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As a fairy artist you'd think I would already have like, ten fairy gardens. Nope, not even one, although I adore the thought of them and used to have an obsession anything miniature when I was younger (although I didn't really have dollhouses, just Barbies).

Fairy gardens are all the rage right now, and as always, I try to not follow too close to the trend. There are places throughout my yard where I can envision little fairy spots nested. They fly, so wouldn't all of the 'parts' be scattered about? Like bird houses, feeders, and flowers are for the wildlife that can fly?

 I decided to start with the very front of our yard, near our new mums (praying they made it through the winter). I visited Hobby Lobby today, never a healthy choice, and saw the fairy garden accessories on sale. I have a sweet spot for bird baths, and saw one I just fell for. Also, mushrooms add that little bit of British flare I miss so much.

I know, I’ve been doing a lot of tacos. I can’t help myself. Here’s yet another simple twist.

I’ve had plenty of spinach and mushroom enchiladas before at restaurants but somehow never thought to recreate something similar until the recipe here, in Super Natural Every Day by Heidi Swanson (she of 101cookbooks fame).

Her version is minus the spinach and uses fancier mushrooms (chanterelles, or Pfefferlinge, if you’re German—btw wouldn’t it be great to see this on a seasonal Pfefferlinge menu?). I just used plain brown mushrooms. Along with the mushrooms, there’s garlic, onions, and a serrano pepper involved. Yum.

I used frozen chopped spinach from Trader Joe’s. I definitely recommend spinning or squeezing it dry if you’re going that route. Fresh spinach would also totally work, of course. Either way just saute it a little in the pan, but separately from the mushrooms so each veggie cooks at the right temp and length.

I find the mushrooms really satisfying and a welcome change from my normal array of vegetables. And it was a quick lunch.

Do you get stuck in veggie ruts? I’m not-so-patiently waiting for the local-ish asparagus to come in. I’m guessing it’s still Rotkohl (red cabbage) season in Deutschland? That’s one of those dishes I’ve only appreciated in restaurants and haven’t yet ventured into cooking myself. (If you’re wondering why I’m talking about German vegetables, it’s because last year this time, we were living in Hannover, Germany).

In other news, our local chapter of the WNBA (no, not basketball—the Women’s National Book Association) had a great joint meeting the other night with the Charlotte Writer’s Club. It was a panel about the process of getting published, with lots of great food for thought from industry folk.

Meanwhile I’m still plugging away at my character interviews led by these questions. Writers, have you ever done this? It’s such a Magic-8-ball/ subconscious-channeling kind of exercise. Feels weird at times, but I’m coming up with lots of good character stuff that relates to the plot.

Oh, and one last aside. I did a Skype call to talk about Slowpoke with a class of first graders last week. So fun. Best question, which still has me laughing: “Are you ever afraid you’ll never finish another book?”

Here are some studies for today.

I did the lips yesterday and made a video of the painting progress on youtube.

I’m a bit of a mushroom fan, I’ve got about 6 books on the subject now. I just love the different shapes and colours.

A World of Food: Discover Magical Lands Made of Things You Can Eat! by Carl Warner doesn’t actually come out in the UK until May, but given that we’ve been playing a lot with our food recently, I couldn’t resist sharing this title with you now.

A World of Food showcases the incredible landscapes created out of food by photographer Carl Warner. 12 scenes are included, accompanied by a rhyming text describing some of what you can see in each image.

The photographs are incredible – witty, inventive, mindboggling. It’s enormous fun to attempt to work out what everything is made of; sand dunes from couscous, autumn leaves from cornflakes, railway tracks from kitkats, for example. At the back of the book there’s a key to each picture so you can check your guesses.

We found looking at the images inspiring and eyeopening. All of us wanted to try our hand at creating similar images, and the photos also made us look anew at food items we might have previously considered rather dull eg split peas, kale and sunflower seeds.

Unfortunately, the accompanying text doesn’t match the quality and inventiveness of the photos. The rhymes are a somewhat clunky e.g

If all the world were gray,
There wouldn’t be much room-
For every inch of ground would sprout
A tasty gray mushroom

or

Like herbivores on forest floor,
We’d walk through fresh green herbs
And share out thyme with passersby
In leafy, lush suburbs.

Perhaps I’m being a little harsh, as this book is really a showcase for Carl Warner‘s imaginative photography, which you can also see on his website. Indeed many of the images included in the book are (currently) available to view somewhere online which leaves me wondering who might buy this book?

I think it would be great for schools doing a healthy food topic. The images are such fun; they are bound to get kids looking at fruit and veg in a different light. I think families with picky eaters (just like our family) might enjoy this book. With my picky eaters half the battle is getting the kids just to touch the food; by offering them the chance to make pictures with their food at least this first hurdle become easier to jump over. I, personally, would love it if posters were available of these photos; they would look super in cafes, school canteens and even in my kitchen!

