Category Archives: garden

This the garden at the moment — mostly volunteers and who knows what from when I wildly scattered seeds everywhere.

Today I wanted to write about my Goodreads accounts except I’ve fried up all my time trying to fix a couple of simple things which led to having to update and reset passwords and click and reclick in a circular FAQ where no questions were answered and now I’m tired and cranky and don’t feel very charitable toward Goodreads.

Different part of garden with volunteers and surprise-me-later seed dispersal.

Pen name has a Goodreads here.

I have a profile here.

I periodically check in and add books I’ve read and rate them and try to add books I want to read.

I noticed that I still had Ted Chaing’s Story of Your Life up there. I have no idea what happened to that book. I *might* have left it at my mom’s. But I also remember leaving it at the office because sometimes when I’m by myself I have time to read when I finish eating my lunch. That’s the last place I remember seeing it and it’s not there now.

I would be pleased to learn that it was stolen. I would love to be a part of someone discovering that book, even a book thief.

Meanwhile, I never finished it. The book reading situation is bad, just no time for reading. After three weeks I’m about a fourth of the way through Paladin of Souls – I have relented and read books on my phone now because then I always have them with me. So I might finish it by July.

I am about three weeks out from having to turn the manuscript over to beta readers and it’s still a frustrating mess. All my time and energy is on that right now.

My good news is I have a new spec fiction story coming out in Apex Magazine. I will post details when I have them.

Last weekend I cleared out the front flower bed in honor of the bulbs. There’s already a cat turd right in the middle of the cleared out spot. Delightful animals!

But also these cute green little bits pushing their way out.

I have an old email address (since 2004) with a sorta cartoony name and over Christmas someone started using it to sign up for various social media. I’m assuming this person is doing so mistakenly. Out of curiosity I put the name into a search engine and every hit on the first page was something inappropriate and included the words: hot teen.

How does this happen to me?

I ignored the first round but there was a second attempt to confirm an Instagram account. The confirmation email says click here if this isn’t you. I clicked here and went to a page that said: invalid URL. Now that I had committed to caring about this I went to the support page where it said I could report a feature that wasn’t working, except there was no place to report anything. It was just menus with examples of problems a user could have none of them having to do with a random hot “teen” who doesn’t know her own damn email address.

That was the end of my good citizen attempt to fix. It’s hard to be optimistic that this is over.

After threatening to go out and work in the yard for months but never actually doing it, I managed to put in a couple hours this weekend.

I cut back all kinds of dead stalks. I raked up a bunch of stuff on the garden plot that wasn’t going to compost and look what rolled out.

A potato.

It’s like they’re just messing with me.

I hope that long after I’m gone that patch of land is known for bubbling up with potatoes from nowhere.

This is what the garden plot looks like at the moment. It’s hard to tell from the photo but there are TONS of tomatillos composting there. That plant will never go extinct in my yard. I just cut out a recipe that uses tomatillos and I guarantee that I will not remember it at the end of next summer.

I keep telling myself I’m going to get out there and do some tidying up but whenever I have time or I’m in the mood, it’s raining or worse. When it’s decent enough to get some work done either I have something else I need to do or I would rather sit in the house and drink hot chocolate.

On Saturday there was a lovely sun break but by the time I was ready to change into my work clothes it was pouring again.

This is out in the middle of the berry patch. I’m not sure who Jamie is — maybe a grandkid from next door.

Years ago these flowers magically appeared in my yard. I liked them and encouraged them. I had a big patch in what had been a sorta ugly corner of the garden. Then they wanted to grow in the lawn, which I discouraged. Then they ditched the sorta ugly corner and now have sprung up in the middle of the garden.

If this was a story about magic flowers, I would be anxious about the next chapter, are they friendly flowers or are they up to something?