Disney Land for Bambi

This morning I went wandering around the property looking for a place to build a little tree stand to have a second spot to deer hunt.  Everything here is dry.  The grass is dying and none of the small branches that flow through our property have any water in them.  I guess this is going to be more and more common if the summers have longer dry spells.  When we used to just come here to visit they were never completely dry.  At this point they aren't even mud holes just dry sand.  When I went to the branch that flows along the south side I heard the deer making their weird noises to warn each other as they took of through the woods. I know they are close which made me wonder how far they have to go to find a pond or creek that still has water.  The creek that flows into my wife's grandmothers place has water, but its a couple miles from here. I thought they might like a little drink along the way.  So I filled this plastic turtle that used to be the girls sandbox when they were little with about thirty five gallons of water.

This means that in this little area is a mineral lick, a feeder full of corn and this smiling turtle full of water. This starts about sixty yards from the house at the feeder and extends about another twenty yards,  just beyond that is one of the dry branches.  This tripod feeder that my wife's cousin put out is about another twenty yards and puts out like ten times as much corn as mine.  He is going to put a chair up one of the nearby trees and go bow hunting in this spot.  If Bambi doesn't like all this something will.  So far I have seen lots of squirrels and rabbits visiting both feeders, but haven't seen a deer stopping to munch a little corn.  I was hoping they might apperciate the water, but of course as I write this I can hear the thunder coming so we will probably have an epic rainstorm tonight that fills everything up.

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Fall Chores

The unbearable heat has finally lifted in East Texas and we will hopefully have nice fall days for at least a month or two before it starts to be freezing all day long.  The weather here is unpredictable and last year all of December was cold with a very small amount of snow. Since that was the first winter I spent here since we moved out here five years ago I thought it would be warmer.  Sometimes is it 72 degrees on Christmas day.  During this short time of pleasant weather I have a big list of things I want to get done.  I have another couple of weeks before rifle hunting season starts, but my shooting lane is pretty well cleared out.

In the next four weeks I need to:
Clear all the down limbs from around the pump house:
        These have been down since Huricane Ike and this will make the third time I have cleared this area                 because both times before were followed by Huricanes that knocked down a bunch more tree limbs.

Clean out the cistern and the pump house.
      The concrete cistern  holds about three hundred gallons and gets  a layer of silt that comes up out of the         ground with the water and needs to be cleaned out from time to time.

Clear the area next to the old garage for a goat area.
      Around Easter it looks like we are going to be adding a rabbit because our youngest is not gonna let up,          but I want to get a couple goats in the early spring.  It should cost around three to four hundred bucks and       I need a good spot to put them in.

Build some type of green house.
     This will probably be a 4x4's framing out a base, a metal canopy that we already have and some plastic           sheeting.  Hopefully, it will be enough to let us have tomatoes in the winter.

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A Free Lunch

So I decided to buy a sack of corn this morning and set up my feeder even though I have a full month and a half until rifle season opens, but I figured I see if they will come this close to the house or if I need to move my feeder a little further down the line.  The corn cost 5 bucks for a fifty pound sack and this year I am going to try to keep track of what I spend on hunting season so I can see if it is cost effective.  Bow season opens in a couple weeks and I am tempted to pick up a bow on Craigslist and give it a shot, but so far I haven't been able to bring myself to spend the money.  A new bow goes for a minimum of two hundred fifty bucks  with the average around four hundred and the top end around a thousand bucks.  You gotta put up a lot of meat to make a thousand dollar bow pay for itself.

The feeder has a light sensor which will set it off about a hour after sunrise and an hour before sunset.  The little metal plate spins around allowing the corn to flow out and be scattered around the feeder.  The black box holds the light sensor, a six volt battery and a controller that allows you to test the motor as well as set the amount of time the feeder spins.  I have it set to the minimum so that I won't have to fill the five gallon bucket as much. I know the deer are out there so really I am just trying to lure them a little bit closer and hopefully at a convenient time.  Apparently they have never gotten the message that there is no such thing as a free lunch.
The main reason I put it out now was to see if it draws the hogs into the area.  On the the east side of the creek where Luci's cousin bow hunts all he seen are hogs, at her grandmothers place a little ways down the road they have trapped ten or twelve this year.  If the hogs come I will have to take the hunting more seriously.  You can't have them to close. They tear up gardens and can be dangerous.

