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The Gory Details
Aug. 16th, 2011
04:01 pm - "Name that photo" answer:
This is the source of my "what is it?" mystery picture: burnt sugar! 
It started out as a pan of sugar syrup meant for the hummingbird feeders (1 part sugar to 4 parts water), which I usually simmer for 5 minutes or so. But this time I forgot to set the kitchen timer, and it wasn't until the house began to fill with smoke that I realized something was wrong! The burnt syrup was overflowing the pan like Caltiki the Immortal Monster, bubbling and seething and smoking... (The pan may never be the same - though I have another pan that suffered the same fate a few years back, and which, after much scrubbing, has almost returned to normal, so perhaps there's still hope.)
While the bubbling blackened sugar-syrup was actually rather dramatically beautiful to look at, it was also a reminder of why I've taken to thinking of my kitchen timer as my Most Valued Appliance - without it, odds are fair that I'd have burned the house down before now. I'm so used to setting it whenever I put anything on the stove that I still can't understand how I missed it this time, but perhaps I was due another little object lesson in kitchen safety!
embarrassedAug. 15th, 2011
08:43 pm - Today's harvest - more veggies, more colors!
I got a nice little harvest today, clipping veggies in the rain. 
(Roughly) clockwise from the top: jalapeno, "Sweet Chocolate" sweet pepper, "Great White" tomato, cucumber, orange pepper, green peppers (had to harvest them green because a stem broke, otherwise they'd have grown up to be the chocolate or orange types), "Calliope" eggplant, and two "Sweet Lavender" eggplants. Most of it went into a stovetop ratatouille tonight (yum!), with the orange pepper waiting for tomorrow - I plan to make some hummus and dip the pepper in it.
hungry03:08 pm - Name that photo:
Anyone care to guess what this picture shows? I'll post the answer tomorrow, along with the reason why the picture exists at all {wry grin}. [If you click on the photo, the Flickr entry has a hint.]
Aug. 11th, 2011
06:07 pm - Plants showing off, plants digesting...
This is what I saw when I looked outside this morning:
The poor little garden shed is almost completely covered by rampant vines, with the trumpet vine winning, and the morning glories offering a handsome contrast. It was a glorious day, too, breezy and bright and not too hot - I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of similar days this summer, alas! But I was glad to get this one, and spent some happy time in the hammock enjoying it.
One of the indoor plants managed to do a little hunting on its own; check out my Venus flytrap:
[You might have to click through to the larger image to see the fly-shaped shadow inside the uppermost flytrap, but it's definitely there.] I sometimes take the pot outside to let the plant hunt in the wild, but I hadn't done that recently, so this fly must have been nabbed indoors. Good job, Audrey 2 1/2!
Today's my ninth anniversary on BookCrossing; so many books, so much fun! I'd intended to have a stack of books ready to release for the occasion, and to try to set a personal mass-release record of some sort... But, alas, I kept putting off the part where I write up the books-to-be-released in favor of going shopping for more books (ahem), so I don't know if I'll manage any releases today at all. I'm taking a brief road trip this weekend, though, so I hope to strew a few books across several states in the process...
cheerfulAug. 9th, 2011
07:31 pm - More veggies
Note the green-and-purple theme of the eggplant, okra, pepper, and even the cherry tomatoes (a variety called "Black Cherry"). I do have some veggies that are neither green nor purple, including tomatoes in white and peach and some "Bright Lights" Swiss chard in white, yellow, orange, and red - but those are all taking their sweet time to ripen.
If the weather cooperates tomorrow (and if I don't get distracted) I may try to get some pics of my poor overgrown yard and neglected house, just to counteract the "aren't they pretty?" veggie pics.
okayAug. 7th, 2011
10:25 pm - Eggplant season
Between my sprained ankle and the frequent and prolonged heat waves this summer, I have done little if any yardwork beyond sticking a few seedlings into planters. My shed is completely overgrown with vines, the trees need pruning, the shrubs in front of the house are beginning to cover the windows, the neighbors probably all hate me {wry grin}... I'm actually considering hiring someone to come help with the heavier work, just to make the place look more like someone actually lives here. 
