I just finished a rather long book. About 740 pages, but I didn’t mind. In fact, when I saw how long it was I ecstatic! It was the lastest book by one of my favorite authors, Sherrilyn Kenyon. This one is from her The League: Nemesis Rising series called Born of Legend. I hesitated in starting it because I knew nothing else would get done until I finished the book, and I have a 4th of July party to get ready for. So I decided to wait until afterwards.
Needless to say, I didn’t.
I’m not big into writing reviews. I know for a writer that sounds bad, but in my defense I’m always worried I’ll ruin the book or movie for someone. So I try to keep what I say to a minimum. What I will say about Born of Legend is I am sorry it ended. This is a series I have read numerous times and eagerly wait for the next one. I feel as if I have walked away from some old, very dear friends that I won’t be able to see for another year or two with questions of, what happens next? What about this particular character that went off on a personal mission? What happened to him? What about these two? *pointing at a young couple* You’ve been hinting something is between them since they met at the age of four. Tell me more!
So now I sit here. In withdrawels. Wanting to play with my friends I met through Sherrilyn Kenyon and knowing I have to wait. Maybe now I can finish getting ready for the party. *sigh*
It’s June already and it’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything on the garden. That’s not saying haven’t had ideas running around in my head. Recent health issues have been getting in the way. I’m doing okay now, so maybe I can start getting caught up.
Hopefully I can now get back into my yard and do work. At this point with the rain and heat mix parts of it have turned into a jungle. It doesn’t help that said rain has been happening on the weekend, keeping me inside. May need to add a machete to my arsonal of gardening tools.
Spring started in the middle of March, which meant I started weeding and pruning shortly thereafter. Now I have areas that need more attention.
Where this doesn’t look to bad in the picture, in order to walk down the path you have to sort of fight your way through. There is also a vine maple that needs to be pruned up so we can walk under it without ducking.
The worst is the back. I had it all cleaned out last fall, ready for grass sees. Now, not so much.
It’s full of forget-me-nots and stinky bob, among other weeds. What is stinky bob? It’s a weed with little pink flowers that look nice among the blue of the forget-me-nots but is very evasive. It’s choking out the meadows so we are suppose to pull it out. As you can see, I’m a little behind.
I’m thinking pulling weeds is on my list for this weekend. I can sit and it’s easy.
Well, that is all for now in the garden. Have a wonderful weekend.
I know. It sounds ominous, but really it’s not. There might be a couple more, but this one I have partaken in recently. My favorite, or at least one of them, form of torture is puzzles. I love putting puzzles together. I have to be careful when I start them though, because once the bag is open and the pieces are on the table nothing much else gets done.
Usually I buy one every Christmas. I wait until the house is ready for company and then the bag is open. This way I can share my fun with my family. This includes my boys, husband, sister, her family and my parents. It’s very hard to walk by a table with an unfinished puzzle and not look at it. Then you find that one spot that screams “This will be easy!” and spend the next ten minutes looking for that one piece. From there it’s usually down hill. With this last one it was late in the night, I get up around 5:30 am and if I don’t get my sleep I’m useless the next day. So finally I had to reach over and just turn the light off. If I can’t see it, I can’t do it.
This year was a bit different. I bought the puzzle, but was unable to open it because we were working on the house. Had to put the new flooring in so the dining room had something more than plywood. Kind of hard on the bare feet in the morning. So the puzzle was not opened until a few weeks ago.
My youngest helped me some. He actually likes puzzles to a point. My husband told me if I needed the “Puzzle Master” just let him know. This means when I get down to the last five pieces that he is willing to come in and finish it for me. *rolls eyes* So the fun begins.
Usually the puzzle is 1000 pieces. Otherwise they are done too soon and so is the fun. Everyone has their way of doing puzzles. Some put the same colors in the same pile, others just make sure the pieces are all turned upright. I like to start on the border. Sometimes that works, sometimes I have to move on to another section and work on it for a while. This one was one I had to do the latter. But finally the boarder was done along with a couple of the main pieces.
I do cheat a little. If there are pieces that are still hooked together when I open the package I keep them together. A little help from the manufacture never hurt. 😉
So about a week and a half later, with the only thing getting done when I was home from work was laundry and dinner, the puzzle is done.
My son helped me with the last. It became a race to see who would find the next piece and then who would put the last in. I put the second to the last in and started to look for that finishing piece. It was no where to be found. Frowning I looked at my son who was grinning like the Cheshire Cat as he reached down to the hand that was on his lap and pulled the last piece of the puzzle from it. The little twit (edited for those younger ears) had hidden it so he was the one to put it in! Grrrrr!