And so my picky eaters did

By Nicholas P. Money

A grown-up neighbor in the English village of my childhood told stories about angels that sat upon our shoulders and fairies that lived in her snapdragons. Like the other kids, I searched her flowers for a glimpse of the sprites, but agnosticism imbibed from my parents quickly overruled this innocent play. Yet there was magic in my neighbor’s garden and I had seen real angels on her lawn: little stalked bells that poked from the dew-drenched grass on autumn mornings; evanescent beauties whose delicately balanced caps quivered to the touch. By afternoon they were gone, shriveled into the greenery. Does any living thing seem more supernatural to a child than a mushroom? Their prevalence in fairy tale illustrations and fantasy movies suggests not. Like no other species, the strangeness of fungi survives the loss of innocence about the limits of nature. They trump the supernatural, their magic intensifying as we learn more about them.

Once upon a time, I spent 30 years studying mushrooms and other fungi. Now, as my scientific interests broaden with my waistline, I would like to share three things that I have learned about the meaning of life from thinking about these extraordinary sex organs and the microbes that produce them. This mycological inquiry has revealed the following: (i) life on land would collapse without the activities of mushrooms; (ii) we owe our existence to mushrooms; and (iii) there is (probably) no God. The logic is spotless.

Mushrooms are masterpieces of natural engineering. The overnight appearance of the fruit body is a pneumatic process, with the inflation of millions of preformed cells extending the stem, pushing earth aside, and unfolding the cap. Once exposed, the gills of a meadow mushroom shed an astonishing 30,000 spores per second, delivering billions of allergenic particles into the air every day. A minority of spores alights and germinates on fertile ground and some species are capable of spawning the largest and longest-lived organisms on the planet. Mushroom colonies burrow through soil and rotting wood. Some hook into the roots of forest trees and engage in mutually supportive symbioses; others are pathogens that decorate their food sources with hardened hooves and fleshy shelves. Mushrooms work with insects too, fed by and feeding leaf-cutter ants in the New World and termites in the Old World. Among the staggering diversity of mushroom-forming fungi we also find strange apparitions including gigantic puffballs, phallic eruptions with revolting aromas, and tiny “bird’s nests” whose spore-filled eggs are splashed out by raindrops.

Mushrooms have been around for tens of millions of years and their activities are indispensable for the operation of the biosphere. Through their relationships with plants and animals, mushrooms are essential for forest and grassland ecology, climate control and atmospheric chemistry, water purification, and the maintenance of biodiversity. This first point, about the ecological significance of mushrooms, is obvious, yet the 16,000 described species of mushroom-forming fungi are members of the most poorly understood kingdom of life. The second point requires a dash of lateral thinking. Because humans evolved in ecosystems dependent upon mushrooms there would be no us without mushrooms. And no matter how superior we feel, humans remain dependent upon the continual activity of these fungi. The relationship isn’t reciprocal: without us there would definitely be mushrooms. Judged against the rest of life (and, so often, we do place ourselves against the rest of nature) humans can be considered as a recent and damag

© Loree Griffin Burns

I found this strange musrhoom growing at the edge of the front lawn. It’s a stinkhorn, and I now know where the name comes from; they really stink! The over-sweet smell is distinctive, and designed, I’ve since read, to attract flies, which land on the slime-coated tip of the mushroom, muck about, and fly off with spores stuck to their legs. Stinky, but clever.

Happy Wednesday …

The world of children’s literature is full of generous and supportive people. First and foremost among these are the authors. If they’re competing for shelf space and bestseller lists, they certainly don’t act like it. I’m new to this world, but have been lucky enough to meet and learn from dozens of authors. Kurtis Scaletta has been at this about as long as I have, but it would seem as though he’s been doing it forever. He’s already a seasoned pro. His newest book is The Tanglewood Terror, a beautiful mash-up of classic science fiction, football, bicycle-back adventure, and bittersweet family drama, with a healthy dose of adolescent awkwardness mixed in. It will be released on the same date as The Only Ones: tomorrow! To celebrate the occasion, we decided to interview each other. I’m answering questions on his blog. He’s answering questions here. If you can find a better deal than that, then pin a tail on me and call me a donkey. Because it don’t exist.

Aaron: First off, congratulations on crafting an utterly unique story, a gentle but ominous tale about a plague of mushrooms and a family struggling to hold itself together. And congratulations on your third book in three years (after Mudville and Mamba Point). It’s an astounding accomplishment, especially considering they’re each stand-alone novels set in vastly different times and places.

Kurtis: Thanks. I published my first book at age 40 and I think I was trying to make up for lost time by putting out a book a year.

Aaron: I guess that leads to my first question. In a children’s book industry dominated by trilogies and series, what is it about the stand-alone novel that appeals to you?

Kurtis: Kids love series, no doubt about it. They ask about sequels a lot. I think it’s because they feel really connected to the characters, they make these temporary friends and want to keep seeing them.  But I’m usually focused on a kid in a time of upheaval and transformation. By the end of the book, that kid and the world around him have changed too much to go back and do it again. But I did love series as a kid, too, and I have one in the works… it’s for younger readers than my first three novels so it can be a little more static.

Aaron: The Tanglewood Terror is set in present day Maine, in a world of cell phones and the internet. Yet it also seems to exist in a time when kids were granted more freedom. The characters roam the woods for hours on end. There are none of the “helicopter parents” we hear about.  The wonderful title and cover art communicate the retro aspect of the story, but I’m curious how this notion of freedom and autonomy informed your writing. Was it something other than nostalgia for you? It reminds me of the