Amanda W

@amwesselmann.bsky.social

712 Followers 250 Following

Interested in books, history, neurodiversity, cooking, art, and democracy

Book cover for Too Small Tola by Atinuke. On a yellow background is the head and shoulders of a small child with dark skin and black hair carrying a basket full of different foods, a reference to the first chapter of the book. The title and author appear in red patterned letters.
A cosmos flower (Cosmos bipinnatus) is almost open with yellow petals surrounding a red center. Behind it and slightly out of focus is a fully open cosmos bloom. More buds dot the green foliage, consisting of cosmos, goldenrod (Solidago canadensis), other wildflowers, and the dreaded foxtail grass.
Me, a pale woman who is older today than yesterday, sitting in the shallows of a lake beach. I am wearing my favorite khaki bucket hat, a red long-sleeved rash guard, and black swim shorts.
A small bright green fly with translucent wings, Condylostylus sipho, landed on a pale human.
Ruellia humilis, or wild petunia, volunteering in a sunny garden. The blooms are light purple, 5-pearled, and bell-shaped. The foliage is fuzzy, pointed, green leaves. These plants are growing about 8 inches high.
Many hops vines overflowing a trellis made of wood and clotheslines. It’s appears as a wall of leaves.
Crowded stems of yellow coneflower (Echinacea paradoxa) growing green out of brown leaf mulch. The stems nearest the edge have been nibbled short by wildlife, likely rabbits. New stems grow around the nibbled ones.
A shallow bread basket lined with a yea towel and containing yeast rolls. The edges of the towel folded over the rolls shows the lower portion of Bag End, and the word Hobbiton.
My pale fingers holding several long, skinny green leaves of garlic chives over a simmering pot of soup. Floating at the top of the soup are a few leaves of sorrel. Both garlic chives and sorrel are perennial herbs picked from my garden.
Cover of the book The Girl Who Stole an Elephant by Nizrana Farook. The title is at the top. Centered is an image of an adolescent in a shirt, long skirt, and a long braid of black hair riding an Asian elephant. The elephant has long tusks and a trunk raised like it is trumpeting. The pair are marching along a river through a jungle at sunset.
A Tupperware container containing 6 colored eggs, including 2 with a patterned shrink wrap
A mama cottontail rabbit in a raised bed garden. Her front legs are splayed because she is nursing kits, not visible under her. After she left, we saw 3 little furry kits.
A black Flemish giant rabbit lying floofed on its side in a carpeted room. There is also a scattering of hay on the floor, cardboard boxes for “bunstruction”, and a large dog crate because this sass-ball can’t be trusted at night. The photo app on my phone thinks the rabbit is either a Scottish terrier or a French bulldog, which cracks me up.
A play table, kind of like a train table but structured like a river with banks and hills rising from it. There are toys, including small brown wooden pegs representing people, a wooden campfire, cut logs, rectangular houses, and a mastodon “that is friendly and you can pet it,” according to the youthful scene creator. This river table is meant to show life in part of Illinois over the past 10,000 years.
Cover of the graphic novel The Naked Tree. On a blue background, a black, leafless tree weaves branches through the yellow words of the title. To the right, a young Korean woman stands turning as if looking over her shoulder toward the other side of the tree. There is a wind-up key, like ones for a mechanical toy sticking out of her back. The author’s name, Keum Suk Gendry-Kim, is at the top of the cover in white letters.
A post by shedances underthemoon that reads, “Can’t tell if my bad mood is due to perimenopause or the fall of democracy.”
Tan cover of the first book in a trilogy. At the top, a yellowed banner displays the name of the series in script font, The Song of the Winns. Below that, the title reads The Secret of the Ginger Mice. The image is a drawing of two mice, both orangey or yellow “Ginger” colored, riding a raft down rocky rapids. One mouse wears a scarf flapping in the wind, and both hold makeshift oars that are thoroughly useless in the situation. At the bottom is the author’s name, Frances Watts.
A child’s playhouse with white siding, gray shingled roof, and purple porch railings. On the roof is a squirrel, apparently named Munchers, nibbling on a seed cake it brought up there. The roof is littered with seeds that have fallen in the process.
Screenshot from The Story Graph. It says that I have read 84 books, over 18,000 pages. Bars of color at the bottom indicate the different moods of the books, but the image cut off the labels. Adventurous is the biggest mood, and includes most of the Redwall series and all the Poppy and Friends series. The tracked books include chapter books I have finished. It does not include picture books I read to children, magazines or newspapers, or books I didn’t finish. Or what I read in January, as I started using Story Graph in February.
A photo of a selection of toys and an advent wreath arranged on a wooden table. The advent wreath in the background is from my childhood. It is made of brown clay, with various biblical symbols stamped around it, and it holds 3 purple and one pink candle. In the foreground, a group of shepherds gather to adore the baby Jesus while Mary and Joseph look on. The shepherds are played by a superhero, a couple of princesses, and a bunch of wooden peg dolls painted to look like different saints and an angel. Baby Jesus is played by a small mouse toy in a crib “manger”, Joseph is played by Fred from Scooby Doo, and Mary is played by a wooden doll representing herself. Toward the right of the photo, two My Little Ponies play angels, and in the back left, a spotted horse plays the donkey. Merry Christmas!
Handmade cards are scattered about a shoebox used to transport them to a local nursing home.
Digital art depicting a lit menorah, sufginayah (like a donut), a wrapped gift, a dreidel, and several gold coins. The words above the items reads, Happy Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights.
A selfie of a white, brown-haired woman with glasses smiling and wearing an orange sweater, skirt patterned with leaves and pumpkins, and sage-green colored knitted cowl.
A pale-skinned hand holding a peeled potato carved to resemble a human skull. Because no, giblet gravy is not goth enough.