This feeder has to wait a full twenty four hours to set its internal timer for sun-up and sun-down so it wont be until the morning after next that I will hear the clinking of the corn and I can start watching to see how long it takes for them to go for the snack.

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MegaMuffin

East Texas is covered in mushrooms.  These big boys were waiting in the yard this morning.  They were huge.  Enormous, bigger than the muffins you get at the nine dollar muffin shop.  The inside had the texture and the look of chocolate cake, but without the flavor.  Ok, I didn't try to eat one because I have no idea if is safe  or not.  About five or six of these were scattered across the yard.  If you knew for sure that these were safe to eat you would have quite a meal.           

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Fall Planting

Here in east Texas there doesn't seem to be much of a fall because it is just as hot now as it has been for the last four months.  I know carrots will grow because I tried them last year and even though they didn't get huge they did produce.  If it was slightly cooler I would try a bunch of salad greens, but I think I have to wait a little while.

Today I got carrots, radish, turnips, and green beans in the ground.  Tomorrow I hope to get some cucumbers planted I think I can get some to grow before it gets to cold. Somehow we didn't get enough jars of pickles put up to last the girls until next summer so this is a big priority. I am pretty sure I might be able to get some Zucchini as well. With Garden in disrepair not nearly enough veggies are going from yard to table.  It surprises me how much I miss being able to just wander out and pick something to fix for dinner.  The availability helps with my cooking decisions as well.  Instead of having to decide what sounds good or what the family might want I just have to go see what we got.

I could see how if you were producing your own food for a long time how hard it would be stop and just go to buying all your food at the store. I know I really didn't think that there would be much difference in what I could grow and what I could buy.  I thought that modern agri-business with all it's years of experience and science would be able to get better produce to the store than a guy who had never planted anything before.

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WD-40 contest and fanclub

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of WD-40. All opinions are 100% mine.

WD-40 has created a new fan club section on their website and to kick if off they are having contest to give away three awesome prize packs each consisting of  the Now & Then WD-40 twin pack, a Smart Straw can wall clock and a Nostalgic can wall clock.  WD-40 has been around for fifty years and the classic WD-40 can is an american Icon, but the new with the new smart straw you lift the straw up to aim it or you flip it down to use a wider spray so that you never lose the straw.  I use to take  the straws and chuck em in the top of my tool box in case I lost the next one, but I guess I will have to use those to stir my coffee now.

By joining the fan club you will get exclusive promotions and you can share your uses for WD-40 and check what others are doing with WD-40.  It's free and you can get the WD-40 badge which looks great on your blog, myspace page or as a sweet tattoo.  Ok, maybe you think twice about the last one, but you should definitely sign up for the fanclub. Follow the link below to join the fan club.
Join the fun in the WD-40 Fan Club


When I started my blog I was beginning my battle with my tiller and my ten year old craftsman mower which hadn't been touched for five years.  WD-40 was high on the list of tools to get them running again.  When I first changed the back tires they were locked tight and I use it to get everything unstuck. East Texas is humid and every thing metal rusts so  fast  I have come to rely on WD-40 to keep everything  around the homestead clean and protected. There are thousands of projects that can use some WD-40 and it tastes great on pancakes.  Ok, please don't put WD-40 on your pancakes, but let em know how you do use WD-40. Need some inspiration check out the latest video release from WD-40: Watch the latest WD-40 video release

To enter this contest you have to leave a comment on this post and tell us what you do to save time and money on your DIY projects. I know anyone could use the WD-40 around the house and two count em, two WD-40 wall clocks that would be a great addition to any shop, office, or home. For anyone who is a stickler for details you can find the contest rules right here: contest rules

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Small Town Entertainment

When we lived in Las Vegas we lived right down town about five minutes from the strip on the West side right off Valley View.  We both worked for casino's and didn't want the long drive into town just to go to work so we picked a smaller house in a old neighborhood instead of going for the cookie cutter house out in north Las Vegas. With both us working in the entertainment business we got a fair amount of free tickets to shows, at some point or another went to most of the casino attractions, we liked to go out to dinner, on rare occasion we went gambling and never drove more than twenty minutes.  I love the movies and Vegas has great theaters with huge screens, great new seats, and amazing sound systems.  It is pretty hard to find a foreign film or independent movie because people in Vegas don't like much  culture in their entertainment, but that can be said for this place too.  Besides the occasional fair or rodeo, a night out with the kids is most often a trip to the movies.  Normally we go to the Jasper twin cinema, but since they were playing the Last exorcist and no one wanted to watch the kids freak out for a week we settled for Nanny Mcphee at their sworn enemy the Fain Theater in Livingston.  This was my first trip to the Fain so I had to take a picture of the fantastic sign which I could just imagine looking all super shiny back when it first opened.  I do miss the super comfy seats and selection of the Las Vegas movie theaters but when I  can take two adults and three kids to the movies on a Saturday night, load up on popcorn and drinks for only forty bucks I feel a little less deprived.

