Tuesday, 27 November 2018
We had had this much rain.
A fine day meant I must continue weeding. I am trying to prepare for getting eight yards of mulch sometime this winter. In the course of weeding, I noticed a plant from Digging Dog Nursery was finally blooming. I forget the name of the carroty thing. I expected someone taller.
I consigned a columnar apple tree to the wheelie bin.
It seemed too diseased to put through the Pencil Sharpener shredder.
I scavenged more leaves for the leaf bin.
The wind had caused no serious damage.
The bogsy woods were so soggy that I did not go much farther back.
I decided that tomorrow we must check on the big gunnera in Fifth Street Park.
In the late afternoon, rain returned and I began a mystery series by Robert Galbraith, the Cormoran Strike mystery series. Steveston Gardener of Canada had given me the first three when she visited this summer. In looking to see the proper reading order, I found out today that they are actually by JK Rowling.
I was immediately smitten by the book and got halfway through before sleep time.
Wednesday, 28 November 2018
I had to leave my book behind and go out to a medical insurance appointment. On the way, we pulled cosmos at the Ilwaco Fire Station in a light rain.
The rain stopped as we pulled cosmos at the boatyard garden and trimmed wind-thrashed Stipa gigantea with The Toy.
Some of the cosmos still looked too good to pull.
I thought we might get some final clean ups done in Long Beach after our appointment, but while we were at Shelly Pollock’s office getting my health insurance for 2019 set up, rain returned in earnest. (Thank you, President Obama, for health care that I can afford.)
In the storm, we drove by Fifth Street Park to check the gunnera. It was already cut down!
That is the first time the city crew has cut it down without waiting for us; I usually cut it only after frost has laid it flat. We drove to city works to look for the leaves so that I could lay one over the plant to bring it through the winter. We were told apologetically that the leaves were gone. We will bring one from home to lay over the plant later.
All that got done was cutting down one now silly and lonely looking Salvia leucantha in Lewis and Clark Square.
We had parked at Veterans Field for that tiny project. I pondered whether or not people think the still blooming Gaura ‘Whirling Butterflies’ are just messy. I like them even now.
Damp, but not so much as to be dripping miserably, we repaired to the Shelburne Pub for a late lunch. (I was still thinking about my book as the day progressed.)
We checked the window boxes for moisture at the Depot on the way home.
And then …home where I sat right down and read for hours to finish The Cuckoo’s Calling. I realized I could do nothing much but finish the three books, giving up all idea of blogging so that I could get them done before Crab Pot Tree and friends’ visits on Saturday. Each book is long, but unlike the later books in the Potter series, they do not drag. (And I did love the Harry Potter series.) It has been a long time since I have been this smitten by a fictional book series.
Thursday, 29 November 2018
We had had this much rain since I had last left off weeding.
Annoyingly good weather meant that I had to weed rather than read for at least three hours.
Once upon a time, I bought some dwarf conifers and have never found a good way to use them.
Weeding in the front garden, I trimmed suckers off of a witch hazel.
Another thing to watch for is green branches growing from variegated shrubs…
In good weather, Allan had been working on the greenhouse annex, which is more complicated and harder than I had hoped. I am sorry I asked for it and yet it will be good in summer for a dry storage area and in the winter I can put plastic on the ends and keep some plants out of the worst weather.
I found that a quite large branch had come down in the bogsy wood.
Finally dusk came and I could get to my book.
With a break for dinner and some telly with Allan, I got within fifty pages of the end by the time I could no longer stay awake. Silkworm‘s plot was much more disturbing than the first book. The characters and settings overcame my squeamishness.
Lately Skooter has been more of a lap cat.
Friday, 30 November 2018
We had a perfectly wonderful rainy and windy day.
I finished Silkworm and read the whole of Career of Evil, book three of Cormoran Strike (even more disturbing than book two; what other horrors lurk in JK Rowling’s mind?). I might have liked less gory detail. However, the protagonists and the settings had me completely mesmerized. If I did not finish it before Crab Pot Tree Saturday, I would be frustrated to have to leave the house. Finish it I did at 1 AM, and immediately ordered the recently released fourth one because I cannot wait for the many folks ahead of me in the hold line at the library. Now I could join the Crab Pot Tree festivities with an undistracted mind.
