Did you read the book TALES OF A FOURTH GRADE NOTHING as a kid? It's by Judy Blume. My memory is fuzzy about plot details, but one scene from the book came in handy today.

How I remember it is two boys and a girl worked as a team on a fourth-grade research project. When the time came to hand in the project, someone messed up the cover 0r something like that. So the girl on the team, Sheila, covered the mess with a row of flowers. The boys weren't happy with flowers on their project, but floral decoration was better than the mistake.

Today I carefully wrote out the word "Quince" to label this fruit I drew in the medieval herb garden at the Cloisters Museum. I pressed extra hard with the green pencil.

Something didn't look right. I wasn't sure what it was at first, but it turns out I wrote a capital Z instead of a capital Q. Who handwrites capital Zs and Qs anymore? I'm so out of practice.

I remembered Sheila and her flowers, and I made the green band across the page to cover my mistake. But you can't fool a scanner and with modern technology you can still see my Z under the green.

I should've remembered the words of my mom, who is not named Sheila. She says the original error is bad enough, but it's the cover-up that will always get you in the end.

Quince: a medieval delight. Colored pencil in Moleskine sketchbook.