Fran Magazine: Sunday Dispatch, Mar. 10-23

We have a lot to catch up on! Sydney Sweeney, James Gray, David Cronenberg, and a major life update

This is the Fran Magazine Sunday Dispatch, a weekly culture diary for paid subscribers only. The Sunday Dispatch details what I’m watching, reading, playing, and listening to. Paid subscriptions help stabilize my career in culture writing full-time, but all readers — paid & not — are appreciated. Feel free to follow me on Instagram or Letterboxd (for free!). Thanks for reading!

Sprouts

A week and a half ago, I walked to the plant store to get my seeds for the summer. Keen Fran Magazine readers will remember that I grew tomatoes last summer — they almost didn’t make it after the heat wave and some root issues, but they rallied, granting us with lots of little cherry tomatoes this past fall that we used in sauces and salads and generalized snacking.

This year I’m expanding my horizons a little: I’ve done another round of tomatoes, but also sage and sugar snap peas. I also managed to salvage my dying basil plant and now I have one single basil sprout that is so sad I can’t bring myself to document it, but I do think approximately two months from now I will have a full-sized basil plant once again. I planted my seeds the day I got them: sage and tomatoes inside to start, sugar snap peas outside. I was dismayed to see that two days after I planted the peas, the soil looked undeniably… rifled through. I did a cursory brush of my hand to make sure that some of the seeds remained, but I do think some mischievous bird or squirrel got in there. Enjoy my peas, idiot!!!

I wasn’t sure anything would happen with any of these plants: they all said they’d sprout in the 5-15 day range. Then, exactly one week after planting, my tomato plants poked up, pictured above. What a thrill! Despite writing two and a half paragraphs about my plants, I can assure you I’m no green thumb. It takes a lot of effort for me to keep a plant alive, though I love seeing them in my house. Here’s to a fruitful harvest in the coming months…