Nom de Plume

I was going to do a long, involved step-by-step recap of our week-long trip to British Columbia, but I’ve lost my steam. The short version is that we spent two days in Victoria, 2 days in Tofino, a day sightseeing our way to just north of Vancouver, and a day and a half along the coast up there. It was great; we fell in love with Tofino and the whale-watching tour, thought Butchart Gardens was WAY overrated, and discovered the mining musum, which rocks (literally). One of the highlights, though, was camping outside Port Alberni along a stream where the salmon were migrating in DROVES.

More aptly, a novel of no sex, stupidity, and mindcrushing boredom. Again, my standards for chick lit are low, but not this low. Not even on an airplane — with no other reading material in sight save for the in-plane catalog filled with FrontGate garden lighting and Lord of the Rings paraphernalia — could I force myself to wade through this labored story that never seemed to start.

Smunshi, of course, being the smushed together form of Smith and Munshi.

(This last is Steve’s latest obsession: water gardens.)

Nicki, our next door neighbor, has agreed to let me put raised vegetable beds in her backyard. It’s actually a pretty sweet deal for both of us; she has a wild yard that she doesn’t have time to keep up, and Steve doesn’t let me plant anything except in shady spots. Now, I just have to get around to doing it. But here’s motivation: Wayne’s gathering from his garden. From this morning alone.

Found on Poppy Cedes. Here are the rules: BOLD those you’ve read, ITALICIZE the ones you’ve been meaning to read.

Alcott, Louisa May–Little Women
Allende, Isabel–The House of Spirits
Angelou, Maya–I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (totally overrated in my opinion)
Atwood, Margaret–Cat’s Eye
Austen, Jane–Emma
Bambara, Toni Cade–Salt Eaters
Barnes, Djuna–Nightwood
de Beauvoir, Simone–The Second Sex
Blume, Judy–Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret (we must, we must …. I cursed myself)
Burnett, Frances–The Secret Garden
Bronte, Charlotte–Jane Eyre
Bronte, Emily–Wuthering Heights
Buck, Pearl S.–The Good Earth
Byatt, A.S.–Possession
Cather, Willa–My Antonia
Christie, Agatha–Murder on the Orient Express
Cisneros, Sandra–The House on Mango Street
Clinton, Hillary Rodham–Living History
Cooper, Anna Julia–A Voice From the South
Danticat, Edwidge–Breath, Eyes, Memory
Davis, Angela–Women, Culture, and Politics
Desai, Anita–Clear Light of Day
Dickinson, Emily–Collected Poems
Duncan, Lois–I Know What You Did Last Summer
DuMaurier, Daphne–Rebecca
Eliot, Geroge–Middlemarch
Emecheta, Buchi–Second Class Citizen
Erdrich, Louise–Tracks (not this one, but plenty of others, my fave was The Beet Queen)
Esquivel, Laura–Like Water for Chocolate
Flagg, Fannie–Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
Friedan, Betty–The Feminine Mystique
Frank, Anne–Diary of a Young Girl
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins–The Yellow Wallpaper
Gordimer, Nadine–July’s People
Grafton, Sue–S is for Silence
Hamilton, Edith–Mythology This seems like an odd inclusion to me.
Highsmith, Patricia–The Talented Mr. Ripley
Hooks, Bell–Bone Black
Hurston, Zora Neale–Dust Tracks on the Road
Jacobs, Harriet–Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Jackson, Helen Hunt–Ramona
Jackson, Shirley–The Haunting of Hill House
Jong, Erica–Fear of Flying
Keene, Carolyn–The Nancy Drew Mysteries (any of them) This inclusion is just plain WRONG. The original was written by a man; the rest were written by a whole passel of writers
Kidd, Sue Monk–The Secret Life of Bees
Kincaid, Jamaica–Lucy
Kingsolver, Barbara–The Poisonwood Bible
Kingston, Maxine Hong–The Woman Warrior
Larsen, Nella–Passing
L’Engle, Madeleine–A Wrinkle in Time
Le Guin, Ursula K.–The Left Hand of Darkness
Lee, Harper–To Kill a Mockingbird
Lessing, Doris–The Golden Notebook
Lively, Penelope–Moon Tiger
Lorde, Audre–The Cancer Journals
Martin, Ann M.–The Babysitters Club Series
McCullers, Carson–The Member of the Wedding
McMillan, Terry–Disappearing Acts
Markandaya, Kamala–Nectar in a Sieve
Marshall, Paule–Brown Girl, Brownstones
Mitchell, Margaret–Gone with the Wind
Montgomery, Lucy–Anne of Green Gables
Morgan, Joan–When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost
Morrison, Toni–Song of Solomon
Murasaki, Lady Shikibu–The Tale of Genji
Munro, Alice–Lives of Girls and Women
Murdoch, Iris–A Severed Head
Naylor, Gloria–Mama Day
Niffenegger, Audrey–The Time Traveller’s Wife
Oates, Joyce Carol–We Were the Mulvaneys And God, was it horrible.
O’Connor, Flannery–A Good Man is Hard to Find
Piercy, Marge–Woman on the Edge of Time
Picoult, Jodi–My Sister’s Keeper
Plath, Sylvia–The Bell Jar
Porter, Katharine Anne–Ship of Fools
Proulx, E. Annie–The Shipping News
Rand, Ayn–The Fountainhead Even worse than Mulvaneys
Ray, Rachel–365: No Repeats
Rhys, Jean–Wide Sargasso Sea
Robinson, Marilynne–Housekeeping
Rocha, Sharon–For Laci
Sebold, Alice–The Lovely Bones
Shelley, Mary–Frankenstein
Smith, Betty–A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Smith, Zadie–White Teeth
Spark, Muriel–The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Spyri, Johanna–Heidi
Strout, Elizabeth–Amy and Isabelle
Steel, Danielle–The House
Tan, Amy–The Joy Luck Club
Tannen, Deborah–You’re Wearing That
Ulrich, Laurel–A Midwife’s Tale
Urquhart, Jane–Away
Walker, Alice–The Temple of My Familiar
Welty, Eudora–One Writer’s Beginnings
Wharton, Edith–Age of Innocence
Wilder, Laura Ingalls–Little House in the Big Woods
Wollstonecraft, Mary–A Vindication of the Rights of Women
Woolf, Virginia–A Room of One’s Own

