Inside, outside, all around the house
It’s been Garden Week. I dug up two shrubs, cut back two more, harvested and ate a bunch more lettuce, planted many vegetables and some native flowers, and transplanted some volunteer perennials.
That’s not counting the watering and monitoring of all the seeds I planted last week. Which, to be fair, does not take much time or effort. Less than a week since planting, and my annual flowers, pumpkins, zucchini and cucumbers already have their first true leaves. (not the seed leaves, cotyledons don’t count) It’s quite astonishing how FAST the tender annuals grow once the ground and air are both warm.
I invested in new hoses and connectors this year, and I do not regret a single penny. No more swearing or getting soaked when switching from side-yard to backyard watering hoses—OR swapping the from multi-purpose sprayer to gentle-rain waterer—with the new quick-releases.
Planters full of baby veg, and if you look really close at the foreground, you can see seedling cucumbers and zinnias.
All the outdoor action hasn’t kept me from enjoying my new office. Is it still new after seven months? It still feels new. ANYway. It’s also nice and cool, which is thrilling. The air conditioner had its annual checkup yesterday, just in time for the weather to hit 88F today, but it has not yet even kicked on. Old brick house with big new roof insulation FTW!
And I’m writing in my office. Treasure Haunt background is my latest Research Rabbit Hole. I’m doing reading and web searches galore. (Three cheers for remote access to online library resources!) Illinois history and 1800’s American history in general—other than the Civil War—sure did get glossed over in all the classes I ever took. Undoubtedly because it’s complicated, political, and messy in ways that battles are not.
The stories behind all the dates and weird names I had to memorize for tests in high school (Teapot Dome! Crédit Mobilier! ) are full of juicy scandal and fascinating soap opera-level melodrama. Just more proof that the best histories are nothing other than good stories told well. All I’m gonna say about the topic of research right now is this: some people who went all “Westward, ho!” didn’t go happily, and some left a lot of things behind. Valuable things. Things people might commit murder over.
Speaking of murder, last Friday was the inaugural Meal ‘N Murderbot get-togethers with two of my Murderbot-loving friends. Pasta, cucumber salad, garlic bread, and lots of cheering for poor Murderbot, who has to deal with so many uncooperative, self-destructive, squishy humans.
Menu planning is underway for the next MnM, although no date set yet. We did half the season in a sitting, so the discussion is whether to do two more sessions or just one. (I’m voting for two.) Coordinating schedules is always tricky.
I will withold most analytical commentary on the Murderbot adaptation until I have finished the whole season/book. Overall, I love it to pieces and can recommend it, I dislike some of the casting choices and have reservations about the changes to some plot elements, but some of those dislikes are me things, not the show, and others arise from the difficulty of shifting from a single POV prose format to a necessarily external visual one. The rest? Welp, I’ll wait and see. The dialogue and acting are doing enough freaking genius heavy lifting that I’m eager to see where it all goes.
In other media consumption, I’m also still watching Leverage: Redemption with a different friend on Mondays. We’re 33% through season 2, looking forward to sharing the new season soon. And that rewatch has inspired me to dig out my Librarians DVDs and embark on enjoying a second series with Noah Wylie & Christian Kane. (Also, a LIbrarians reboot is in the works, so I might as well catch up, right? RIGHT.)
That’s it for my mid-week episode of “write it down before I forget what I did.” Pippin pics courtesy of Leverage Monday Night.
After my friend left, Pips wrapped himself up in the fleece blanket we were sitting under, earlier.
That’s it until later.
What’s on your bookshelf?
This is the part where I talk about my books.
Relics From A Traveling Show
The newest of the new! A collection of all my short fictions in one handy volume, available now from your favorite booksite or local shop.
Or! OR! if you like your local library, you could request a purchase. Free for you, sale for me, everyone wins.
Most libraries need the following info for ordering print books:
Title: Relics From A Traveling Show
Author: K. M. Herkes
ISBN: 9781945745201 (paperback)
Every library system does things a little differently, but most want their collections to serve their communities, so most of them are very responsive to patron requests.
If you like novels more than short stories, I recommend my series The Rollover Files for hopepunk tales of about an alternate world where moms with midlife crisis superpowers have been saving the world and making the military nervous since 1943.
I also have a completed, quirky slow-burn science fiction thriller duology with a romance chaser: The Stories Of The Restoration.
All my titles are available from Amazon, Apple, Kobo, Hoopla, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Overdrive and many other fine booksellers.
Support your favorite independent bookseller! Find a local shop via Indiebound
Be a potato.
" Fear is strange soil. Mainly it grows obedience like corn, which grows in rows and makes weeding easy. But sometimes it grows the potatoes of defiance, which flourish underground."
Terry Pratchett (Small Gods)