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I don't think I really understood where the story for Jack and the Bean Stalk came from until I actually planted some beans.  Last night I went out to see how everything looked because we were about to get hit with nasty thunderstorms and pounding rain.  I thought everything would be smooshed or washed away, but was very pleased to see that the rest of the cucumbers had come up and the beans are two and half inches tall!!!! From a half inch yesterday.  They grew two inches over night.  It would be easy to see how that quick growth would work its way into your stories when your life was in the fields.  Nothing else I have planted grows even close to that fast.  I wish could have a time lapse film of it, but probably it has been recorded for jr. high science classes films many a time. 

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My first Mulch

Everyone has different natural resources on their homestead and one of the resources we have is a forest covered with a thick blank of pine straw that keeps everything, but the trees from growing.  I finally decided to take advantage of this and do my first mulching on the cucumbers I just planted.  I know now that if  I am watering it this small dead spot it will quickly come back to life and be covered with five foot tall grass shoots.
If this works well I imagine I will end up doing this in my regular garden because weeding has to be the worst part of gardening.  I would never buy mulch.  I just don't think I could bring myself to fork over the money to buy something to cover the dirt, but I will definintly wander out back and grab a load.  I don't own a wheel barrow, so I had to adjust and used the girls radio flyer to haul my loads from the dark forest out back to the spot where I have my cucumbers planted. 

After spreading it out I sprayed the whole thing down so that the mulch wouldn't blow away in the massive windstorm which is been ready to fire up all day.  I am not sure how close to the plants you are supposed to get so I left a good bit of space for watering.  I have enough I might try to dig up a left over bubbler valve from my sprinklers in vegas.  Then I can bury everything except the actual plant under the mulch and it will still get water.  I was hoping that this would start to make my garden beds look better, but when I uploaded this picture I realized that I am going for practical, not pretty.

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Walnut Harvesting in East Texas

Inspired by a post on the Homegrown.org social network about walnuts I decided to go to the walnut tree outside our  yard and gather as many as I could find.  Rarely does anyone go to this part of our property except for my occasional mowing which keeps if from turning into mess of thorny vines and small trees.  I also wander past once and while to a check a section of the branch to see if it has flowing water.  I have seen a fair amount of snakes right under the tree and when I got under the cover of the tree I scanned the open area  for fallen walnuts and snakes.  Being so vigilant about these things I failed to notice that I was standing in a pile of ants. The worst part of standing in a ant pile is that your boots will be covered in ants before you feel the first bite. East Texas is full of bugs that bite or sting.  Growing up in California I never appreciated the lack of fire ants. 

I have no idea what kinda of bug this is in my picture.  I had reached up and grabbed a branch to pull it close enough to get at the walnuts and when I pulled it in front of my eyes I saw this guy.  Not paying attention I had almost wrapped my hand around it.  I guessing some type of caterpillar and I don't think it would have a bite, but around here everything else does.  It was while I was trying to take his picture when I felt the first ant bite and saw them crawling all over my boots.   I had to go the kids from school in a minute so brushed off as many as I could and finished filling my bucket.  I will have to back tomorrow to fill another bucket.  Since they are black walnuts they will take a good deal of work to get the nuts out, but like most things out here it is worth the a couple ant bites and a little extra effort.

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The New and Screwed up HughesNet

I just paid five bucks to have my internet service turned back on.  Why is that you might be wondering?  Well, because some dill hole came up with a new way in which our service works.  Living in the middle of nowhere you have pretty limited internet options.  Dial-up blows even in a city with good phones and out here with lines put in in 1962 it blows even harder.  Cable and DSL are not going to come this way.  There is just no way they are ever going to bother running lines just so the four of us who live on this particular dirt road can have service so pretty much your stuck with HughesNet Satellite service if you want your pages to load when your try to open them.  There use to be one competitor AgriStar which oddly enough had exactly the same pricing and services as HughesNet, but they were recently  purchased by HughesNet.