A handful of tiny baby lettuce leaves, rinsed and sitting a damp white towel used to pat them dry.
A small bell pepper plant with one tiny green bell pepper hanging off a low branch. Around the plant, the wooden walls of the raised bed and the red maple leaves used for mulch are visible.
Eight pumpkins decorated by kids sitting on a porch. Three are drawn on with sharpie and 5 are carved. The carved ones are light from within by electric candles.
Flowering dill plant. A flower with magenta petals and yellow center blooms atop a thin green stem, surrounded by unopened buds. The feathery (and tasty!) leaves are below the flowers.
Photo of a white woman with dark hair wearing pointy elf ears and a green and yellow dress. The skirt portion of the dress is printed with a pattern reminiscent of the Fellowship: a wizard, a hobbit, a dwarf, and an elf all walking as a group.
Six cherry tomatoes in a plastic bowl. The tomatoes vary kn ripeness from bright red to orange with hints of green. Not pictured: the enthusiasm of the preschooler who picked them.
A small white rose in full bloom, including the yellow stamens. In the background are green rose leaves and a few rose hips ripening from green to red.
About a dozen purple coneflowers (Echinacea purpurea) and twice as many yellow coneflowers (Rudbeckia sp.) blooming and leaning to the right due to recent storms with high winds. A cottontail rabbit is sitting at the corner of the plot, grooming itself, because it realizes that the 5 people within 10 feet of it are friendly and won’t harm it.
A homemade painting depicting yellow coneflowers and orange butterfly weed, rendered in dots of tempera paint on white paper in a style inspired by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama.
Glass jar maybe 1/8 full of basil I grew and dried myself. It’s labeled “Dr. Basil” on yellow tape on the side of the jar, but it would rather you just call it Basil.
A small Echinacea plant with two yellow blooms. The flower on the left is just sprouting petals, and the flower on the right is more developed and has the characteristic shape of “center on top, petals drooping down”, like a poofy skirt someone stepped out of and hasn’t put away yet.
Cardboard box stacked with books that fit the requirements for the mail book drive: paperback, novels, religious/inspirational, health and parent guides.
A green salad on a plate, including green lettuce, herbs from the garden, dandelion greens and salad dressing.
On a wooden table, a square of wax paper bears a brown silhouette of a cat. At the top left corner of the image is a white pot and spoon which were used to heat the sugar solution and then drizzle it on the wax paper in the cat design. The child artist is quite proud of this sweet work of art.
A blue plate bearing a homemade version of tonghulu, red candy-coated grapes speared with toothpicks. There are also pools of the candy coating that dripped off while it was cooling. The candy coating is clear, sweet, and crunchy, while the grapes are crisp and fruity.
Inside of a white card. At the bottom of the left half is the quote from The Hobbit, “There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure.” - JRR Tolkien The right half reads, “We are excited to welcome your new little hobbit!” Both are handwritten in black pen.
A garden bed, with three green plants poking through the brown leaf mulch. Two plants near the top of the photo with silvery green leaves are yellow coneflowers (Echinacea paradoxa) and a larger plant with lighter green leaves is purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea).
The cover of The Black Panther Party by David F Walker and Marcus Kwame Anderson.
A few bright green sorrel leaves rest in a blue bowl. They are oval-shaped and smooth-edged, with a sharp lemony flavor that is not obvious in the photo but will be when I crunch it up for lunch.
Cover of the book Under the Sea Wind by Rachel Carson. From the lower right corner, the golden sand of the beach ends in waves breaking over rocks in white foam. The waves continue rolling in from the middle of the picture. The light blue sky peppered with cottonball clouds looks like a perfect day for a baby cod to hunt shrimp, or a young gull to find a mate. Lines of text read from top to bottom: New York Times Bestseller, Rachel Carson, Author of The Silent Spring, Under the Sea Wind.
An enormous black rabbit lays on the floor of an interior room. The rabbit's back is to the camera, and a yellow plastic egg is directly behind it, as though the rabbit laid the egg. The photo is backlit, the rabbit looks alert, and you can tell the photo was taken paparazzi-style by a ninja mama just before the sassy bunny hopped away.
A homemade blueberry pie, cooling uncut, but with a spot of juice leaked out the left side where I crimped my crust poorly. Grandma Lolly always said pies came easy for her, and that’s goals. 😏
Three dark-eyes juncos look for bugs in a yard of brown, dormant grass. A rain-soaked wooden fence is in the background and a huge stick some kid dragged into the yard is much more noticeable than the birds.
Four items related to print-making/painting on a wooden table. Clockwise from top right: a paper plate with splotches of tempera paint and a bit of carved, paint-covered styrofoam; a depiction of a garden at twilight; a seascape at night; and a layered painting of green, blue, and black. All paintings have a texture and pattern to the paint from using a styrofoam stamp. One is mine, the others were painted by children.
A lovely mushroom fairy crocheted with different colors of yarn. She resembles yours truly, female with pale skin and brown hair. Her dress is sage green with gold trim around the edges, and she has a gold shawl tied around her shoulders. Her hat resembles a mushroom cap, red with white felt spots sewn to it. She also has black button eyes and a sweet little smile that isn’t quite visible from the angle of the photo.
A plate of apple crisp and cream, which will serve as both delicious treat and prompt to rehash mentally the discussion of the turning point of Animal Farm by George Orwell.
Book cover for This Land is Our Land: A Blue Beetle Story graphic novel by Julio Anta and Jacoby Salcedo. A male teenager with brown skin and short black hair stands with his back to the viewer, looking over his shoulder. On his back, glowing through his shirt, is a blue scarab from space. The city of El Paso is lit up at night in the background.