Zone 7b
Garden aspirations, book club
Garden Aspirations
It’s officially spring, the weather is nice, and I’ve been moving dirt around.
In addition to the fail-safe zinnias for cut flowers, I’m hoping to plant a garden conducive to making anthotypes this year. It’s more of an experiment in gardening than in alternative emulsions, but if you have recommendations for plants to grow in Zone 7b for pigments, dyes, or anthotypes, drop me a list in the comments. April 15 is my planting date and native to Tennessee would be great. My preference would be to grow freeze-dried coffee, but alas, that requires Zone 10b.
Impromptu Book Club
The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa.1 I’ve forgotten when I acquired this book, or how I first came across it. Perhaps during the pandemic, perhaps later. I’m not sure it matters whether The Book of Disquiet is read in chronological order, though that seems to be the conventional approach to reading in general. Being somewhat unconventional, and prone to fractured narratives myself, I’ve lost track of where I am — or where I was. In short, I am beginning again, at the beginning or from the beginning. Semantics.
“…In a time which celebrates fame, success, stupidity, convenience, and noise, here is the perfect antidote, a hymn of praise to obscurity, failure, intelligence, difficulty, and silence.” —John Lanchester, Daily Telegraph (London)
I’m also making my way through To Photograph Is to Learn How to Die by Tim Carpenter, for a second time. It’s another book that can be read either linearly or nonlinearly, depending on your predisposition. I started reading it shortly after it was published, but it’s one of those deliciously dense books that reads like an AAA triptik with alternative routes, and somewhere along the way I forgot which exit I took and where I wound up.
Meal Prep
And for those keeping track, I’m still on my tofu bender.
I am reading the edition translated by Richard Zenith.