For a long time I was pretty happy with the service.  The dish is pretty tough and didn't even need to realigned after either hurricane Rita or Ike.  We pay the minimum of sixty bucks for their base level of service and the speed has always been sufficent. They have always had what they call a "fair access policy" which is a download limit of 200MB which doesn't sound like much, but  I am online quite a bit blogging, selling on Ebay, using Quirky, surfing around etc and my wife finished her college degree by taking classes online through Lamar University. Basicly we have always found that we could do anything online except watch videos. Which of course means that I have missed out on all the great joys YouTube has to offer. If you download software you can do it at two in the moring when they give you a free time. If all the years we have had this service we had maybe gone over this limit five times, about once a year. 

It used to be that when you went over they would slow your service down so much that you could maybe get your email to open, but that was it.  If you called they would sometimes let it go and reset it and other times you just had to wait twenty four hours.  Recently they came up with a new system where if you go over you could pay five bucks and bingo your speed has been restored or you can wait twenty four hours.  Since they started two months ago we have somehow gone over our limit around ten times. A few days ago I spent an hour on the phone trying to get the tech support guy to tell me what the hell they had changed so that I could avoid this. He of course assured my that nothing had changed and as a sign of good faith reset my service without charge, but I know they messed with something.  Somehow they changed the way they count the megabytes in order to get customers to pay  a little more.  Right now I have no options because they have a monoploy on the market.  I don't really miss living in the city, but I can't explain how much I miss my cable modem right now.

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This little piggy

I had intended to write about our trip to the county fair this afternoon, but on our way home this evening we came across my wife's cousin who was just about to head home from his evening bow hunt.  Archery season opened on Friday so we expected he would be out here hunting.  When we pulled up we asked the typical did you get anything question and he said he had a killed a pig so we had to have a look.

This area is right on the fence line of a fifty acre track that the owner doesn't use.  Since it is one of the few places that is total secluded and has not been logged tons of wildlife uses that land for their home base.  On his trail cam he has seen up to forty of these at once so it really is time to thin out the ranks.  pigs can be dangerous as well as  using  up resources and space that could be taken up by more deer. We are hoping to take a pig or two this winter and butcher them, but right now it is warm enough this little thing would be spoiled before we got it cut up.  Tonight it will be food for the coyotes that have been howling like crazy the last couple nights.  I thought I was going to have to load up the shotgun and hangout on the porch last night because they were so close, but I think tonight at least some of them will be munching on this little piggy.

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Ruminastions

How did I get here?
This is not my beautiful garden.
These are not my beautiful nasturtiums.
Letting the days go by, into silent autumn
(with apologies to the Talking Heads)

This is ostensibly a Seed GROW post, but it's also a Sundries Sunday post so be ready for random ramblin' ruminastions!

Well, my 'Spitfire' nasturtiums definitely look the worse for wear, especially after last night's low near 40! There isn't enough sun in this location; I've been needing to move a huge arborvitae. The hops is more or less gone, too, but look at the eeny beeny morning glory that popped up!

There are one or two more growing higher on the trellis.

The nasturtiums I planted to grow up my corn are doing somewhat better. To all the hatas who tried to tell me I wouldn't get corn with only one plant, neener neener! I got two corn cobs, but neener neener on me, they were both covered with corn smut, which was so gross I tossed them before even taking a photo. I suspect it self-pollinated (with the seeds above falling on the tassels below). Everything in my garden has to fend for itself, lol.

Pretty turtlehead I received in spring from my friend Joey.

There's something about the forming seedhead of the cup plant I really like.

On July 4 I direct-sowed some zinnia and sunflower seeds. Two months later things are blooming.

I didn't used to like zinnias, but holla!

Ready to bloom any minute now...

...There we go! I can't help but smile when I look at sunflowers.

My tomato crop was suboptimal this year, but I did discover an awesome plant tie: hair clips! Just make sure the ends don't pinch the stem. (These 'Great White' are high enough up to have (knock wood, toi toi toi) escaped the rascally raccoons so far.)

The obedient plant is kickin' ass and takin' names. Most of all mine for not dividing or staking it!

That's my girl!

This corner of my huge front bed is the first thing I planted when I moved into the house. It is now one hot mess, with weeds encroaching the bed. The other side is even worse but I couldn't bear to show it!

