Review: Learning the Birds: A Midlife Adventure

by Susan Fox Rogers

Very good memoir! And with birds!  Ms. Rogers seems to have gone through several minor obsessions in her life, from climbing to kayaking to birding, and this is an excellent story of how birding kept her whole in what might have been the slowdown years of her life. Or so it seemed to me.

It's written very honestly, and that makes it superb as a memoir. And it's written with a light touch, which makes it fun to pick up and hard to put down. She starts off telling of her on-again-off-again love affair with a birding guru, and while I couldn't help but hope for them to stay together, I wasn't nearly as tied up in that question as in whether or not she'd find her next bird.

I don't think I'll ever be as obsessed of birding as she, but as she points out, she herself will never be as obsessed as other people she knows. She's comfortable on a continuum and happy to see what she can and share the locations with anyone interested.  It seems that a lot of birding enthusiasts are like that--generous and helpful to an excess. I've had help from strangers, both wanted and unwanted but usually the latter, I'm embarrassed to admit. Mostly I want to figure it out on my own. Which is not the "birder" way or even the best way, sometimes. But I've learned that it's the only way I really learn.

But I digress. This book is really enjoyable, bright and lovely and written like a charm. And, of course, full of birds.

Breaking news!

  

First asparagus!  One spear each, from the old plant and the new ones I put in this spring.

 

 

 

 

This is from the old plant and it's considerably thicker, just about perfect eating size.  But dare I...?

Gardening in my Roots, February still

 The peas that managed to come up are growing apace, and beginning to twine onto the fence support.

But there's little else to show for my efforts. Below you see what happens when you leave collard and broccoli plants to overwinter in Texas. They get huge!  Hard to tell that in the picture, but just assume that each of the plants below is bigger than a volleyball. 

 The collards plant (on the left) could be harvested any time--I already cut, cooked and ate a number of leaves from it--and the broccoli (on the right) appears to be putting out little heads. We'll wait and see.

Book review: The Outermost House

 The Outermost House:

A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod

by Henry Beston

This book has been around for a good many years, so it's unlikely there's anything to be said about it that hasn't already been said.

Lovely, loveable and than some. I wish--I think we all wish--he'd written a sequel. No matter, I find myself listening to it over and over, so as to catch details I missed while jogging with the audiobook on.

It makes me want to go to Cape Cod more than ever, but I'm not sure how I'm going to get there. We will see.

Not camping but traveling...and a little gardening.

 

 

First daffodil. (At my house). Yesterday there was only one bud showing a hint of yellow, but they got busy overnight.

Today Molly and I took a short jog, then sashayed up to Hagerman to take a gander at the snow geese before they leave for the Arctic circle. They weren't hard to find--they we occupying a lake right behind the visitor center. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We also took the wildlife drive and saw a handful of waterfowl, most of which (as usual) I couldn't identify.  But I got these two:

Northern Shoveler 

Northern Pintail

Then we came home, planted asparagus, transplanted an oak tree (will it live? Who knows), and tried to dig out the fence in the pen area. It's buried in a foot of sediment from years of creek flooding.

Gardening in my roots, mid-late February edition

 It's beginning to look like a garden!

 

 

 

 

 

a very little, very little Spinach

a few Peas

Review: A Prayer for the Crown-Shy

In this one Robot wrestles with the question of whether it is ethical to replace a broken part in himself rather than just turning himself in for recycling. And they both fight the issue of what to do when the journey is over. And there's some other cool thought-provoking, brain-wrinkling stuff in here too.  Awesome.  With an extra Awe.

A thousand stars!  Are there any more?

no...no yet. darn.

Not exactly camping almost over

 and good! It turned off really cold today and will get in the 20s tonight. And we leave tomorrow.

Birds seen: chickadees, titmice, red-shouldered hawk (heard), turkey vulture, blue jay, white-breasted nuthatch, Eastern bluebird, Eastern meadowlark heard I think maybe, yellow-rumped warbler, cedar waxwing, probable hairy woodpecker, probably red-bellied woodpecker (heard), pileated woodpecker. Not a great list but not bad.

