Emily Brisse

    For those of you who have been here since the very beginning of Landing on Cloudy Water, you might remember my early attempts to learn and document the names of what I saw growing around me. First there was the snowdrop , then the Siberian squill , then the forsythia , then the tarda tulip , and finally the wild columbine. Well, a child came into my life a bit after all that, and naming him, I suppose, claimed my attention. I am happy to say, though, that he is now at the age where he wants to know what he's seeing, and that has given me new cause to do the same. So, I bring you yet again, a series in wild identification: Plant Literate! (Although I seem to be always a month behind, and have no time for individual posts, so it will most likely happen in bursts. Ah, well. Better something than nothing, is my current motto.) This is a doubly-sweet endeavor because what I've been learning these past months has been focused on the growing a

Friends, Today is the last day of school for my students, and although I'll continue through the end of the week with my colleagues in workshops and other wrap-up activities, summer has arrived. It's been another wonderful year, but I can't think of one solitary person who doesn't love these two words put together: summer break. Summer break! Oh, for a few months in which to go where the wind blows me, do what the whims insist! Perhaps I'll show up here a bit more? Or perhaps I'll disappear still deeper into this marsh that is my back yard, what with its wildflowers and ferns and maples and oaks and ash and cottonwood and beech and tamarack stands. I am rippling with contentment. Can you tell? Like the leaves. Like the air, blue and redolent, and so very very close.  Books:   The Progress of Love by Alice Munro -- The entire collection is wonderful, but "Miles City, Montana" struck at my heart with a force. The Small Backs of Children  by