When the foliage of the goldenrod (I believe Solidago canadensis) came up, I thought it was native asters. It's not that I don't like goldenrod, it's just that there used to by be native asters in that space as well. The queen of the prairie is about to bloom, way later than the one in a sunny location out front.

I couldn't get the contrast of Big Bluestem grass against the buckthorn in the background to work, so I did an inverse and messed with hue saturation. HA!

Poison ivy growing up a stem of echinacea that the groundhog broke the top off of. Ah, nature. I have tons of small patches of PI like this and huge spreads. I've been hesitant to use Roundup because I often see American toads in this area and their skin is particularly sensitive to absorbing chemicals. Later in fall I'll paint it on.

We were talking on my facebook page about how some gardeners (volunteer at recent workday, left) seem to have a magic anti-dirt shield and others (me, right) very decidedly do not. Lisa pointed out in the comments that the woman to the left is holding pruners and so was likely standing while working. Which is a great observation and interpretation except that there happens to be very little to prune in that garden; mostly everyone was weeding and spreading mulch that day... and everyone finished clean, except me (though I was doing some more rigorous weed removal, lol!).

I got this sweet autumn clematis (Clematis terniflora) from my mom two years ago and this is the first time it's bloomed for me. I winter-sowed two native versions of this plant, virgin's bower (Clematis virginia), and will be interested how long it takes them to bloom. (Where to plant them is a whole 'nother kettle o' fish.)

Large milkweed bugs on (surprisingly enough) my milkweed seedpods.

A while ago I won some cool stuff, including a $20 gift certificate to Lowe's, from Lisa. Even though I had every intention of spending the money on bird seed, I couldn't resist these $3.33 gallon shrubs: two false cypress, two different cultivars of chokeberry, a spirea, and a red-flowered potentilla. No, I have no clue where they'll go.

My elephant's ears 'Illustris' really came into their own this year; they about quadrupled in size. They're gonna need a new pot before they come back in for the winter. Eep.

I've shown Pinky a few times. These are Siegfried (left) and Gertrude. G is named partly after Ms. Jekyll (I chuckle to myself as she hated fuchsia) and partly after my grandmother.

I wonder if I can get Siegi and Gerti to balance on a tight rope like these two? I adore everything about this photo of the Flamingo Trailer Court on Middlebelt Rd. in Farmington Hills, MI.


I'm growing Nasturtium 'Spitfire' for the GROW project. Thanks to Renee's Garden for the seeds.

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I broke up with my garden today

My garden has seemed a bit too big for a while now. Things that were initially mere blips on the garden radar have lately felt overwhelming and insurmountable. A very hot summer kept me inside a lot, and weeds have taken over. My tomatoes were a big bust this year due to marauding raccoons and suboptimal sunlight. There's so much to plant and transplant yet this fall, which I normally look forward to but which this year feels defeating.

Today I planned to dig out seven overgrown junipers that need to go to make room for other things I like more, which have been waiting to get in the ground since June. Five of the junipers are 4' tall x 6' wide, the other two are 5' x 8' feet, though I'd trimmed those back considerably already.

I normally like digging out shrubs--it's hard work but it's gratifying when it's done and it's a good way to get out aggression! First I cut off the branches of the first shrub, which filled two yard waste bags, so I could see where I was digging. Then I dug. This was extremely arduous because the soil is so dry and the roots are far down. I barely reached them at all. I get rashes if I touch certain evergreens and even though I was wearing long sleeves, long pants, socks and closed shoes, I could feel my neck and the back of my legs start to itch. The underside of my foot where you push on the shovel was a little sore. An hour and a lot of digging passed, but still no progress even finding the roots, and the base trunks were not loosening even an eeny beeny tiny bit!

To say I was getting frustrated would be inaccurate. I was swearing at random things (yes out loud), and even called a squirrel (my favorite wildlife friend!) an expression favored by residents of Deadwood. In a fit of fury I jumped down on the spade too hard, onto soil that was too hard, lost my balance, and toppled onto the adjacent juniper in a big flailing heap.

Before I mention what happened next I have to tell you that gardening has been my passion for many years and I have gardened in many different settings. I'm very much a roll-up-your-sleeves-and-get-stuck-in kind of person, a modern-day Rosie the Riveter. My arms, my energy, my determination, and my will are strong. I'm not afraid of hard work and I've always done my own heavy lifting. And, let's face it, I'm so goddamn stubborn that a whole army of buckthorn is no real match.

