Scriniary

Between the shade, the hard rains that smushed the lettuce into the dirt to rot, the bugs carving holes in the rutabaga and cabbage leaves, the squirrels digging up seeds, and something (rabbits?) taking chunks out of almost everything), I don’t think we’re going to have much to eat.

Next year, I’m digging a vegetable bed in the front lawn, since the tomatoes and peppers out there seem to be happy (there’s a lot more sun).

I’m going to build better rabbit fences too – I haven’t seen any rabbits in the garden, just the yard, but something’s eating my veggies.

(My compost pile is doing great.)

Belated garden recordkeeping: (more…)

Filed by scriniary at 8:28 pm under Garden
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I received this book through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers group ages ago. I’m not a huge superhero fan, but I enjoyed the book. The lack (more or less) of secret identities plus the way the aces worked with various government organizations made it seem more realistic to me.

It’s a mosaic novel, with nine authors writing chapters from the point of view of various characters. Several of the reviewers on LibraryThing said they found it hard to follow (it’s also the 19th book in the Wild Cards series); I had no trouble keeping all the characters straight even though I haven’t ready any of the previous books.

The good and the bad thing about such a structure is that you don’t stay with any given author/character for long. That’s good because I got bogged down in the second “chapter,” which is the first of three by Caroline Spector, but once I got through it the book didn’t go back to that character for quite a while. It’s bad because I could have read a whole novel centered on the character Melinda Snodgrass was writing (Noel). (I’m sure, like in Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series, other readers have completely opposite preferences from me.) Other intriguing storylines belong to Walton Simons and Ian Tregillis (Niobe and Drake) and Victor Milan (Tom and Dolores).

The only major problem was towards the end, when there were some too-abrupt character transformations and plot resolutions. It felt a bit like the authors had been writing happily along and suddenly realized they had almost reached their maximum wordcount.

Filed by scriniary at 12:09 am under Books
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Last Saturday I took before photos of the yard and gardens at our house for future reference. Yesterday I planted the vegetable garden (with some space saved for things that need to be planted in a few weeks).

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Filed by scriniary at 12:18 pm under Garden
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I got a free ARC of this book from LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers group by promising to review it.

It’s an entertaining enough read that I had no problem finishing it quickly. Although there were aspects of the book that bugged me (sympathizing with Crusaders, and the main character being so self-centered), I was interested to see what would happen when Ian, the main character, made it back to the present day after he got tossed back to the year 1307.

(Minor spoilers from this point on, though not much more than you’d get from the book jacket.)
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Filed by scriniary at 10:29 pm under Books
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Any Given Doomsday, A Respectable Trade, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, The Thirteenth Tale, Drowning Ruth
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Filed by scriniary at 4:03 pm under Books
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My parents visited several weeks ago, so we went to see the prairie at Meadowbrook Park , the prairie grove at Busey Woods, and Kickapoo State Park. The latter, a former strip mine, is slated to close on Nov. 30 due to state budget woes, though that may change.

Monarch on thistle (Meadowbrook Park). Butterflies rarely hold still for me, so I’m happy this turned out.

Spider vs dragonfly (Busey Woods). This is a yellow and black garden spider. We came by the web shortly after the dragonfly was caught, so got to see most of the struggle. There were quite a few of these spiders at one spot along the path.

Sephski, this is for you. (Meadowbrook Park, where there is a lot of sculpture, most of it less identifiable)

Two weeks ago, J and I helped clear bush honeysuckle at Weaver Park, which is a relatively recent purchase by the city of Urbana. They plan to put ball and soccer fields there; people also want to preserve the 7 or 8 oak trees (red, white, and chinkapin) that are 300-400 years old. It’s neat to get in at the start of a project like that.

Yesterday, I went to Meadowbrook Park to collect seeds, which the park district uses there and at other parks (including Weaver) and sells. We had about a dozen plants we could have collected from, but most of us focused on one or two because it’s not easy to learn to id plants by seed head, especially when the leaves have already fallen off.

Filed by scriniary at 8:27 pm under Outdoors
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Sunday I went to Meadowbrook Park in Urbana, which has a patch of restored prairie.

The prairie is larger than you might think given the line of trees; it extends quite a bit off the left of the picture.

More photos behind the cut; click for larger versions.
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Filed by scriniary at 12:03 am under Outdoors
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Some months ago my husband decided he wanted chocolate cake, but had trouble finding a recipe that called for cocoa rather than chocolate. (He eventually found one. That was the night of the icing fire.) After that I asked my mom for her Wacky Cake recipe, which I finally made last night (not exactly the one linked to, but close enough). Turned out really well – moist and chocolaty. We skipped the icing, though, as I was short on time.

I think it turned out so well because of the secret ingredient. It calls for 2 cups of sugar, and after I measured about 1/3 cup of sugar I discovered that was all we had. We had some light brown sugar, but it was dried into a solid block. Tried stabbing it with a knife and barely made a dent. Luckily my faithful assistant came up with the bright idea of grating it. Even more luckily, he grated it while I ran off and did some work upstairs. Sounded like he was scrubbing pots.

Today, spurred by an article in the paper about farmer’s markets that still have local produce this time of year, we ventured to the Worthington farmer’s market, which is really hard to find. We didn’t see any of the greens that are supposedly available, perhaps because we got there too late, but did get some squash and shallots and sausage.

Filed by scriniary at 3:53 pm under Food
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I’m doing an unofficial Nanowrimo this year (I’m elizabeths over there). Since I’ve been rewriting last year’s Nano novel, I’ll continue with that.

Turning a zeroth draft into a first draft takes me a lot longer than writing the zeroth draft in the first place because my brain is a lot more involved in later drafts, so the chances that I’ll get 50k this month are pretty slim — I could just transcribe blindly, but that would be cheating myself since it’s a waste of time to not do the obvious edits (anything from fixing grammar to adding whole new scenes) as I come across them.

I’d at least like to get the entire second part typed up, and the holes in part one filled in, however many words that takes.

Filed by scriniary at 6:34 pm under Writing
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Dead Water Creek & Cold Dark Matter are mainstream mysteries about a woman who investigates scientific fraud for the Canadian government.

Dead Water Creek was not bad, but the depictions of life in a science department did not mesh with my experience, and there were a fair number of unnecessary bits, like the protagonist’s mother being an alcoholic, and her resulting bad memories of the city. They had no bearing on the story whatsoever.

The actual scientific mystery, involving salmon, was interesting, too, and believable.

Minor nit: All but one of the named female scientists in this book are bi or lesbian, and that one is debatable. Considering that that’s a stereotype of female scientists, and it had no effect on the plot (everyone could have been sleeping with everyone else if they were straight couples, or if the men were also bi or gay), it seemed like a weird choice. Though a nice change from all the other millions of books on the planet where everyone is straight.

Cold Dark Matter was *much* better than the first one, at least once I got to chapter 7 or 8, and once I accepted that it was about astronomers, but not astronomy. In some ways the plot was preposterous (too many hidden motivations seemed like coincidences), but if I focused on the mystery and ignored the investigator’s reasons for investigating, it was just fine.

Filed by scriniary at 3:19 pm under Books
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