When is it safe to plant?

For Northerners who garden with annuals, May is always a fraught month. When is it safe for us to plant?

The usual answer is around May 15 or Mother’s Day, when frosts are no longer expected. But even if a frost isn’t in the forecast, temperatures in the 40s can stunt warm-weather annuals. As the Chicago Botanic Garden says on its website, “In May, it pays to be patient and flexible.” 

I’ve had it with show-offy novelists

My book group recently read The Sea by Irish novelist John Banville. All seven of us were disappointed.  

  

Its first-person narrator is an unlikable, self-absorbed misanthrope who recently lost his wife but is more focused on a 50-years-ago loss. He spends his days ruminating about the past but not learning from it. I felt indifferent to his fate.  

  

Especially frustrating for me was the excess of multisyllabic unfamiliar words. I asked our group, “Why do you suppose he always chose a big word instead of a small one?” “To show off,” someone said, and nobody disagreed.  

  

I don’t like novels that seem to have no point except to flaunt how well the author can write.   

  

PBS Passport is the only streaming service I need

This coming Sunday evening, May 4, Miss Austen, a four-part series highlighting the bond between the novelist Jane Austen and her sister Cassandra, will premiere on public television.

Being a huge Janeite, I’m thrilled. After the first episode, those of us who have PBS Passport — which comes with a $60 annual contribution to WTTW or your local PBS station — will be able to stream the other three episodes at our leisure.

Passport is the only streaming service I pay for. I’m out of the loop during conversations about programs on other platforms, but Passport is enough for me. 

After a lemon of a homeowners insurance bill, I went for Lemonade

How much has your homeowners or renters insurance gone up?

Note I didn’t ask whether it’s gone up. With all the claims from wildfires, hurricanes, tornados, and floods and with increases in rebuilding costs, insurance companies have increased homeowners premiums an average of 24% over the past three years, according to the Consumer Federation of America. In Illinois, the three-year increase is 50%, the second highest in the country.

Too savvy to be scammed? I was mistaken.

If you are an AARP member, you received its March/April Bulletin with FRAUD in three-inch red letters on the cover. Inside, five articles discussed the increasing problem of scams.

I didn’t read them, thinking I was too savvy to be scammed.

The week after putting the issue into the recycle bin, I fell for a scam. I’m embarrassing myself by telling about it in the hope that my story will warn others.

Avoiding the news hasn’t calmed me down

A few months ago I wrote about trying to avoid “a state of constant agitation over the news from Washington.” The plan involved differentiating between essential and nonessential stories.

Skipping over a lot of news hasn’t make me calmer. I’ve felt similar to the Germans who ignored Hitler’s villainy.

Ambivalence about how much to renovate

I’d not thought that the strip of six uncovered lightbulbs above my bathroom vanity is ugly and outdated until I read that it is.

Known as Hollywood lighting, it’s “just ugly and out of fashion,” proclaimed House Digest. “The bulbs stick out like a sore thumb and completely ruin the room’s aesthetic.” 

Then I kept thinking that I should replace the vanity lighting.

Caring about my home’s showiness was so not me when I lived in a vintage three-story building of modest condos valued at under $200,000. Now living in a downtown high-rise, I see how neighbors whose condos are worth two and three times more than mine are remodeling. I try to resist comparing.

Organized but not ready for döstädning

Decluttering advice like döstädning (Swedish “death cleaning”) and KonMari tidying can leave us feeling that we’ve failed if we don’t strip our homes to the bare bones. 

As I attempted döstädning — clearing out unnecessary belongings so that others don’t have to do it when we’re gone — it became apparent that I was not disposing of everything unused. 

Bonded with us or unfeeling? Research about cats gives different answers.

New York Times headline: “Your cat may actually like you”

Vox headline: “What research says about cats: they’re selfish, unfeeling, environmentally harmful creatures”

Two articles with widely different conclusions. Both cite research studies.

Microcalcifications weren’t going to kill me. The process of diagnosing their cause was still stressful.

My memory of breast biopsies in 2001 and 2006 is foggy. Any anxiety must have been wiped out by hearing “benign.” 

This time I tried to tamp down anxiety with knowledge. When a screening mammogram results in a callback for which you have to wait three weeks, and then the diagnostic mammogram results in a biopsy appointment for which you have to wait another four weeks, there’s plenty of time to research the situation.

Sharing what I learned may reduce the stress of women headed for biopsies because they, like me, have suspicious-looking microcalcifications. It calmed me somewhat beforehand to know that whatever the biopsy finding (it was benign), microcalcifications are not going to kill me.