Where bloom the cup plants

I wanted wildflowers on our land, but I didn’t know anything about wildflowers except that I love a field full of wildflowers, and I thought at least a portion of our newly acquired 3-acre parcel should be given to them.

We went to a greenhouse that specialized in native Wisconsin flowers and bought, among other perennials, six cup plants. I loved the story of the cup plant, so named because their upturned leaves capture rain water to nourish insects and other critters that might happen along.

Fifteen or so years later, those half-dozen plants have grown into a veritable forest, and every summer around the first of August, their distinctive yellow flowers start popping out. I spotted this first bloom on July 23, and I’m seeing more of them every day. They’re not as big and bold as sunflowers, but the joyful effect is similar.

My life has seen a bevy of milestones around the first of August. I met Red, my fourth wife and the one who lasted, around the first of August 1997. My first day as editor of the Door County Advocate, my favorite job, was Aug. 1, 2002. We moved into the house we built on our three acres around this time in 2012.

And on Aug. 1, 2020, I started blogging every day after 15 years of blogging whenever I felt like it. More on that tomorrow.

Besides the cup plants, Leinenkugel releases its annual Oktoberfest beer this time of year, so I have two distinct reminders every year that August is upon us.

I used to think they were bittersweet reminders heralding the coming end of summer, but that’s a misnomer. We think of Labor Day as the end of summer, but the season actually continues for three weeks after that. We are barely five weeks into Summer 2025 — Aug. 1 is midsummer, not near the end.

It’s called Oktoberfest beer but October is still two months away. And so I raise my glass of wonderful Märzen beer and savor the taste of midsummer, and in the morning Summer (the golden retriever) and I will take a walk past the cup plants.

W.B. At the Movies: Fantastic Four: First Steps

I so wanted to love Fantastic Four: First Steps. The third cinematic iteration of Marvel Comics’ greatest comics magazine of the 1960s is oh-so-close. The characters are there, the familial love is there, almost all of the elements were there.

But you know what it felt like? Star Trek: The Motion Picture. I was back in the late 1970s — an absolute great Superman movie followed not long after by a movie featuring one of my all-time favorite casts of characters, this time the crew of the starship Enterprise, but even with all of the original ensemble in place, it kind of fell flat.

The Fantastic Four casting director got it right — this is a great team, although Pedro Pascal needs to get over himself and shave the mustache. Reed Richards only has facial hair when he’s been working in the lab for days trying to save the world. And what’s with the orange brick beard that they gave Ben Grimm halfway through the movie? And please don’t get me started about H.E.R.B.I.E., the silly robot pal who never appeared in the comics until the TV cartoon invented it to appeal to the kiddies.

Nitpicks, all. The family of superheroes I remember were all up there on screen. As I suspected, they wisely used the immortal Galactus trilogy of F.F. #48-50 as the foundation of the story.

It’s a very, very good movie that checks most of the boxes, but it didn’t give me the comic-book-geek thrill that Superman did just a couple of weeks earlier. Still, if Superman was a home run, Fantastic Four: First Steps is a solid triple.

I believe it will all come together in the sequel, just like Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn saved that franchise. That’s if we get a proper sequel — the blurb at the end of First Steps says the F.F. will return in Avengers: Doomsday.

The Fantastic Four were the heart and soul of Marvel Comics, not Spider-Man, not the X-Men, not the Avengers. They came first, and the whole “Marvel Age of Comics” was built around the Fantastic Four. Reed, Sue, Johnny and Ben are not supporting characters in the Avengers; they are the root from which everything else grew.

Maybe someday we’ll get the Fantastic Four movie the characters deserve. They’ve got the pieces in place at last, and they’re oh-so-close.

Second scene of a short story set on a space station three-quarters of the way to the moon

(If you’re curious about the first scene, you can click here or buy The Man Who Crossed Whimsy Avenue here or wherever fine books are sold.)

The little coffee shop did not have much atmosphere, but they made the muffins fresh every 24 hours and the coffee was as good as any back on Earth.

“Settled in, then?” he asked, resisting the temptation to get lost in her eyes.

“Yes. I love what you’ve done with the place,” she said with a flip of her hair that made her look 20 years younger.

“You’d be amazed how much you can do with only an eight-figure budget,” he smiled. “Of course, most of the money goes toward staying alive.”

She looked down at her cup and then back into his eyes. Oh, those eyes …

“Do we need to talk about anything?” she asked.

“Not if you don’t want to,” he said. “I’m so glad to see you.”

“Me, too,” she said softly. “I’m sorry about what I said. I was so upset that you accepted this job. I was just focused on myself; I didn’t consider how much this opportunity meant to you.”

“I don’t blame you,” he said. “You must have felt like I was abandoning you. And I really kind of was. I couldn’t ask you to come with me.”

A shadow passed over her face.

“You could have asked.”

“Come on,” he said gently. “Would you have said yes?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do. Three quarters of the way to the moon? Make a life together here?”

“With you,” she said, “maybe.”

His eyes widened. “No. No, I couldn’t ask you.”

“But I could volunteer.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I guess I was waiting for you to ask,” she said.

A few moments passed in silence.