Playing with Matches

The grass is a sickly yellow. The shrunken edges of our pond reveal grassy banks that usually remain well hidden. The weeds have taken over every lawn along my walking routes.

Given this droughty state of things, we have been warned not to play with matches around here, or fireworks, or any other sparky things.

I'm on board with this, having recently seen pictures of Colorado cars fleeing in front of a wall of orange flame.

I'm especially on board after reading John Pipkin's Woodsburner, a fictionalized treatment of a real event.

It concerns Henry David Thoreau, of Walden Pond fame. A year before he went into the woods to commune with the flora and fauna, he set them afire one dry and windy April day. He merely wanted to cook a chowder. But the flames outmaneuvered him in short order and rushed towards the town of Concord, Massachusetts.

Pipkin brings Thoreau and three or four other characters to life. There is a preacher addled by opium (his chapters were slow-going for me), a bookseller who hopes to expand his empire and a Scandinavian farm hand. Cow patties aplenty.

As for your recipe, we went all out for fruit salads recently, snapping up blueberries and strawberries and eating them this way and that. You can start with the more healthful version:

Poppy Seed Fruit Salad

Next, you can try something a little more sugared up. Since it features marshmallows, it is, in my mind, a very Mormon salad:

Marshmallow Fruit Salad