Perhaps she'd like to read Redcliffe Salaman's supposedly classic "The History and Social Influence of the Potato" (1949). From the preface:

Happy to recommend/advise if anyone else wants to do something similar. Good luck 9/9

So after many years of waffling over unsatisfying options for rooftop arrays and/or sketchy top-of-pole ideas, we're getting our solar array PLUS an attractive shady pergola we can can sit under. 8/

The panels are getting mounted flat; tilting them just isn't worth the trouble. (I believe the flat mount will actually maximize output on cloudy days, of which we have many.) I'm hoping an occasional leafblower pass can keep them clean. 7/

In a few weeks the solar panels go up courtesy of www.bettertogether.solar. 12x 450W CS panels, 5.4 kW total, IronRidge hardware, EnPhase electronics. Electrical run from the pergola to the house got trenched in in September. Ready to add storage later. 6/

The pergola kit vendor says their 12x12 kit assembles in 4 hours with "a tradesperson and helper" or "two skilled homeowners". I'd guess I put in 12--15 assembly hours SOLO plus 30m with a helper. 5/

The pergola is totally DIY accessible (albeit the biggest thing I've ever done). The footers were the hardest part; www.otherguysconcrete.com mixed and poured my concrete (great guys, super helpful) but I did my own surveying (tedious), digging (difficult), and rebar (fun, honestly). 4/

... which let it meet OH building code including snow/wind load on the panels. I've got engineer-stamped drawings for my specific kit for Ohio; happy to share if that helps you? (If it doesn't, engineer charge was $950.) 3/

Starting point is a 14'x18' "classic cedar" pergola kit (16' x 20' top surface) from www.pergolakitsusa.com (very satisfied, happy to recommend.) Slightly over-specced from the catalog kit (taller headers and rafters) ... 2/

If you like that sort of thing, The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959, Gary Cooper and Charlton Heston) sounds like it's going to be a high seas survival adventure film but most of the screen time is a dull-as-dirt marine salvage rights courtroom drama

A) Frozen peas ($1.5/lb) + bouillon. Boil & puree. Dress w olive oil. Great soup, nothing like split pea

B) Any pumpkin pie recipe makes a dinner entree if you halve the sugar. (Healthy variety: carrot, squash, sweet potato, pumpkin are interchangeable. Cube and roast.) Cheap, kid-friendly veg.

The theme of the sermon was overalls? 👖 We're doing backwoods stereotypes now?? Didn't you just say they were wearing suits??? (It was all ok, the sentence went in a different direction but the misreading made me laugh.) /end

OK finally one thing I want to quote because misreading it made me laugh. The dead mother's funeral reception. Here's the pastor. I got to the sentence beginning "The overall theme" and pulled up short. 12/

Quick read; friendly characters, lots of sex, not gory, and vast (but, notably, not incomprehensibly vast) horrors. 11/

Those are my Thoughts Prompted By. Should YOU read it? The narrative voice is getting on towards noir; jaded, confident, grouchy. (Could hardly be more different than The Twisted Ones, which may as well have been narrated by Cathy Guisewhite. Cthulhu AACK!) 10/

I grew up watching little developments/subdivisions spring up in fields around me. The fact that 20 years can take you from "empty field" to "weird new street" to "lived-in place" is so familiar IRL. Children of Solitude's setting is exactly this, maybe the first time I've seen it in fiction. 9/

"... surrounded by" <author selects "clone" tool in Photoshop> "more suburb I guess? Whatever. Back to Our Character." If a building's origin is mentioned at all it's because of some distant-past anomaly, a curse, a graveyard. The built environment is never *new*. Usually. 8/

your realtor probably used it for comps. Eldritch comps. Anyway! It made me think about how built environments usually show up in fiction? Usually pretty static? "Here's our character, in an environment consisting of Familiar Suburb ..." 7/