Caution: Wordiness ahead.

Minneapolis hit a record breaking 78F/ 26C Saturday. Our first 70F/ 21C day of the year generally happens around April 7th. Over the last two years, the first 70-degree reading has come early—March 14 last year and March 3 in 2024. The 2024 date of March 3 was the earliest recorded 70-degree reading for the Twin Cities. Saturday’s record breaking temperature comes after we had 8.9 inches/ 22.6 cm of snow Saturday night to Sunday, a low temperature Monday night of 1F/ -17C, and another inch/ 2.5 cm of snow on Tuesday. March in Minnesota is generally a roller coaster, but not quite this whiplash-y. The temperature today has moderated back closer to “normal” and will continue for the rest of the week between 40F/4.4C to 50F/ 10C with a 60F/ 15.5C burp at the end of the week.

The sap is running in the maples and tapped trees I see around town are filling up their bags like nobody’s business. I expect Melody Silver Maple in the front garden will soon be blooming. The witch hazel is blooming. Saturday we pruned the apple trees and their buds are already swelling. I noticed the perennial walking onions and the bunching onions are already sending up green shoots. I’ll be able to start adding some to meals next week at this rate.

It appears that real spring has finally sprung. The animals think so too. I seem to be interrupting rabbit meetups every morning on my way to work, sending them scattering. I seriously doubt this will have an impact on the rabbit population, but who knows? I also keep finding stuff squirrels have commandeered for fluffing their nests stuck on perennial stems in the garden–gobs of leaves, fake grass, fiber fill stuffing, candy wrappers.

The robins are trilling and the males are arguing over territory, the cardinals are singing to their mates, and the wild turkeys in the city are flocking with the males becoming extra aggressive. On my bike commute home from work recently I had to save a school bus that was having a standoff with a turkey in the middle of an intersection. The turkey was pecking at the bus and completely undisturbed by the driver honking the horn. I slowly and carefully biked up to the turkey and herded him off the road. James has also been herding turkeys off the road on his bike commutes. They are unfazed by the traffic jams they cause. I find it absolutely hilarious.

Saturday was the Rebel Gardeners seed swap. It was a good turnout. I brought a bunch of seeds and other folks brought seeds too, and someone who is a Master Gardener brought a lot of commercial seed packets that must have been donated. I was very good and only came home with a seed packet of turnips. I was tempted by beans–I love growing beans!–but I refrained because I am filled up with bean varieties right now. The folks who organized the group talked a bit about plans going forward, the food shelves we will be donating to, efforts various people with connections are making to get donated wood for newer gardeners to build raised beds, compost and mulch donations, how we can help each other out during the summer with garden care when folks go out of town as well as skill and knowledge sharing.

A couple people in the group are experienced hydroponics growers and after some discussion about it I’m thinking of maybe setting up something for growing greens indoors during the winter. But we’ll see if I end up having the time and willingness to go through the effort of setting that all up when October arrives. Sure would be nice to have fresh homegrown greens in winter though.

The catalog for the Friends School Plant sale I attend every May went live midweek. I downloaded the PDF and thought, I’ll wait until the weekend to look through it. Yes, I am that delusional sometimes. It wasn’t even a full hour after downloading that I opened the document “just to peek.” A bunch of highlighted plants later, I managed to pull myself away until the next day when I made it to the end of the catalog.

Inflation has come for the garden. Plants that used to cost $2.50 – $3 are now $4, and the “comes in a pack” where you get 4 or 6 plants that used to be $4 – $5 are now $6 to $7. The price for shrubs and trees has skyrocketed. Even so, the prices are still less than at a commercial nursery and they don’t sell any neonic plants. But also, I’m glad I don’t need many plants this year. Want is another matter. But wants are much easier to talk myself out of.

ICE

ICE is still here abducting people but it seems a bit less dire, or maybe I’m just used to this now as a new normal. Kids are still terrified to go to school for fear their parents won’t be there when they get home. Adults are still terrified of going to work for fear that they will be abducted. Mutual aid work continues as we all try to heal from the trauma. Saturday James and I went to a Maker and Baker neighborhood fundraiser where proceeds will go towards helping people in my neighborhood pay their rent. I came away with a cute new sticker for my water bottle, a new pair of earrings, and an awesome postcard. The fundraiser last month took in $6,000 and yesterday raised an additional $5,000. There will probably be another one next month, so I’m putting on my thinking cap for something I might be able to donate. Maybe a loaf of sourdough bread or some extra garden seedlings.