Usually by the time I’m done with the “Christmas” puzzle I am good until next year. Apparently it is not so this year. While I will keep this puzzle on the table for a week or so, I have bought my next one. This time it is 1500 pieces. Oye! It will wait though. Even though I have this week off for spring break, I have a lot of yard work to do. If I open the puzzle that won’t get done. So maybe later in the summer. Here is a sneak peak of what new torture I have designed for myself. I think this one is going to take me awhile.
Spring has sprung in the Pacific Northwest. Well, actually it sprang… sprung in February. That was when the frogs started croaking the trees started to show signs of life. Now the Roses are almost done leafing out along with the hydrangea. My tree is about to burst into bloom and the rhubarb is growing. All about a month early. The weeds, however, have been doing just fine since it started raining again in September.
Between life and the rain (btw: Washington State is no longer in a drought. Mother Nature fixed that by the end of September. It’s amazing we all haven’t drowned!) I haven’t really had time to go out and work in the yard. I did weed the garden by the shed in November because the amount of shotgun weed that bout to bloom was getting out of control, so it is doing better than the rest of the gardens. About two weeks ago I finally was able to clean up the front gardens but not the lawn. At the time I only had weekends to work outside and the only day it didn’t rain was Saturday so I wasn’t able to finish. When I saw that it was suppose to be nice this weekend and we had nothing planned I knew I had to take the opportunity. The problem was, where do I start?
Like most gardeners, by the times January rolls around I start thinking about what I would like to do this year in the garden. Are there any changes that need to be done, projects that I have been mulling over the last 15 years that I want to tackle? What I did know was I needed to mow what can be in the vaguest sense of the word be called a lawn before it rained again. As I was cleaning the landmines our dog and a few other critters so graciously placed around the yard I realized what my project would be.
Last years drought took a toll on our grass. No rain for three months with 90F pretty much every day made keeping plants alive almost impossible. You just could not keep them watered enough. So something had to go or I would end up with a $500 water bill. No thank you! So the lawn was sacrificed. We weren’t the only ones. Not many lawns survived last summer.
Now to bring it back to life.
My knowledge of lawn care is simple. You mow it twice a week in the spring, maybe once a week to knock down the weeds the end of summer. You kill the moss then weed and feed it at various times in the year. Keep it short in the spring when everything stays wet and keep it longer after July 4th so you don’t have to water it as much. (July 5th is when summer official starts in Washington. Ask anyone who lives here. They will tell you it is true.) Usually the only part of the lawn that does get watered is what is near the flower beds.
Here is what a couple areas look like now.
I have more, but I think you get the idea. Pretty sad. This is mowed. I spend the rest of the day raking storm debris, leftover fall leaves and pine needles. Pine needles are the Bain of my existence. They get EVERYWHERE. Anyways, now the yard looks better, except for the grass. I’m hoping the rain holds off long enough tomorrow that I can go buy some moss/weed and feed and put it on the lawn tomorrow. Crossing fingers and toes.
So aside from maintaining and moving a couple of plants, this is my project this year. As always I may add to it, but we will see how this one goes first.
I have just updated the page for my series Destiny. I have added the link to the new prologue, which I think is much better than the old. Not as stilted. I have also added the book cover. For your convenience I will put both of them here. I hope you will take a look and let me know what you think. 🙂
I know I’ve talked about dreams before, but they always have interested me. Everyone dreams. Some remember them, some don’t. My husband always said he never dreamed, yet I hear him every once in a while talking in his sleep. That is what got me thinking about dreams again. This morning he was yelling out my name. Obviously a nightmare so I reached over and touched his arm to reassure him I was there. It took a moment, but he settled down and went back to sleep.
I have had good dreams and I have had a couple of doozies that still lives with me years later. I have a few that are reoccurring, the same dream that never changes until one day it does then they stop. One of those reoccurring dreams I have always enjoyed is the one where I fly. This one has changed over the years, but I hope that it never stops.
When I was young it always seemed hard to take flight, and when I did I was very close to the ground. This kind of worked because height has never really been my friend. If I have a railing in front of me or I’m enclosed in something, say a plane, I’m fine. It’s those cliff edges with nothing but air and a loooong drop that get me. I don’t understand those who can stand on the edge of a cliff with their toes hanging over it. It’s just insane! Some call it cowardness, I call it self-preservation! LOL
Back to my dream. In my mid-years I did not have the flying dream as much. When they started back up they weren’t as often, but there was one big difference. I was much higher in the air. Instead of soaring, I was sitting in a lawn chair with a long rope that reached down to the earth tethering me to it. As always my grandparent’s Oak tree was front and center. But instead of flying low across the green grass under the tree, never traveling farther than my grandparent’s propriety, I was high above it, and it wasn’t as fun as before. Yes the view was spectacular and I was very firmly and safely in that chair, but I knew if the rope broke I would continue floating up and up. There would be no coming back down and that terrified me. I was not ready to fly away. I still had so much to do.
