Squirrels Love to Waste Tomatoes

Here is the lineup of tomatoes I'm saving from the squirrels. As you can see, a few have been molested, but I'm trying to save them. The one under the plastic bowl is in intensive care, due to fruit flies attacking the bite marks. The one just beyond that also has bite marks, but they've closed over. These will be ok for cooking, if they can get ripe before they get rotten!

It so maddening to find a good tomato on the ground in my garden with just one bite taken! The squirrels have been terrible about that this year. For every two good tomatoes, the squirrels have had their way with one. I'm feeling murderous.

The Gift of Reading

The other day at the library, I had just checked out two books that were begging me to take them home when it struck me (again) how happy I was to enjoy reading so much. It has been a continuing joy to be able to hear people's stories - from their experience and from their imagination.

The two books (which haven't made it on to my sidebar yet) are both novels about California, and they couldn't be more different! One is Donald Duk by Frank Chin - about a 12-yr.-old in a California Chinatown somewhere who hates his name and being Chinese. The other is The Nowhere City by Alison Lurie - about a young couple who move to LA because of the husband's job transfer. He loves the unpretentiousness and freshness of California, while she hates the lax standards for behavior there. It will be interesting to see if the ideas about California from a book written in 1966 still hold true now.

I hope I never stop feeling excited about getting a new book. Set me on an ice floe if I do.

Miscellaneous Interesting New Websites

Spreety.com lists all the sites for watching FREE online TV! This includes PBS and lots of other commercial stuff. Haven't tried it yet, but it *sounds* good. Librarians love good organizers like this. Somebody let me know what you think!

Wordle.net is pretty useful - and fun! Take the characteristics of someone you know and love, then create a poster/birthday card/?? using all the words arranged in a word cloud with artsy colors, etc. You have to go to the Website to see what I mean. Again, I didn't try it myself yet, but I saw one that my cubicle partner did - really nice!

Another Great Read

Just finished All Other Nights by Dara Horn (her 3rd book so far). What a wonderful story! I've told at least 4 people about it already because I want them to read it asap. As I said in my sidebar, this is about a young Jewish man living in New York at the time of the Civil War. He escapes an arranged marriage with a simpleton girl by joining the Union army. When it becomes known that he is related to a New Orleans man who is plotting against Pres. Lincoln, he is smuggled behind the lines to kill his uncle on Passover night.

That part was thrilling enough, but it was only the beginning. His next assignment is to marry one of four sisters in a Jewish family from Virginia to find out which of them is a Rebel spy ringleader.

It turns out that the author did research on the history of American Jews during the Civil War and came up with material for some utterly fantastic plot twists. A tragic thriller that's a very satisfying read.

Peas - Too Much Work

Yesterday I finally got the last plump pea pods from my garden. Time to rip out the plants.


I had been saving the pods until I got all of them or had enough to make a decent side dish for dinner - whichever came first.


Here are the measly results: about a cup and a half of various sizes of peas. That means you have to cook them in stages. The biggest ones cook first, then you add the mediums, then the teeny ones.


Next, the pods go into the food processor for compost material.


I like this picture with the steam rising from the just cooked peas! They're very good when you eat them, but IMHO it's very hard to tell them from frozen peas from the supermarket. This may be my last year for them. I could grow more plants next year, but they would use up too much garden space and only give me one crop. Off with their heads.

Addicted to this Map Quiz!

As I get ready to teach a class on Websites for maps and directions, I came across The Traveler IQ Challenge from TravelPod. I started trying it out myself (on North America, of course), and I was doing so well that I kept going on and on to the next level to see if I could keep it up. It was so much fun that I forgot about the time. Nothing like getting paid to enjoy yourself!

If you want to try it yourself, know that there are 13 different areas for the quiz and each one has several levels of difficulty. Be prepared to get sucked in!

Google Squared - I like it!

Have you seen the latest from Google? I just tried out Google Squared to get a handy list of vegetarian restaurants in Chicago - easy to read and compare addresses, features, etc. There's a handy Help Screen to explain it all. This might be useful for lots of stuff. Let's see.......