this little life of mine

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

1. Grab your current read

2. Open to a random page

3. Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

4. BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

5. Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My teaser this week is from page 21 of The Darkangel by Meredith Ann Pierce (I've cheated a bit and posted four sentences instead of just two):

She pulled her tangled throughts away from that, tried to think on other things. Already the village poets were beginning to sing of the syndic's hapless daughter, stolen away for the vampyre's bride. Yet with all their singing and moaning and murmuring in all the fortnight since, not one of Eoduin's friends or kith had stirred a step to climb the steeps again and confront her murderer. That is not justice, Aeriel raged silently in despair.

From Rebecca at Just One More Page:

"Now that we’ve come to the middle of the year, what do you think of your 2009 reading so far? Read anything interesting that you’d like to share? Any outstanding favourites?"

So far this year I've read 16 books (I'm currently on #17, and after a slow start, am finally getting into it.) I've had mostly winners this year; very few terrible or not-so-good books. By far the best books I've read are the second and third books in the Annals of the Western Shore series by Ursula K. Le Guin (Powers and Voices), and the second Looking Glass Wars book Seeing Redd by Frank Beddor. I also really enjoyed Fire Bringer by David Clement-Davies,  Little (Grrl) Lost by Charles de Lint, Exodous by Julie Bertagna, and Ink Exchange by Melissa Marr.  So far the only real disappointment was A Haunting in Cambria by Richard Taylor, and while I haven't finished Poemcrazy by Susan B. Wooldridge, I was really enjoying the book before I set it down, and just need to pick it back up again.

The garden is totally exploding!

The once-dying Early Girl tomato plant appears to be making a comeback. It's grown a foot and has more little tomatoes on it:

The zucchini plant is working overtime and producing more ginormous squash:

The little bell pepper that is sharing an earthbox with the squash seems to be holding its own, though it's almost completely covered by the zucchini leaves and gets very little sun:

While the other two peppers are doing great and I even found a couple good-sized peppers on one:

The Big Boy tomato plant is doing fantastic and is covered with dozens of little green tomatoes:

The plants all look very healthy and pest-free (so far), so we'll have to see how they all stand up to the 100+ degree temperatures!

In other gardening news, the echinacea is starting to bloom:

... these pretty white flowers have bloomed (I don't recall what their name is):

... and the lavender is beautiful and delicious smelling:

I'm very excited at how lovely everything looks! Except for the lawn, of course, which is a crabgrass-infested, dryed out mess, but I guess we can't have everything! Cheers!

It's been a while since I've cooked anything fun or different for dinner, but the bumper crop of zucchini we've been getting has inspired me to try something different. Or forced me. Or something. Anyway, yesterday I picked up the latest edition of Vegetarian Times which has five different recipes for zucchini and tried the Braised Zucchini Wheels with Sesame-Mint Pest this evening. 

It was fairly easy to make and was really delicious! I know it's supposed to be a vegetarian-only dish, but it made a really good side dish for the hickory marinated tri tip steaks I cooked up!

The Midas Touch rose I planted last year is simply awesome! I can't get over how big it's grown, and how it's always covered with dozens of gorgeous, sunny yellow blooms. I went out and trimmed it up a bit, taking out all the deadheads and faded blooms, leaving only the buds and new blossoms.

I found one blossom that was particularly pretty and cut it off to bring inside:

Not only is it pretty to look at, it also has a wonderful, delicate scent. Similar to the Peace rose, but not as strong. Simply lovely.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

1. Grab your current read

2. Open to a random page

3. Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

4. BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

5. Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My teaser today is from What-the-Dickens by Gregory Maguire. I'm actually nearly finished with this charming little book, but here's a couple sentences from the beginning of the story, Page 26, to be exact:

"What's a skibberee?" asked Dinah.

"Ah," said Gage. "You'll have to wait and find out."

... and so will you! Hee!

Check out the two zucchini squash my mom found in the garden yesterday:

We didn't go out to look at the garden at all this past weekend, so we have no idea where that one monstrosity came from. It's HUGE!!! She said there's several more, so we'll be eating zucchini till it's coming out our ears!!

I installed our new house numbers last night. They're slightly bigger than our old ones, but not overwhelmingly so, and they are SO much more awesome! I ordered them through House Numbers Only, and they were delivered within just a few days! I chose the font "Viva", although I was very tempted to buy either "Calypso" or "Lyric", because they were really cool fonts. However, I was afraid people wouldn't be able to recognize the number 5 with the "Calypso" font very well, and the "Lyric" font looked a bit too bold. I'm pleased with my final choice. I think "Viva" goes well with the style of the house and the new light fixtures, and definitely fits my personality!