass of color: blue Bachelor's Buttons, orange California poppies, fragile red and white poppies, bright red orange poppies, hollyhocks, white daises, golden Sweet Marguerite, pink, red, burgundy and pink/white Sweet Williams, and vibrant passionate pink Catchfly. This scene was like stepping into a Monet painting. Colleen (the owner) just dead-heads the flowers and puts them where she wants new plants. I asked if she covered them with soil, and she said, "No, nature doesn't do it that way."

So, as the garden was being toured and I was the tour guide pointing out the features and answering questions, a master gardener told her friends that the plant with the five petal star flower was Catchfly. My favorite reference, The Flower Family Album, Fisher and Harshbarger (1941), puts this plant in the Pink family with some species carrying a sticky gum high on their stems to keep away unwlecome insects.

I have been dead-heading them and placing them around my garden thanks to Colleen's advice. They are very colorful and an easy, cheap addition. Another great reference for wildflowers is http://www.wildflowerinformation.org/default.asp.

No, it's not the yellow brick road. Big Fred is making a serpentine brick path from the brick patio to the bricked-in garden. It looks very charming like a Mary Engelbreit drawing.

We have a cottage garden with vegetables and flowers, mostly flowers. I planted one eggplant and two zucchini. I think the plants are stunted since they don't seem to be thriving. The tomatoes, however, are doing well. The cherry tomato plants are rather gangly, but I have loads of little tomatoes already on them. It's hard to buy just four tomato plants when you have been raised on a farm with 200 tomato plants. I started with four plants, but then wanted some yellow pear tomatoes. What I thought were yellow pear turned out to be more cherry tomatoes, so now I'm up to eight plants. I finally purchased four yellow pear tomato plants which are still pretty small. So, most of my garden is tomatoes. The good thing is that I like to make salads with tomatoes. My husband doesn't like them. And since we are gentlemen farmers ( our definition is that we plant it, but don't care if anything is harvested).

Big Fred does like roses and clematis vines. We have a lovely variety of both and they're just starting to bloom. So, the brick path connects the house with the garden. I'll be happy when it is completed because, as my son always taunted, "She loves her garden!"

A Walk Down The Road.
I turn out of my driveway past the white house with black shutters I was raised in, turn left, north, for a walk down the road. I've gone down this way many times. I pass large Colorado blue spruce that my dad planted. They were to be sold for Christmas trees, but when he died, they were not trimmed, and as time passed the blues grew too big to sell. I'm not good at judging height, but they must be twenty feet high. Some are silver blue. They stand proud, each with their own personality. The heat of the day brings whiffs of pitch and needles. It was said that there is enough trees to plant a city. I sometimes think I could give them to a city and picture new housing developments with very tall trees placed to make you think that they had been there forever. I wish I knew of a city that would take them. They probably would be too big to dig and transport. So much for the city idea. Maybe one of them could go for the downtown Christmas tree. They would meet the size requirement and certainly would be a better shape than last years scraggly tree.

On the opposite side of the road, I miss the line of ancient maple trees that were along the edge ; the pavement getting closer and closer. The trees grew and the road became modern and wider. The trees are gone, cut down, because they were tapped each spring, year after year. Sometimes you would see three or four wire-handled buckets hanging off the spigots that were bored into the tree so the sap would drip out. The practice of tapping basically girdled the trees and they started loosing their top branches so the county marked them to be cut down.

I miss the field beyond the trees, lately planted to sunflowers. Mr. F or one of the boys would be out there working up that field with a rusty old tractor, going back and forth raising a big cloud of dust since the field was mostly sand, not even loamy sand. Just sand. Over and over the field had been planted to corn. Then maybe left for hay. But, I liked watching the sunflowers grow, their sturdy stalk, their tight flower bud, and then the field overflowing with sunflowers like my own Van Gogh painting. The year of the sunflowers, we saw flocks of turkeys crossing the road, sneaking past the tall spruce to get to a slight ravine that hid them from view until they reached the maple woodlot on the northwest corner of the property.