Last year, I wanted to plant masses of bulbs in the front yard. I imagined froths of hyacinths and daffodils poking their heads up spring after spring, tons of tulips for cut flowers. But no. “It’s not in keeping with a Japanese garden,” sniffed Steve in disdain. So I resigned myself to planting five or six bulbs in the ground, and the rest in pots. And we all know that I kill plants when they’re in pots. There’s a reason that Steve calls them Zia’s Torture Chambers.

So what happened this year? Steve “discovered” the joys of bulbs. He planted flat after flat of ‘em. He dragged me to McClendon’s to get the more exotic types of bulbs. He’s even ordered a bunch of them online. And when I complained? “I’m so glad I thought of putting bulbs in the front yard,” he said.

That’s what the garden is.

In case you’re wondering, the white thing in the pathway is my trash can covering the mole trap. I don’t know if it’s worked or not — the contraption is scary.

And below is Steve’s new garden gnome. He’s been wanting one for ages. I don’t know why. But, it makes him happy, and that’s all that really matters, isn’t it?

There is, of course, nothing quite so tiresome as someone explaining why she hasn’t been posting more regularly — so I won’t bother, except to say that it’s been a crazy week with no end in sight. But spring is really here! We spent Sunday working in the yard; I cleared off the deck, started fantasizing about heirloom vegetables again and planted a bunch of seeds hoping that this year I won’t kill my container garden. I call them pots; Steve calls them torture chambers. Mean, but true. In any case, he has his hands full;we have a mole. He’s dug several holes in the backyard, and when we stuck a hose down one of them, it ran for 45 minutes before leaking through the containing wall. So he’s a man with a mission: to kill the furry little bastard. It’s very entertaining. Actually, I think the mole’s just moved next door; I was talking to Nicki over the fence when she looked down and said with some surprise, “Oh, I think I have a mole.” Yep — huge pile o’ dirt at her feet. How can something so small create such a mess?

I can’t remember where I read a recommendation of this kiddie lit, but got it from the library and read it in a couple of hours. The Penderwicks — a family of four sisters, their father, and faithful dog — rent a summer cottage in the Berkshires. The owner of the property is a dragon, but her son and gardener are a delight. I was rather expecting this to be a magical novel a la Harry Potter for some reason (the description on the front says it’s “A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting boy”). It’s not. But then again, it doesn’t need to be. This was one of those old-fashioned kids books in which the ordinary seems magical. Birdsall remembers what it was like to be a child — and she knows how to write about it.

Spring is springing: tree blossoms are in bloom; the calla lilies are shooting leaflets up into the air like arrows, and Steve is getting into the garden once again. He took yesterday off to go whitewater kayaking, forgot the paddle, and ended up at Squawk Mountain Nursery to pick up some euphorbia.