A landscape. Blue skies and white, fluffy clouds over faraway hills and a prairie.

Fluffy clouds.

Love them 🥰

Solitary bees don't live in hives and don't have queens.
There are many species of solitary bees, but in all species female bees mate with a male bees, with all females being reproductive.

irescuebees.com/how-do-lone-...

Different species, but we have them. They nest on a piece of bare soil near our back wall.
We also have lots of masonry bees.
One reason we don't mow the lawn before May.

The image is a quote, "One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back." Carl Sagan

The image is a quote, " I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time - [...] when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness." Carl Sagan

I can't say it better than Carl Sagan, so here are his words on the subject...

Both quotes are from his book, Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.

The cover of Uprooted by Naomi Novik

This was a nice spring read,

"Truth didn’t mean anything without someone to share it with; you could shout truth into the air forever, and spend your life doing it, if someone didn’t come and listen."

― Naomi Novik, Uprooted

#BookSky 💙📚 #Fantasy #Folklore

At some time in human history, every human understood the universe as the creation of a god-like figure. Nowadays, a large percentage of the human population don't believe in such a thing. Religion is a resistant concept but it's not a perennial one and science is the driver of that change.

One thing doesn't exclude the other.
Religions changed as humanity changed. But that doesn't exclude the fact that science can but doesn't need to disprove the tenants of a religion to contribute to its desuetude.

I keep seeing "all authors use AI, the real issue is they're being forced to be sneaky about it" headlines.

Full stop No. This is a lie peddled for normalization. It's schoolyard-level pressure tactics "C'mon, all the cool kids are already doing it. We won't tell. It's fine. We're on your side."

Seedlings growing in small pots, are cover in white hail.

Seedlings and hail, a recipe for running...

I was quick enough to bring them inside before the worst of it, but it would be nice if the weather finally understood it's time to get warmer, not colder.

#gardening

The cover of Childhood's End by A. C. Clarke

First read it as a teen. Liked it better this time.

"Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the nonexistence of Zeus or Thor, but they have few followers now.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood’s End

#BookSky 💙📚

The cover of The House With a Clock in Its Walls by John Bellairs

I'm reading some spooky #MG mystery and enjoying it deeply.
#Kidlit even spooks harder than it needs 😉

"When you are hiding something, you get the feeling that every other secret is connected to your secret."
―John Bellairs, The House with a Clock in Its Walls

#BookSky #MiddleGrade 📚💙📚

Beautiful color contrast!

Love the tulips!

Lovely

Little seedlings in trays on a porch, waiting to be planted.

Winter-sown seedlings are almost ready to go in the ground.
If only it would stop snowing! 🌨️ ❄️🌨️
I may need to repot a few of them so they have enough room to wait for warmer days.

#gardening #spring2026 #wintersown

Where satire meats the factual, that's the genius of it.
Is the Duchess actually talking about the speed at which the Earth rotates? Or is she talking about the world as in society?
Alice, too eager to show her knowledge, counters the point while missing the point, same as the Duchess does next.

The cover of Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol

Once in a while, I like to peruse through this one...
Lots of interesting things too find, refind, and find again.

"If everybody minded their own business, the world would go around a great deal faster than it does."
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

#kidlit #classics #BookSky 📚💙📚

A bloom-fill branch of a cherry tree with a blue sky as background.

A bucket full of fruits collected last summer. Apples, plums, cherries and a few veggies, tomatillos and tomatoes.

I love looking at this ⬇️ knowing that this ⬇️ is coming...

#Spring time wonders!

#gardening #spring2026

Excellent... I feel so smug when one of the bookmedations reaches the right reader! 😉

Among my favorite GNs. The only thing I don't like about that series, is how heavy the compendiums are. One weekend of reading is like going to the gym.

I have so many favorite series, but one I love since being a teen is that of sci-fi detective Lucky Starr by Issac Asimov.

Small yellow dandelion flowers growing from a crack between garden pavers.

Dandelions, lawn daisies and other "weeds" are bees only source of food in early spring.
We love these weeds and, to help our lovely solitary bees, we don't mow the lawn until other plants have bloomed.
Bonus points, the garden gets some early color!

#gardening #wildgarden #notaweed

The cover of 100 Days of Sunlight by Abbie Emmons showing the tittle over a bright yellow background surrounded by objects one may use on a summer afternoon outside, a guitar, sunglasses, flowers, waffles...

Continuing with #YA that goes hard, this one oozes emotion...

"Letting go feels like giving up. But if you don’t let go, you’ll drown. I know the feeling. And it sucks. But Life sucks sometimes."
― Abbie Emmons, 100 Days of Sunlight

#KidLit #BookSky 📚💙📚

I may take a little longer, but it'll come, and it'll be glorious (or at least I hope so).

We had a very, very wet winter. Little snow, but no blue skies for months. The new color is a great relief.

Excellent idea!

Four salmon-colored tulips

A white and yellow daffodil

A clump pf pink ballerina tulips

Three patches of tulips, pink ballerina, soft purple and white.

The colors of spring...
What a joy!

#spring2026 #gardening #springflowers #tulips #daffodils

The cover of Nothing Sung and Nothing Spoken by Nita Tyndall shows three teens walking in the night among old buildings, holding hands.

#KidLit putting words to feelings in the best possible way

"I feel guilty for it sometimes, for any sort of laughter or feeling of freedom on my part, because there is a war going on and we shouldn't be allowed to forget so easily."
― Nita Tyndall, Nothing Sung and Nothing Spoken.
#YA #BookSky 💙📚

Very interesting!

The cover of WHAT BEAUTY THERE IS by Cory Anderson, shows a couple of teens, sitting under the canopy of a forest in the night. A shining mot flies by.

Seriuosly, #kidlit goes so hard...

"People try to create order. Discipline. Rules. It gives them peace. A sense of regulation. Of strength. It makes them feel in control. But life is chaos, reader. The sooner you learn this, the better."
― Cory Anderson, What Beauty There Is

#BookSky #YA 📚💙📚