In case you haven’t been following Minnesota news since we dropped out of the headlines when the surge “ended,” remember Liam, the cute little 5-year-old boy in the blue bunny hat who was used as bait to detain his dad? They were both then sent to Texas until a judge ordered they be released and returned to Minnesota. Well, the Department of Homeland Security filed to have their case expedited, and the other day an immigration judge ended the family’s asylum claims. The family’s lawyers are appealing, but it could take months or years for it all to be resolved. I am not certain whether they will be allowed to remain in the United States during the appeal, or if they will be forced to return to Ecuador. Trump has repeatedly said ICE is only looking for the worst of the worst, the criminals and bad people. I am not sure how the Ramos family qualifies as criminals and bad people. Maybe Trump finds blue bunny hats triggering?

In other news, it turns out that the world’s deadliest sharks are only one-third as deadly to Minnesotans in 2026 as ICE. It’s a serious but also funny article in which I learned that with all of our shark-free fresh water lakes, a good many Minnesotans are still mildly afraid of sharks. Personally, I’m not worried about sharks in the lakes, it’s the silty mud and lake weeds that freak me out.

Meanwhile in the New York Times, Thomas Friedman, of whom I am not a fan but who turns out to be from Minneapolis, has an op-ed piece (gift link) in which he talks about what the federal government has done here, the damage it has caused, and the peaceful resistance that stood up and forced the federal government to back down (a little). He suggests, in spite of the horrible title of the piece, that the response of the people of Minnesota needs to be exported to the rest of the country. The lesson Friedman wants to export is the understanding that governments and institutions will not save us, but solidarity and community will. Quite rich coming from a man who was an advocate of the Iraq War and who believes in unregulated trade.

Speaking of the community response to being invaded by the federal government, the people of the Twin Cities were awarded the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award this last week. It is an award created by the Kennedy family and given by the JFK Library to honor those who have demonstrated political courage and conscience at personal or professional risk. We apparently tied with Jerome Powell for the award. The award ceremony is in May. Is the whole Twin Cities invited to the ceremony? And who gets to show off the award? I suspect the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul will attend and then thumb wrestle over in whose City Hall the plaque will be displayed.

Books and Libraries

I’m totaling vibing with Jo Walton’s recent essay at The Reactor about how she reads sixteen books at once  I don’t use an e-reader and my number is lower, but I currently have twelve books on the go. It is, as she calls it, “a lovely reading symphony.” The way I read my multiple books is a bit different than Walton’s method. I have five main reads I cycle through and then the rest are ones I pick up in odd moments or when I need a breather from my main reads. 

The main reads depend on location and day of the week. So I have a book I read only at work during my lunch break. This might be fiction or nonfiction. I have a book that James reads to me while I am doing a strength workout lifting weights and doing pushups and lunges on Tuesdays and Saturdays. We are reading our way through all of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books. We’ve read all the books with the witches as the main story and are one and a half books away from being complete with all the Night Watch books.

Generally Monday and Wednesday nights I get to read for about 45-minutes in bed before going to sleep. These are usually novel nights unless I’m reading a nonfiction book I really like or have to return to the library soon. Tuesday nights after neighborhood foot patrol and my strength workout I read nonfiction in bed before going to sleep. Thursday nights I don’t get to read because I’m at sangha and not home until after 9 and go right to bed. Fridays are either movie/TV show and popcorn night or meeting with my Beloved Community Circle, so generally no reading. Daytime Saturdays and Sunday I read whatever strikes my fancy, which could be one of my main reads or one of the other books I have going. At night on both those days I usually get a nice chunk of reading in bed before sleep time and generally devote half the time to a novel and half to nonfiction. Almost every night I read a poem and will also read poetry in those “I have 10 minutes” moments between other activities.

This way there is something I always want to read no matter my mood and ability to focus. I’ve been reading like this for so long, I can’t remember the last time I read just one book with no others in progress. I sometimes worry the multiple books in progress are a result of a short attention span brought on by too much digital media, but when I think back through my reading history, I’ve been reading like this since university in pre-internet days.

I couldn’t read like this if it weren’t for public libraries. When James and I moved to Minnesota back in the mid-1990s, within a day or two of arriving, we found the public library and got library cards even before we went to the DMV to get new driver’s licenses. Priorities! And back when libraries had more money and were open until 9 on a Friday night, we used to go to the library as a regular date night. Nerds!

All this to say, anyone who loves reading or libraries should be extremely concerned about HR 7661, the “Stop Sexualization of Children Act. This is a bill introduced into Congress that will ban all “sexually oriented” children’s books from any institution that receives federal education funding. “Sexually oriented” includes all things LGBTQi+ as well as “lewd and lascivious dancing. Cue Footloose theme song

Books and libraries matter more than ever in these times of growing authoritarianism. I listened to a fantastic Movement Memos podcast conversation this morning on Why Libraries Matter in a Fascist Moment. As one of the guests said, “If we lose this as a public good and as a free public service, we will have lost everything.”

One of the best ways to support your library? Use it!