Speaking of books, I was asked to show the before and after of the cover of Allan’s Southwest Washington Paddle Trips book.
Here is the first version:
And the more colourful version:
He will be selling it at the Sou’wester’s Handmade Artisan Bazaar on Saturday, December 15th from 10-4, 3728 J Place in Seaview. It is also available in Ilwaco at Time Enough Books and the Columbia Pacific Heritage Museum and at Adelaide’s Books in Ocean Park.
By our standards, that looks like a lot of rain. I had always heard that it rains too much in Washington, but I have seen it rain there only once. It was February, and it was only a light drizzle. I somehow miss the rainy weather when I am there. I have seen it rain only one in the Portland region too. Anyway, we also got a lot of rain, so our total is about eight inches, with is about two thirds of the annual rainfall in my former neighborhood, and twice the average annual rainfall of Trona near Death Valley.
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I am a pluviophile. I do think we have the wrong reputation for too much rain as we tend to have dry summers from June through September. Ann Lovejoy calls our climate “modified Mediterranean” because of our dampish winters.
So far this winter we’ve had ridiculously little rain. I bet the ski resorts are worried.
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I sort of suspect that the reputation originated in the Seattle region by Californians who snivel because the climate is not as dry as it is here.
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:-). Some think Northwesterns exaggerate the weather so people won’t want to move here. (Not me.)
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I don’t want to move to the Seattle region because it is crowded with Californians who hate California (but crave what the left when they moved away).
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wow, I was thinking what Jim might like other then a tool for the holiday. He loved the Harry Potter series and has read them over and over again, These will be a hit. Your garden looks like it is ready for the cold rainy time that is on it’s way.
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I hope he likes the books. They are very different from HP.
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I like the improved cover. I hope the book sells well. I have enjoyed the trips that I have read about.
I am glad that you have affordable health coverage. It makes life more bearable at tough times.
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Thank you.
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So glad that you enjoyed the Cormoran Strike book series. Yes, they did get a wee bit gruesome, perhaps Rowling wrote it as such to define them as adult books, and differentiate from the style of the HP series?
The word that you used…smitten….is absolutely perfect. I cannot think of very many fiction series that have had me smitten. Rankin’s Rebus, the delightful child heroine Flavia de Luce, and Mma Ramotswe in McCall Smith’s brilliant Botswana ladies detective series…
I am looking forward to the fourth!
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I will give Rebus a try! I did love one of Dick Francis’s characters….Sid Halley. And Kinsey Milhone and the protagonist in An Unsuitable Job for a Woman… long ago. Oh and Tess Monoghan, China Bayles, Carlotta Carlyle, Kate Fansler, and the Dog Lovers Mysteries. Robert Wright Campbell. Mary Willis Walker. But rarely have I felt this smitten.
I was pretty well smitten with the Bucket Nut trilogy by Liza Cody. And the Lauren Laurano series by Sandra Scoppetone. And Dave Brandstetter by Joseph Hansen.
I did have to refresh my memory with Goodreads and there is one series I can’t remember and wish I could. Kinda like Elizabeth George but not.
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A bevy of future reads for me! Will add them all to the list for my next library visit and when I trawl though the second hand bookshops and thrift stores!
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Simon Serrailler series by Susan Hill is the one I had blanked out on. But it is very good.
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I love the Cormoran Strike books too. I don’t know if it would interest you, but they have been turned into a British video series (not the most recent of course). It may have originally just been called Strike, but it’s on imdb as C.B. Strike.
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I have it on order from the library! Netflix seems to not have it.
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That books series sounds gory. But you say it is really worth reading? May have to try it . . . And good going, Allan — that is a good-looking new cover!
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It is startlingly gory. But the first one is milder.
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Great pictures of Skooter! He makes a nice model for the book photos. I hope Allan gets lots of sales. I like both book covers, but the new one is a little easier to read the print against the lighter background. Has he considered selling in sporting goods stores?
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That is a good idea. I’ll run it by him.
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