Nom de Plume

I am reminded of that e-mail that chronicles the day of a cat vs. that of a dog. The cat hatches nefarious plots to foil human attempts at domination while the while the dog bumbles through the day with Oh boy! Breakfast! My favorite! and Oh boy! A walk! My favorite! (Actually, it’s a pretty funny e-mail. You can read it here.)

In every day life, Steve is a dog (Oh boy! Bamboo! My favorite! Oh boy! Siberian Dogwood! My favorite!) and I am the cat (My plans for an heirloom vegetable garden were foiled yet again … the captor uprooted and tortured my spinach with Alaskan ferns … )

In the case of case, Sorcery and Cecilia, however, I am clearly the dog.

Oh boy! A Regency Austen-esque romp! My favorite! Oh boy! Intelligent kiddie lit! My favorite! Oh boy! A dash of Harry Potter-esque magic! My favorite.

Told through a series of letters, Sorcery and Cecilia chronicle the enchanted and romantic adventures of two English misses. One cousin is in London for the Season; the other is at home. Yet a mystery is afoot, and they center around a stolen, magical chocolate pot …Okay, I confess, I haven’t finished this one yet. But I will the moment I get home tonight because I’m itching to get back to it.

Seriously. Like this is a surprise?

“Americans say President Bush does not share the priorities of most of the country on either domestic or foreign issues, are increasingly resistant to his proposal to revamp Social Security and say they are uneasy with Mr. Bush’s ability to make the right decisions …”

From the NY Times. Read more.

I’m going to get one of these oh-so-tasteful little guys for the Japanese garden.

link

I do hate to appear narrow-minded, but must confess that I found a book in which the author relates how plants talk to him about their medicinal uses a little hard going. “At that moment, the plant appeared to me as a youngish man, hair curled and growing like the plant itself. He smiled and told me that usnea’s primary function in the Earth ecosystem is to heal the trees …”

Last summer, when we were in Greenwood, before we moved to the hood, before we even had a garden, I spent hazy morning commutes daydreaming about the heirloom vegetable garden I was going to put in. This dream was fuelled by William Woys Weaver’s Heirloom Vegetable Gardening, which I thoroughly enjoyed reading, prompting me to develop exhaustive lists of what I wanted to grow and seek out heirloom seed companies.

Of course, this also before Steve informed me that the entire yard–front and back–is going to be dedicated to his Japanese garden. I am now relegated to container gardening on the deck. Nonetheless, imagine my delight when at the library browsing through gardening books for Steve (ferns and bonsai), I found 100 Vegetables and Where They Came From, also by Weaver.

Who knew that the elephant ears now germinating in the kitchen are actually taro? And that the leaves are an edible green? Well, okay, some of them are edible and some are poisonous; I suspect the latter in our case.

Anyway, quick, delightful read.

You know, I’m irritated with Blogger, inasmuch as one can be irritated with a pretty good blogging service that doesn’t cost a cent.

I have faithfully followed many of their instructions on how to increase readership because I’ve decided I need to become a blogging bazillionaire. (Let me have my dreams, okay?) That mainly involves pinging various blog sites when you have updated content. But they don’t tell you what this leads to.

Referrer spam.

Referrer spam is a way for unscrupulous (though often legitimate) companies to boost their search engine rankings by hitting your log files.

I’m getting a ton of it. I’ve put an .htaccess file in my main directory, but have to update it almost every day. It’s the third of March, and I already have 325 people who were forbidden from accessing my site. That’s more than 100 refused visitors a day. And who knows if any of these people are legitimate?

What to do?