Gardening in my Roots, early May

 My cucumbers have some enormous leaves!  Not started climbing up their fence yet, but it's waiting for them.

This odd pepper plant has the pepper sticking upright. I thought it was just an ordinary chile pepper!

Tomatoes (this is just one) are very leafy...but no fruity.  The roma tomatoes have some green fruit but not a single ripe one yet.

And last, a monarch enjoying the butterfly weed that I planted last year. It reseeded itself (the weed, not the butterfly!) and came back with more than before.  If only I can keep the weeds out of the wildflower bed, it'll be lovely.

review: Sisters in the Wind

Sisters in the Wind

What a strange, strange book. At halfway point I was raving about how great this was—full of plots and subplots and mystery underneath the adventures of a young woman who is taken in by a couple of her dead sister’s friends after an explosion destroys the shop she was working at. Just as she was about to leave it, because “they” (the mysterious they) were getting too close.

I hope that didn’t give away too much.  I’m afraid to explain why I didn’t like the ending because that would definitely spill some serious beans. But I didn’t hate the ending, either, so I’ve recommend this book wholeheartedly. It’s in the YA category, but very enjoyable for an adult. It’s told in flashbacks from her various foster homes, interspersed with flash-forwards to current time. But I didn’t find the discontinuity at all annoying—it was done beautifully.

 

Review: Olive, Mabel & Me

 

Olive, Mabel & Me: Life and Adventures With Two Very Good Dogs

By Andrew Cotter

Very amusing little account of the author’s mountain hikes with and without his two Labradors, and its interruption by the Covid pandemic and shutdowns thereof. It appears—although that’s not the subject of the book—that during the pandemic he turned from covering sports events to filming and posting sporting event parodies starring his two dogs. But his book is more about his various climbing adventures with them.

 Don’t expect anything deep or revealing, but just a heartening reminder of why we love dogs so much and they, inexplicably, love us more. Even when we drag them out on long, cold hikes. In the snow. (Which they love)