I spent a lot of time thinking about what this meant. Then I remembered something I had realized when I was young and had just woken from a flying dream. I seemed refreshed and thought, maybe these dreams were my soul’s way of leaving the confines of my body and just be free to soar. So what did it mean now? Why was I no longer racing around near the ground, and what was the rope for? Answer? Well I know you will probably have your own interruptions because we all have our own ideas and opinions and that is what is wonderful about having free will, but I would like to share what I think.
I no longer race around because I am no longer young and filled with the abundance of energy we have in our youth. Now I sit in my chair and enjoy the peace and beauty around me. Below me my life stretches out like a suburb, each house a different story of my life. My grandparent’s Oak tree has always been my tether, keeping me grounded in family and youth, the roots of my life. Now that I am older I’m soaring closer to the heavens, the rope the only thing keeping me from soaring away. One day that rope will not be there or it will break. Hopefully on that day I will be ready and that peaceful feeling between the terror of that rope breaking will carry me on to the next adventure.
Now I know there are those of you out there that will think this is silly nonsense, and that is your prerogative. What I do know is, there is so much out there that we don’t know or think we understand yet really have no clue. Our dreams may be a window into that unknown. I know I have had a few that have seemed very real, and have come at a time when I really needed reassurance that everything will be okay from those that are no longer with us. So who is to say I am not right?
I have other dreams, some I wrote down that I might share. One in particular is a bit… disturbing, but there is also something very interesting about it too. We will see.
A little side note. My sister and I were the 5th generation to be raised on the land my parent’s own, which was right next door to my grandparents place. The oak tree has always been there, is still there, and had two swings and many fun memories of our childhood.
Lately it seems that the story I have dubbed Broken Promises had been pushing at me to work on. It shows in the latest flash fiction and free writes I have been doing. Kara, Caius and Tanis keep speaking to me, (well yelling actually) asking me to pay attention to them. Aden has been silently waiting in the background, yet his presence it very much there. Out of the four, I would say Aden has the most patience. It’s probably because his presence is so powerful that he doesn’t have to say anything. You just know what he wants. The problem? I’m suppose to be working on Fated to Be! It’s very frustrating.
A little background I think is needed for this particular story. As I have said in my little excerpt about myself, my 8th grade teacher would put something on the board that we were to put in a journal and then write about. One day she put a small paragraph about a forbidden forest and a twig snapping in the quiet. I really wish I still had the original passage, but over the years I have modified it to the point the idea is there if not the exact words.
So I wrote this paragraph down and for some strange reason I could not stop writing. That early draft was all fan-fiction. I took my favorite TV shows from the 70’s (yes I am that old) and mixed them together in my own plotline. At the time it was easier to use characters and actors I knew and just write the plot, such as it was, because I had them firmly in my mind. So I would put into words the movie that was playing in my mind as best as a 14 year-old could up through high school. It was a story that never ended and anything could happen. There were no limits.
That particular rendition of Broken Promises ended up being over 700 HAND WRITTEN pages long. Unfortunately most of it was in pencil and so over time faded. I eventually had to recycle the papers because I could not read what was on them. I cried that day. I remember most of it, and let me tell you my teenage mind had some….. interesting ideas. Somewhere in there I started writing other stories with the first rendition of Obsession being in there, but that is another story for another day. With my memory probably one I have already talked about. lol
Broken Promises was a sort of Sci-Fi slash fantasy slash contemporary romance all rolled into one. When I found it in a cupboard and started to read what was left, I thought that there was a story in there somewhere that I could make all mine. I also thought with some of the scenes and they way they were written (remember I was 14 when I started), “OMG this is scary. What was I thinking! Gah! How embarrassing!” So I began rewriting, changing names of characters and places as I went. (Rewriting those scenes as an adult had much more experience in 😉 ) As per my usually way of writing, it has gone through many many rewrites and changes since then. I think I have something that might be publishable, but it’s not quite ready and I don’t have an ending I am satisfied with. The other problem I’m wrestling with is the storyline starts in the middle. I have tried to go back and rewrite the beginning, but I always get stuck. I think it’s because I am trying to update the time and place and end up going so far off what was originally written my characters balk.
So about Broken Promises. Well the Sci-Fi part is pretty self explanatory. Space, aliens, advance technology species, backwards planets, etc. The fantasy part is more that I have made up my own rendition of how the universe keeps spinning. I have another story called Angels and Demons that was started because of a free write I was participating in. As most writers have had happened, it was a picture or sentence that took on a life of its own. I have since renamed it Forever Lost, for obvious reasons. Angels and Demons was already taken in a big way. In some ways the basis for this story is the same. My version of how the universe started and how it remains still spinning today. A constant battle between good and evil (two males) over the glue (a female) that keeps everything together that has spanned time and space since the beginning. I’m starting to think that maybe the characters of Broken Promises were trying to find there footing in another way since I was ignoring them. Although the place and events are different. Both of these story are borderline horror. The atrocities the characters go through are events only immortals could survive, and sometimes not even then. A cycle that not even death can stop because they are reborn only to begin it again.
