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Showing posts from September, 2014

Gourds, Deer, and Expectations

Our Grand Garden Experiment had an unexpected ending. In late May, my husband and I decided to plant a few vegetables in our garden in Arizona even though we were spending the summer in Alaska. We mulched the garden carefully and set automatic irrigation to provide water. The idea was to come back to okra, sunflowers, tomatoes, peppers, pumpkins, and gourds. The local deer population had other ideas. They found the tender shoots too yummy to resist. No pumpkin, no sunflowers, no okra, no peppers. They left enough of two Better Boy tomato plants that they regrew and bore fruit, but they’re not ripe yet. It will be a race to see if they ripen before frost. And they left the gourds. Boy did they leave the gourds. I only planted two hills of three seeds each, but the gourds have taken over the entire garden terrace, crawled up and down the steps to the next levels, and even climbed a tree. We have green and yellow striped gourds, green gourds that look as if they were dipped hal...

Time Traveling the Pages

My taste in books leans toward contemporary, or at least stories set in my lifetime, but lately I've been living in the past. Three of my favorite reads in the last few months were historical novels. The Yankee Club is set in New York City during the depression. It features Jake, a detective turned writer, and Laura, an actress, who grew up together in Queens. I Am Livia let me into the life of a powerful woman in Rome during the ascention of Caesar August. An Orphan's Tale takes place in Paris in 1834 and introduced me to all levels of society, from a street urchin to nobility. Three stories, all different, and yet each let me into the lives of fascinating people in other times and places.  For my reviews and links to these and other books I've enjoyed, check out the  Book Reviews Tab .