The Bauer Confidential

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Our garden, and park down the street (blackberries).  October 2009.

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We dressed Jocelyn up as a tulip fairy for Halloween, but she really didn’t like the outfit much.  She kept trying to pull it off; eventually she came to tolerate it.  Please enjoy the photos.

Asilomar State Beach, Pacific Grove, CA.

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Me (the little girl) in the lap of my great-grandmother, with my grandmother and mother standing behind. Circa 1979 or 1980.

The next grouping of four generations of women from the same family!  Circa 2009.

Spanning four generations on the other side of my family, my paternal grandmother with Jocelyn and I. Circa 2009.

Hope you’ll excuse the explanations as this isn’t truly wordless.

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Berkeley, CA.  September 2009.

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Our garden, September 2009.

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This is how it started.

Now we have this.

Before.

After.

Remember this “cherry” tomato?

It’s done a little growing.

Turns out that was the one momotaro tomato plant we got from our landlord, it’s getting pretty big.

The sweet 1000 tomato plants are doing great, putting on lots of fruit.

Even a couple ripe ones!

Some of the chard is making a come back after all looked lost!

We’ve had one harvest of lettuce, and are getting ready for another.

We’ve got some peppers, though still tiny.

A couple cukes (there were more, but I think the neighborhood squirrels are fond of cucumbers).

I think this is an eggplant, not absolutely sure though, lost track of some of the plants we were given.

And here’s my not-quite purple basil, pretty though!

It’s foggy this morning, not the normal Berkeley fog that sits atop the hills, but a lower, denser, heavier sort of fog.  Walking to work this morning felt very ethereal.  Spider webs were outlined with drops of dew deposited by the fog, they are beautiful, but I now realize there are spiders EVERYWHERE!  Life has me in a bit of a funk these days, the fog isn’t helping.  I think I need a little something to lift my spirits.

OK, starting to feel a little more like myself.

All better now.

This is the second half of my review of this book, the first half can be found here.  I meant to post this last week but got distracted!

The second half of this book is set in Guernsey, on the Chanel Islands.  To research her piece regarding how people coped during the war, Juliet goes to Guernsey to meet her pen pals and learn more about their experiences and those of their friends and neighbors.  Juliet finds herself quickly at ease with her new friends.  More comes to light about the fate of friends at the hands of the Germans, and modern day treachery also threatens Juliet’s reputation at the expense of her new family.  As any book that deals with the horrors of war should, there is also love, both romantic and familial.  The common and individual tragedies of the war help to bond the people in this book together, and to help them go forward to build new lives.

Like the first half, I very much enjoyed this, it was quick to read, occasionally confusing because of the letter set up.  I really identified with Juliet and other characters in the book, rooting for them during their trials and laughing with them on their adventures.  An easy read, I would definitely recommend this.  If you’re a history buff, you might find the romance a bit distracting, but I think it brings heart to the novel.