Blindspot

Last night I finished the novel, Blindspot, which was a real treat, with a great plot, a murder, good guys, bad guys and a setting in colonial Boston in the year of the Stamp Act.  It was a big meaty book, written in the style of the age in which it was set.  Maybe only an English major or an historian can appreciate the lush vocabulary and the felicitous descriptions, but I liked it ever so much and hated to see it end.

Not my usual reading matter.  I heard Kamensky and Lepore discuss how the novel came into being at a PEN meeting in Cambridge, and naturally we bought the book and have been devouring it.  Both authors are historians of the colonial period, a fact that greatly informs their writing, and the details certainly make the story special. A fabulous collaboration and the writing was not terribly "academic" as one might expect of such illustrious scholars.

I don't recommend a lot of books, but this I do unreservedly.  I had the misfortune/good fortune to be laid up with a bad cold this week, and was able to read more than usual.   I have taken to reading during the Red Sox commercials, and it's amazing how much one can do.  And on the deck in the nice weather.

Now I  must hie myself (gee, was the olde language catching?) up the stairs to my garret to don Japanese gardening pants and set forth into the garden, well-doused with mosquito spray and sunscreen, to plant yesterday's purchases.  We'll have 6 tomatoes and 12 garlics.  2 green beans and only 1 musk melon, as my grandma called them.  Lots of flowers.  The wild iris are blooming for the first time.  I love summer and my garden.  The chipmunks are playing tag, and the hummingbird comes often.  The male goldfinches constantly have dogfights in the air.   Lovely.

Grapeshot

Spring Training

Another glorious day with warm temps and sun.  Now I have to dig my Japanese Gardening Pants out of summer storage and get to work. 

There is a whole forum devoted to these pants, which presumably are available again.  I wear mine mostly in spring or fall or for big dirty summer jobs.  Somehow, jeans just don't work as well.  Too tight, probably.  Anyway, I love these pants.  Read the forum at: 
http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/accout/msg1011145230870.html

Raking, removing small branches, uncovering garden, replanting thyme, tossing what was left in place last fall, and cleaning pots. It could still snow, so don't uncover too much.  We in Boston still recall the April Fool Snow that dumped about two feet on us on the first of April.  God, it was a mess. 


So I will do cleanup, but still leave the leaves mulching the garden alone, although the temptation is there to go hog-wild.  The thistle seed needs attention.    Chives double their height daily.  I can't wait for the first delicious bites of herbs.  Yum!   Maybe not too early to put some parsley out.  

I was tempted by the seed sale at Ocean State Job  Lot this morning.   Significant Other cannot go into that store without picking up yet another can of white asparagus.  We probably have a lifetime supply.   It is fiendishly hard to find in Boston, owing to the lack of German settlers except in Walpole, where there are apparently  some.  

Tonight we're having swordfish in a lemon-pepper (real lemon and pepper) sauce, bok choy,  rice and  fresh strawberries.   Wish I had a bok choy recipe that wasn't Asian.  Maybe somewhere on the web. 


S.O. has fallen asleep in front of the baseball game.  He does his own spring training. 


Onward, 

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