I'm almost to the farm's property line. I remember the field beyond the big spruce being planted to potatoes. Fred took the eight-tined fork out to dig potatoes for supper, but dug a ways without a single potato. It was then that he realized that someone had been there before him. Got the potatoes and cleverly replaced the top. That wasn't the first time someone had stolen from the farm.

I'm nearing Mrs. F's house. You could easily find it if I described her yard. I think I see two rabbits eating under her birdfeeder. I know what lies over the hill. I've gone this way many times before.

Monday they spent most of the day doing wash. They saved the overalls for last because they were so dirty. The weather was warm so most of the white clothes were dry, taken down from the line, folded and put away.
This is Tuesday and they are in the living room where a cool breeze comes through the screen door slightly fluttering the lacey curtains on the big window. They are talking about the tomatoes that are doing good thanks to all of the rain they have had lately. Talk shifts to neighbor's and their illnesses and troubles. Their voices are quiet, interspersed with chuckles and outright laughter, as outright as two dignified farm ladies can be. They have history and know the background for each story. They nod and add details that are left out. They don't have to explain. They are neighbors. Just the next farmhouse down the road.
Supper needs to be started soon, so Ruth has stopped her lazy, peaceful rocking, and must leave. But the chat continues about Club that's coming up next week and maybe Colon would like some molasses cookies.
My mom's best friend, Ruth. She's a tall, big-boned woman wearing those fancy bead necklaces and earrings to match that she always wears when she comes visiting. Mom puts a few more sticks of wood in the cook stove while Ruth stands at the door. Mom will make those molasses cookies on a rainy day when heating the oven won't make the house so hot. Maybe tomorrow.

Here's the recipe:
Ruth's Molasses Cookies
1 1/2 c. sugar
1 c. lard (shortening)
2 teaspoons soda
1/2 c. molasses
1 cup strong coffee
cinnamon
salt
4 cups flour + a little more

Note: I found the recipe card in my recipe box. It has creases in three places and looks ratty. This is a really old-fashion cookie recipe. The cookies are soft and tasty. No fuss. It makes about 4 dozen cookies if made by the teaspoon and dropped on a greased cookie sheet. I bake them at 350 degrees for about 8-10 min. It's one of those recipes that you have to watch to make sure they don't burn. When I try a few warm cookies, I think of Ruth, a sweet, old-fashioned friend.

Friends. I knew there was a reason I loved reading Country of the Pointed Fir. In chapter 12, Mrs. Fosdick comes to visit Mrs. Todd. Mrs. Fosdick has been making her rounds from house to house on Dunnet Island. The two have caught up on all the latest news. Mrs Fosdick says to Mrs. Todd that it is pleasant to talk with an old acquaintance that knows what you know. She says, "Conversation's got to have some root in the past, or else you've got to explain every remark you make, an' it wears a person out." Mrs. Todd agrees that old friends are always best. I spent the day with four of my dearest old friends. We have history. We don't have to explain anything. What one forgets, the others fill in. Mrs. Todd also advises that you can catch a new one (friend) that's fit to make an old one out of. Welcome, Amanda.

We went to the super Wal-mart to do our grocery shopping . Now, I usually can't stand Wal-mart. You know, all the stuff about how bad they are for the community, push small businesses out, have cheaply made products, poor hiring practices. This store wasn't too bad. Spacious aisles, yummy deli, and bread. What more could I ask for. We got fat free refried beans- 1 lb. for $.66. How could you screw up refried beans. Coffee was $1.05 less than we usually pay. Now we don't have much more to compare because as a general rule we just buy what we want. If it is on sale, great, if not, we get it anyway. With very little proof, we figured we saved $2o. Since we went on a long drive down a quiet back road, we also called it entertainment, so we claimed additional savings. What can two people do for that amount of money these days? We went for a drive, bought groceries, saved money. All should be good. It really bothered me because what had been a large field at the edge of town was now a giant Meijers, a super Wal-mart, the usual gas stations, fast food joints, and acres of parking lots. To make it worse, across the intersection was a large empty building up for sale because a grocery store had moved out. On the other corner was another large building going out of business. As I looked around I felt cheated. Boo, hiss, Meijers and Wal-Mart!