That being said, we return to me face down in a juniper (which would have been pretty funny if I hadn't been in a mood). I wasn't hurt, but I found myself balled up in a fetal position crying like a baby kitten who can't find its mama. Well, OK, not really crying because I think the sweating dehydrated my ability to produce tears, but that's not the point.

The point is, I cursed my garden, listing all its failings and all its demands, and everything I had ever done for it, and for what? What had it done for me? Huh?! I used a lot of sentences involving "you always" and "you never" and finally told it to get the hell out of my life, only in much more colorful language.

I squeezed my eyes shut, crossed my arms, and pouted, waiting for it to beat a hasty retreat or at least apologize. I fantasized about doing a major ecological burn and thoroughly enjoyed imagining certain things engulfed in flames. I envisioned an alternate garden, a kwoot widdle patio garden, so sweet and demure.

Feeling a lot better, I opened my eyes and was greeted by wonderful color. My garden gave me flowers, clearly as an apology and peace offering. Embarrassed, I apologized also and asked it to take me back. It smiled and said, "I'm not going anywhere."

Which is all very fine and good and smile smile smile happy, but... I still have one partway dug out juniper and six to go and, honestly, I'm tired. I don't know what the solution is. I don't know how to make a large garden smaller (I'm not ever going to convert beds to lawn and my plants are already low care, I never water!) or how to keep up with it more or how to regain some of the enthusiasm I once had.

I suspect it would help to do just a little bit every day, rather than feeling like I have to do perform big miracles all at once. And I think I just need to get back to work. Right after I have lunch.

P.S. My favorite ass-kickin' companion suggests 1) I learn to focus the camera and 2) to intimidate the problem out of existence! Easy peasy.

Added 9/18: Photo update. Three of the five shrubs in the first bed are dug out. Even though my BIL has a pickup and could probably get those chains for me, there isn't a clear path for a vehicle to access that bed. I found digging as far as I can and then soaking the hole for a few hours makes it possible to get at the deepest roots. A second bed has two really big ones and access to the street. I may ask my BIL for help but he has so many projects that I don't like to bother him if I can do it myself.

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Revelation on megabus and the 9 plants of desire

I was given the book Hothouse Flower and The 9 Plants of Desire by Margot Berwin to review. The publisher's synopsis is:

Lila Nova is a thirty-two year-old advertising copyrighter who lives alone in a plain, white box of an apartment. Recovering from a heartbreaking divorce, Lila’s mantra is simple: no pets, no plants, no people, no problems. But when Lila meets David Exley, a ruggedly handsome plant-seller, her lonely life blossoms into something far more colorful. From the cold, harsh streets of Manhattan to the verdant jungles of the Yucatan Peninsula, Hothouse Flower is the story of a woman who must travel beyond the boundaries of sense and comfort to find what she truly wants.

I'm going to talk about my own personal take. I enjoyed the book overall; it was an engaging, quick read. I read the first half on megabus on the way to Chicago and the second half at the Lurie Garden in Chicago.

In fact, I left the book tucked in some calamint at the Lurie when I was done, hoping it would make a nice surprise for someone else.

I liked how the book tied people's love of plants to their growth as people. I was amazed by how much in the book resonated with me and was struck by how many quotes really hit home.

One of the characters thought technology was superior to the natural world, and that nature was useless. When Lila's cell phone battery oozed and disintegrated in the jungle, she thought "The old nature kicked the new nature's ass." It reminded me of a caption to a photo a friend once took of grasses growing over an old tractor: "When the works of nature cover the works of man, that's progress."

In one scene Sonali tells Lila, "Once you make a decision, you must stop thinking about it and take action without any regret toward the outcome, regardless of that outcome" (emphasis mine). In other words, once you make a decision, don't waste time and energy focusing on what if. Own the decision. This really, really hit home and was just what I need to hear right at that very moment.

Sonali continued, "Regrets are for people who believe they could have done something differently. If you think carefully about your actions, and then you act, you will have no regrets because you will know that you were as careful as possible when you made the decision."

It was also cool to find out my last name is part of the Spanish word for seeds, semilla.

I really liked Armand and Sonali's deep love and passion for one another. It was nice to see such depth of feelings between older, outside-of-the-norm, squishy-around-the-middle people. That true love is not only reserved for the young, hot, and fit.

