Last fall, I planted bulbs in the front planter and a small patch of the back garden. I drew a map so I’d know what they were when they started to grow, and I know I put it someplace clever where it’d be easy to find…

The bulbs are starting to sprout. A few in the front, a few in the back. I’m starting to believe winter might end someday.

The author (Jane Friedman of Writer’s Digest) says writers (and aspiring writers) should:
* Interact with friends and other writers on a social network
* Develop relationships with writers and potential readers on Twitter
* Participate in forums that tie into your work’s genre, topic, or subject matter
* Comment on blogs
* Have a website or blog

I have some comments and questions at 9 and 60 Ways – please go there and let me know what you think.

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:

Planted 4/25:
cabbage – doing ok except for the bugs/rabbits
lettuce (2 kinds) – only one kind came up? killed by rain
kale – doing ok, slightly nibbled
chard – didn’t like the rain, being eaten by rabbits
spinach – hardly sprouted, got eaten
rutabagas – same as cabbage
peas – hardly grew, never bloomed
broccoli – same as kale
parsley – ok, some stems bitten off

Planted 5/2:
Yellow pear tomato (plant) – some flowers, no fruit
Basil (plant) – same as parsley, but it would like more sun

Planted 6/7:
Bok choy – lots of sprouts, got eaten
Beans (date est.) – squirrels dug up seeds
Zucchini (date est.) – never sprouted

Planted 6/13:
Eggplant (plants) – ok, one plant got the top bitten off
Pepper (plant) – doing great, some peppers
In containers in the front, all plants: Better Boy tomato, purple bell pepper, habanero pepper, stevia – all great, getting some tomatoes and some flowers on the peppers

Planted 7/3:
Beans (again) – sprouted nicely, some got nibbled yesterday
Zucchini (again) – 3 look good, 1 got eaten
Bok choy (again) – lots sprouted and then the leaves got eaten
Chard (again) – starting to sprout

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.

(No, I didn’t plant sticks, I used them to remember where things are.) This photo was taken around 3 pm; our whole back yard is partly shady, at least until the trees have more leaves. I’m going to try some tomatoes and peppers back there, and put others in pots in the front yard, which is sunnier.

About half the compost pile is what I swept off the roof last weekend. The rest I raked out of the vegetable garden and front flowerbed this weekend. Lots of trees = lots of leaves.

Recordkeeping:

Planted 4/25:
cabbage
lettuce (2 kinds)
kale
chard (sadly, with white stems, not colored ones)
spinach
rutabagas
peas
broccoli
parsley

I wanted rhubarb but Meijer didn’t have any. Nor did they have rabbit fencing, so there’ll be a trip to Lowe’s next weekend.

In May I’ll add beans, eggplant, tomatoes, and peppers. And more herbs. This year’s kind of an experiment to see what grows.

I’d like to grow some sweet corn but there’s no room.

Our front flower bed looks pretty scraggly right now. There’s a hosta at each end that’s just coming up, a hydrangea that was pruned to the ground but is getting some leaves, and another woody-stem thing that’s either dead or still sleeping. I bought two caladiums for some color, and the store was giving away forget-me-not seeds, so I planted those as well. Kind of a random collection of plants. It just needs to look like I’m attempting to make it look nice, before I annoy the neighbors by sticking pots of vegetables in the front yard. :)

At least the front yard has grass. The backyard is too shady and so is full of weeds (mostly creeping charlie) – that’s a project for another year.

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.)

Unfortunately, what happened was nothing. After making a big deal about how Ian had to bring the “healing music of Rosslyn” forward in time, after he did so…nothing. The ending fell flat. I would almost expect a sequel, except that a sequel would be a completely different sort of book.

Until then the biggest problem I had with the book was the main character’s lack of agency. He spends the entire book doing what other people tell him to. Admittedly, he’s on a pilgrimage, so his journey is laid out for him, but he also doesn’t spend much time thinking about and trying to decipher the mystery of the healing music. He just waits to have visions in which bits and pieces are spelled out for him.

The writing’s a bit clunky in places—it was at least a third of the way through the book before “Remember, Ian’s in the past!” stopped beating me in the head—but the characters are well-drawn. The minor characters were a pleasure to spend time with.

Any Given Doomsday, Lori Handeland

I went into this with low expectations based on reviews in LibraryThing. Unfortunately they turned out to be justified.

The book is readable, but it has very little going for it to outweigh the bad bits. The characters are flat, the main character is an idiot who’s still stuck on some man she slept with nearly a decade ago, and the resolution of the plot doesn’t make any sense. (Being somebody’s child is not an ability that you can absorb.) The pacing flags towards the end, and the character gets dumber: I’d have had a better opinion of the book if I’d stopped 100 pages before the end.

Then there’s the whole character-is-an-empath-who-gets-new-powers-from-sex problem, which leads to her being drugged and basically date-raped by someone who wanted to give her powers. I don’t see that “power” of hers going places I want to be, so I’ll pass on any more in this series.

A Respectable Trade, Philippa Gregory

Technically I didn’t read this. I got 56 pages into it before deciding it wasn’t worth finishing, and then I read the last 5 or so chapters in reverse order. It’s the October selection for my book group or I wouldn’t have made it to page 56.

This is a reissue of one of Gregory’s earlier novels. I suppose her recent work is better written. The prose here was often leaden and repetitive, and I could not sympathize with the characters – a big problem in a book about two people struggling in bad situations.

The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, Michael Chabon

Very interesting world. I’d have preferred a longer ending: he solves the mystery, but the main character’s life is left completely up in the air.

The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel, Diane Setterfield

The Thirteenth Tale was a bit pretentious in parts, but the uncovering of the mystery (the life story of a famous writer – the book is her telling the story to another woman) was fascinating, and the ending surprising. Very well done characters.

Drowning Ruth, Christina Schwarz

Read this for a book group, or I’d have never have picked it up (and possibly not finished it). It was well written, and the characters were well developed, but it bogged down in the middle. The “mystery” of the drowning became clear too quickly, and the present-time story wasn’t interesting enough to make up for it.

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.

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.

Some kind of coreopsis. There wasn’t a lot of it so it was hard to get a good enough view to identify it. Plus they all look the same… But it was nice to see some color among all the white flowers.

Pale Beardstongue. These are the white flowers you see in the previous two photos. Easy to get close enough to see, hard to hold still enough to photograph.

Ohio Spiderwort. My favorite of Sunday’s plants. It’s hard to tell in this photo, but it’s very spiky. Also, it has a cool name.

I remain rather unsuccessful at bird photos (sorry, Mom and Dad). Mostly red wing blackbirds anyway.

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.