Maybe after I finally have Fated to Be published I will go back and look at Broken Promises again. Maybe finally finish it. Although I think this is a Kindle only book and my mom won’t be helping me edit it. I have scandalized her enough with the Destiny series. LOL
I was reading through my blogs to see what it was I had written in my promise to myself that I would write everyday. What I found was, I was right. I really don’t have a lot to say. There were a few idea, a poem or two, little bit of creative writing, but for a day to day blog I don’t know how people do it. So I guess it’s back to when the feeling hits me whether it’s a blog or poem or short story I will post. And you know what? That’s okay. 🙂
I do have some exciting news. At least it is for me. I finally have the first proof in book form of my new novel! YEAH! Earlier I had posted on the Destiny series page a link to the prologue and part of the first chapter. As per my usual M.O., after posting what should have been set in stone, I have now decided that it will not work and have written a completely new one. As soon as I’m happy with it I will post it. As for now, all I have to give is the cover of my new book, Fated to Be. This is the second book of my series Destiny.
I’m not sure exactly when it will be published because as I am editing I am also working. Kind of cuts into my editing time. I also want to remind you that this is the FIRST proof. I’m sure there will be a couple more before I am happy with it. I will say it will be sometime this spring or summer. When I get closer I will let you know. Until then, here is the cover!
Well, it is time for bed. Have a wonderful evening and a great rest of the week. It’s almost Friday!! 😀
Winter is upon us. Everything in the garden is asleep. Or at least they are suppose to be. Even though it has been cold here, the weeds are doing just fine. I finally had the chance to do my fall cleaning and ended up weeding. But I digress.
The one thing, at least for me, that is year round is cleaning out the gutters. I love fir, pine and cedar trees. They are beautiful and stay green all year round. I hate their needles. They get everywhere! On one side of our house they are close to the house, so the gutters fill up quite quickly. The way our gutters are set up is they drain down into corrugated tubing that hooks each drain into one tube that then takes the rain water out to the ditch by the street. About a year ago the corner drain clogged up so badly that I had to dig the tubing out and replace it because all 5ft of it was clogged. It wasn’t easy. That part of the yard was covered in years worth of gravel and is where we store our boat in the summer. So it was pretty compacted.
I now have another drain that is clogged. I was hoping all I had to do was clean out at the base of the drain pipe that goes into the tubing, but no such luck. So today I spent a couple of hours digging. Where this isn’t hard compact dirt, it does have a few obstacles. Like the very thick pad from the old heat-pump, a small privacy fence and the garage side door cement pad. It also has the roots of those damn trees. As of now I have it somewhat dug out. I have yet to find the end where it hooks into the main pipe and it worries me because the tube is going deeper and I am right next to the fence.
As you can see there are a lot of roots. A couple of big ones run across the top of the tubing (which I swear it’s in there but the dirt keeps covering it up) and I’m hesitant to cut them. The tree I think they are attached to is rather big and I don’t want to compromise it. If it fell on my house it would hurt it. 😦
I have also been strongly reminded by my body that I am no long 20. That digging a trench is not something I can do in a couple of hours. So this is as far as I got today. Tomorrow, if I can move I will go back out and try again. I know I am close to where the connection is. I just want to get this one done and hope that the clog goes no further. Digging out the entire system is not something I really want to do.
As for the other… let’s see, 1,2,3….5, I hope they will wait until summer when it’s warmer outside and I have more time to spend playing in the yard.
For me the holidays end the day after Christmas. Two months of shopping, eating, parties and I can finally breathe a sigh of relief. Don’t get me wrong. I love the holidays! But as with eating turkey, at the end I am good until next November. Since the kids have grown we don’t do a whole lot for New Years. Usually sit in and watch it on T.V. and that is fine by me. I’m not big into freeze my patootie off for hours to see lights in the air. Now all that is left is putting the decorations and tree away. I’ll give it a couple of more days though.
So the new year begins and most everyone makes their new years resolution to have something done by the end of the year. I’ve done this many times, and not once have I manage to keep it. So now I all I want is a year full of happy memories with my family and friends. If I lose weight, yeah for me! Now for the one project I do need to work on and finish. My new novel Fated to Be book 2 of the Destiny series. Since I have this week off I am going to work on it as much as I can.
For those whose new year starts January 1st Happy New Year and may you have some semblance of peace and happiness. I know there is a lot of strife in this world of ours, but try and find something that makes you smile, no matter how small it is. It’s amazing how even the smallest spark of hope can make your day a much better day. Find it, hold onto for all its worth and maybe spread a little of it around to make someone else smile, even if it’s just for a moment in time.
To See What I See 