Not exactly camping

 Not camping at all, but at a place where we once were camping. Motorhome is disabled, but we're in Arkansas. Question for us all:

How far does water have to fall to be a waterfall?

Gardening in my roots, mid-February edition

 A couple of trees in the back field are blooming, so I guess it's spring. I don't know which kind they are--they have a greenish bloom and they're tall enough I can't put my hand on one.

Spinach and kale are up--here's the spinach---

 

 

 

 

 and I think the snap peas I planted last week are beginning to pop up, too.  I'll know for sure tomorrow.

No gardening news so a book review: Saints & Sinners Ball

The welcome two-day rain has made the garden impassible, so I'll sneak in a book review.

Saints & Sinners Ball by Stacy M Jones

 I finished this book because I kind of liked the supernatural element and wanted to see where it ended up. It wasn't worth the effort.

The author appeared to have gone through her manuscript and replaced almost all of the perfectly innocuous (and invisible) "he said/she said" constructs with catchy action verbs. Annoying and intrusive, catchy action verbs.  And in the "he said/she said" constructs that remained, she added adverbs. Ick.  
Here's an example of some:
..., Harper whined.
......Harper said ruefully...
...Jackson offered...
...Harper said sarcastically...
...Jackson laughed...
Hattie jumped in. "...
...Hattie directed.
...Harper grumbled.
...Hattie informed her.
...Harper asked confused.

After I started noticing this, it bugged me to the point of distraction. Later in the book I stopped noticing, but I was skimming the words at that point and probably bleeping over most of them.

The other thing that was really annoying was her persistent use of the abbreviations for "detective" and some other word that was probably "Friar" but I have no idea, really.  She started off calling Detective Granger simply "Granger", and that seemed fine. But at some point she persistently switched to "Det. Granger" and every single time I read it, I had to pause and remember what that stood for.  And the use of "Fr." in front of the priest's name was completely ridiculous. Who uses that sort of thing in normal discourse?

Sorry to be so picky, but it made this very hard to read. And the ending didn't make me happy, either.

Book review: Alligators Eat Marshmallows

Alligators Eat Marshmallows (And Other Things I Learned On My 10,000 Mile Road Trip Around The USA!)
by Tony James Slaters

A Brit who became an Aussie takes, as the title says, a road trip. He'd always wanted to visit the USA but couldn't afford it...until he got the bright idea of letting his readers sponsor the overnight housing and set up speaking engagements for him.  And his wife, who does all the driving.

It's pretty funny, very chuckle-worthy at times. I don't know that I laughed out loud at all, but I did reread a couple of especially clever bits.  Very much worth what I paid for it (free with my Kindle Unlimited subscription, so that probably works out to about 2-3 dollars per book.

I'll sign up for one of his others and see if he can keep me interested.  By the way, he has a lot of great tips for out of the ordinary places to go. And a lot of great tips about what motels NOT to stay in. They went from Super 8 to Motel 6 to Days Inn, and down from there, poor guys.

Gardening in my Roots, Early February

 Nothing to see here. Except the work that went into chopping up and pulling out the cover crop, leveling, putting together the wire supports and hammering in the stakes to keep them from falling over or blowing away. 

 

And planting my few sugar snap peas leftover from last year.  My new seed should be here any minute, right?  Right now?

I also planted some spinach and kale seeds. But there's even less to see in that bed than this one.

Book review: A Psalm For the Wild-Built

by Becky Chambers

Gosh. Gorgeous.  Made me think about a lot of deep stuff and didn't leave me with an icky sour angsty existential taste in my mouth.

For the science fiction fans among you, don't bother. There are no light sabers here. No dark lords of fantasy. No insidious poisons that threated humanity. And no enemies from the outer galaxy.

But I say it still belongs in the Sci Fi realm just because it's a possible future, even if (knowing what we know about human nature) very, very improble. But we can at least dream of a world where humans and robots go their separate paths, with the humans choosing a simpler, more peaceable walk of small industry, cottage gardening, and quiet lives.  Or so I think--this is just a very short book and there are many more to come. Maybe I'll find out that the rest of humanity isn't quite as content.  I don't know, but I can't wait to find out!