I also liked the idea of flower versus root people, with root people "drawn to the darker side of things, the underground or unseen aspects." I'm definitely a root person.

I love Diego's take on people losing their personal identity, in favor of being what society wants, a little bit every year like a zipper slowly closing the person up in one of those full-body, "mummy" sleeping bags. He was very much into knowing who you are and being that person.

He told Lila, "Believe me, when you know yourself, you never want to pretend to be anything else ever again because it is better than anything you have ever pretended, or dreamed up, or imagined, or become." That so resonated with what I've been working toward over the last 8 or so years, I got all misty-eyed, right there on megabus.

The book really helped me tie some loose ends in my mental ether, and for that I'm in Berwin's debt.

Edited: Frances asked what the nine plants are, and of course you guys are gonna wanna know that. How silly of me! They're:

Gloxina, Gloxina speciosa, love
Mexican cycad, Zamia furfuracea, immortality
Cacoa, Theobroma cacao, wealth
Moonflower, Ipomoea alba, fertility
Sensemilla, Cannabis sativa, female sexuality
Lily of the valley, Convallarria majalis, life force
Mandrake, Atropa mandragora, magic
Chicory, Cichorium intybus, freedom
Datura, Datura inoxia, adventure

And a tenth: the passion plant with no name whose form curls inward like a mandala.

Stop reading now if you don't want spoilers!

Being who I am with no regrets, I admit some scenes at the end of the book were hard for me to accept. I understand the book is light reading, escapist or fantasy but not literal, but I got a bit lost somewhere between the realistic beginning and the magical, mystical end.

I was on-board with Diego drinking with the deer; he is connected to the land in a way Lila is not, and getting a group of harmless animals to accept you, versus run away from you, is one thing. However, I did not buy that a black panther would lead Lila, an urban dweller with no animal whispering skills we knew of, to David's house instead of, say, dousing her in BBQ sauce (metaphorically) and having her for dinner (literally).

I was puzzled by how they got the deadly scorpions into the piñatas without getting stung. I wondered how the scorpions survived for days or weeks, and why they didn't chew their way out.

I got the feeling I was supposed to like or relate to Lila, who consistently did more harm than good. I didn't. I wanted to kick her really hard for feeding the mandrake to Diego. Perhaps she was a metaphor for how developed nations perceive and impose their views on developing countries.

Ever since Diego mentioned, when he first met Lila, that one of the nine desires was knowledge, I waited anxiously to discover what the corresponding plant was, but it was never revealed.

I also thought Lila going back to NYC the day Armand told her to was out of character after all she supposedly learned and changed. I suspect, in fact, she did not return to Mexico after all, and fell back into her NYC life.

On balance, I have no regrets reading the book and came away with a lot from it. Thanks to TLC Book Tours for giving me the opportunity to review it.

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The scenic route

I've always believed in taking the road less traveled, but lately I've been thinking of it as the scenic route, because that sounds like you'd meet a lot more plants. Plus, I'm way behind on everything lately and that sounds like a good excuse--I've been taking the scenic route!

Plus, the scenic route ties into the idea of focusing on the here and now (thank you, Cheryl!), not dwelling in the past or fidgeting about the future. And I like to take in what's here and now, savor it, appreciate it. For example, this is the only one of my three 'Spitfires' still blooming. I'd rather focus on it than the ones that died. Look how intense the color is and how the foliage looks like little lily pads!

And bless its heart, it's still budding!

And as long as we're standing together in my fall garden, check out my beautyberry (Callicarpa americana). Its berries are more striking than normal this year.

Is there any question how it got its name?!

My rogue queen of the prairie (Filipendula rubra) should have bloomed in early July, but it also took the scenic route. Eggplant 'Black Beauty' is still kickin' it and cheering Fili on.

Let's cross the street to my kitty-corner neighbors' house (hi, Jim & Nancy!). Do you see something special in their huge, gorgeous red maple?

Now you do! If I'd been driving by too fast, I wouldn't have seen it.

My tomatoes are done, and I've been collecting seeds. I left these 'Tiger-Like' (which are soooooo good!) soaking too long and they sprouted in the water! And turned fuzzy, noogie! So while the seeds are no longer good for saving and planting later, I decided to sow the sprouted ones indoors now and see what happens. Maybe I'll have tomatoes in February! I love longitudinal research (the scenic route!).


I'm growing Nasturtium 'Spitfire' for the GROW project. Thanks to Renee's Garden for the seeds.

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