That Plantish Life

Living my best spring life, cultivating plant babies, plus my Weekly What

May 10, 2025

This week’s newsletter is publishing a few hours late because I have been busy living my best spring life!

After what felt like an interminable week of rain, the sun has returned! Mother’s Day in Ohio means the start of warm weather planting season. This week I readied my garden beds and planters with some fresh soil and homemade compost and hit up my favorite local greenhouse for vegetable plants and flowers.

After many hours of gratifying work I’ve got flowers potted on my deck and porch, fresh parsley and rosemary added to my little herb garden already containing thyme, mint, lavender, and chives, and I’m trying some everbearing strawberry plants in grow bags this year as the bed located in a different spot in my yard with a June bearing variety is likely coming out.

In addition to the early spring bed I already planted with lettuces, radish, carrots, kale, spinach, and sugar snap peas, I now have several tomato plants, jalapeno and snacking peppers, two basil varieties, and seeds tucked in for green beans, cucumber, okra, and flowers.

I have some zucchini seeds which I’m planning to experiment with starting in pots and transplanting into the garden later this year as my zucchini plants always, always succumb to squash vine borers to my utter frustration. I’ve read I might be able to ward them off by planting later in the season. (Please let me know if you have any experience or tips in this regard!)

I have big plans to soak up some sun from my deck while enjoying a book in companionship with all my new plant babies.

I hope everyone has a lovely Mother’s Day weekend!

Tell me:

Do you parent any plants? I have both indoor and outdoor flora.

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Reading

O Sinners! by Nicole Cuffy. A NYC journalist and lapsed Muslim grieving the recent death of his father travels to California to embed with and report on a potential cult led by a Black Vietnam war vet. The story is told with 3 interwoven narratives: present day following the journalist, transcripts from a documentary made about this group clashing with a fundamentalist Christian church in Texas, and a handful of Black infantrymen fighting in Vietnam. I can’t say I will readily recommend this book to every reader, but I was captivated by these 3 narrative threads and the story’s meditation on faith, the blurry line between religion and cults, and the complex dissonance of these young Black Americans at war in Vietnam.
Bad Nature by Ariel Courage. After a corporate lawyer receives a terminal breast cancer diagnosis just shy of 40 she quits her job and sets out on a cross country road trip from NYC to California intending to kill her long estranged father and then herself. Along the way she picks up an eco activist hitchhiker; hijinks ensue. I’d call this Unhinged Woman meets Existentialism. I quite enjoyed this while reading, both print and audio are good, though I’m not sure it’s a story that will really stick with me long term.
Homeseeking by Karissa Chen. Two elderly Chinese-Americans with a rich shared history unexpectedly cross paths in present day California. This dual narrative story spanning six decades unfolds from two directions: present day moving backwards, and from their shared childhood in Saigon moving forward offering an interesting helical braid of perspective and time. This is a captivating epic of love, loss, and displacement amidst the Chinese Civil War and subsequent communist rule.

Listening

Stag Dance by Torrey Peters. Through 3 short stories and the title novella Peters explores gender and transness in an incredibly smart, subversive, deft, and extremely nuanced way across diverse settings: a post-apocalyptic world where humans no longer produce sex hormones; a Quaker boarding school; a frontier logging camp; a transfemme gathering in Vegas. I loved Peters’ Detransition, Baby. Short stories are never my preferred format, but this collection is well worth a read.
The Correspondent by Virginia Evans. An epistolary novel told through the correspondence of a retired woman in her 70s writing to friends, family, and beloved authors, among others. Charmingly bookish with obvious influence from 84, Charring Cross Road. An engaging audio listen featuring full cast narration.

Watching

Longlegs (Hulu). This movie is weeeeiiiird, but I think I liked it? Loved the 70s era horror aesthetics.
A Complete Unknown (Hulu). I don’t think I like Bob Dylan enough to fully appreciate this movie? Long, though objectively well done.
The Righteous Gemstones, Season 4 (Max). This final season was just ok.
Four Seasons (Netflix). A limited series dramedy starring Tina Fey, Steve Carrell, and Colman Domingo. This is an adaptation of a 1980s Alan Alda film following 3 middle aged, long married couples in a close knit friend group through a particularly tumultuous year as one of the couple’s marriage breaks up. The 8 half hour episodes are a good, quick watch.

Eating & Drinking

These Buffalo Chicken Burgers from a few weeks back made a repeat appearance this week. They’re so easy and yum! I ate mine with lettuce, tomato, a little extra buffalo sauce, a schmear of sour cream mixed with blue cheese and some green onion, and roasted broccoli on the side.
There are never any leftovers of this Big Mac Casserole. I like to load my serving up with lots of lettuce, tomato, and pickles and it’s sort of a like a salad/casserole hybrid.
Bang Bang Shrimp Bowls = rice + sautéed shrimp (seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic powder, paprika) + all the veggies (I like shredded cabbage, carrots, cucumber, and avocado) + Bang Bang Sauce (1/2 cup mayo, 1/4 cup sweet chili sauce, 1 T sriracha, a splash of rice wine vinegar). I also added a little chili crisp and it was a nice addition.
My daughter had Costco Chicken Street Tacos at a friend’s house and loved them so much she asked if we could make them. We don’t have a Costco membership and I’ve never had the tacos, but I quickly found a copycat recipe, which turned out delicious. According to my kid my version isn’t exactly the same, but it’s close enough! We’ll definitely make these again. Don’t skip the Cilantro Lime Crema!
Iced tea season has arrived! This week I’m drinking Trader Joe’s Mango Black Tea.

Links + Loves

I am extremely skeptical of the move towards book subscription services publishing their own their own titles (The Guardian). I’ve also heard platforms such as TikTok, Amazon, and Spotify seek to do the same. Sure, profit margins have to be higher so I understand the allure, but there’s a complex ecosystem of trends, discoverability, and appetite that contribute to book sales. It seems to me these companies assume readers are largely lazy enough to just read whatever is put in front of them, but reading isn’t as passive as other types of media consumption such as television streaming or the endless scroll of seconds long video shorts. And what of the impact to the relationship between book influencing and subscription services? I’ll be interested to see how this plays out as I do believe this concept will bear fruit; yet unknown whether said fruit will be edible.
‘James’ Won the Pulitzer, but Not Without Complications (NYT). I would love to have been a fly on the wall at this year’s fiction Pulitzer deliberations.
All the books that won Pulitzer Prizes this year (Book Riot)
Judy Blume’s YA classic Forever has a new Netflix adaptation (Slate)
The National Nightmare currently inhabiting the Oval Office fired the first Black Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, via a two sentence email because of course he did 🙄 This apparently at the behest of a conservative advocacy group who believed Hayden was “trans-ing” kids.
I hate so much about the things we choose to be.

That Bookish Life {Stacked}

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