BUT: those few seedlings that I plunked into planters are doing very, very well, and I now have a near-continuous harvest of eggplant, with sweet peppers and jalapenos coming along. (And some cherry tomatoes and a few okra plants, but the eggplants are the real stars this year.) I'm totally spoiled by having fresh, tender young eggplant on hand whenever I want it. If I bothered to total up the cost of the planters, the potting soil, fertilizer, seedlings, etc., each fruit would probably be ridiculously expensive, but I love having fresh edibles growing right outside my back door.
hungryJul. 26th, 2011
09:56 pm - Thoroughly amateur photography
This is my Michael Thomas Ford entry for the first ‘Nathan Burgoine giveaway:
n8an.livejournal.com/718827.html
I've enjoyed Ford's novels and short stories, but my favorites of his works are his books of essays, including Alec Baldwin Doesn't Love Me - a copy of which forms the big dark space at the right of the photo {wry grin}. (See my comments on a BookCrossing copy of the book here.) The book's sitting in my front window, with a goldfinch and a hummingbird at the feeders; the birds have been showing off so much lately that I had to try and get a picture.
[If you click on the photo to get to Flickr, you can see the notes I've added to show where the birds are - they show up better than I thought they would, but are still barely visible on the smaller image. Maybe someday I'll (a) work out how to get better wildlife pics with my little camera and (b) wash the windows!]
artisticJul. 21st, 2011
07:50 pm - N8an's giveaway inspired me to reappear...
I hadn't realized how long it's been since I posted last! Anyway, I’ve just entered the first ‘Nathan Burgoine giveaway (see the info here: http://n8an.livejournal.com/718827.h
That's my cat Spike, with a copy of Lawrence Schimel's anthology His Tongue. I've enjoyed many of Schimel's stories, but haven't read this collection yet; I was hoping to get the cat to stick her tongue out but she was, catlike, unwilling to cooperate!
And: 
I enjoyed Masters of Midnight - click the link to see my BookCrossing comments - and my favorite story was Jeff Mann's "Devoured", with a Appalachian leather-bear vampire. So he's my entry for this one. The book appears with the first eggplant from my garden this season - which, to my vast surprise, is sporting an erection!
So that's two entries; not sure if I can manage more, as I've passed along most of the other qualifying books I've read. But we'll see! [I'd be happy with any of the offers, should I win one, but I admit that Blood Sacraments and Riding the Rails are especially intriguing...]
Oh, and just to add my two cents to the cat/dog question, here are links to my BookCrossing entries for a couple of very cute mangas:
Chi's Sweet Home Vol. 1, a very cute look at the life of a stray kitten who adopts a new family - funny and yet (mostly) within the bounds of real-life cat behavior. (I laughed a LOT.)
Inubaka Vol. 1: the title means "crazy for dogs", referring to the heroine, but the series as a whole could be considered the same. (I'm not that much of a dog person but the books make *me* want one!) The stories are amusing (and sometimes heartbreaking), and there's a surprising amount of helpful info about how to select, raise, and care for dogs. Recommend for anyone who might be thinking of getting one someday... {whistling nonchalantly}
hopefulJul. 8th, 2009
10:53 pm - I caught a mouse yesterday.
Tempting as it is to post just that, I can't stop there {grin}. What happened was, on Sunday night my huntress-cat Drusilla stayed out much later than usual, probably because my sister and nephews were visiting. I made one last attempt to get her to come in at about midnight, and when she zipped in the door I didn't notice that she had a mouse in her mouth - until she dropped it and it scooted under the refrigerator. I didn't want to wake up the house with a midnight mouse-hunt, so I let it go, figuring that either the cat would find it first or I could do some furniture-moving after my family went home.
Well, they left on Monday, and Iforgot about the mouse - until last night, when I saw Drusilla on point in front of the linen closet door. Cleverly deducing that she'd cornered the mouse, I gathered my critter-hunting gear - gloves to protect me from those small-but-sharp teeth, and a cardboard box to block off the closet opening - I went a-hunting. When I opened the door I could see the mouse skittering away over the vacuum cleaner (and the dust mop, and the spare rolls of toilet paper, and the containers of shower-and-tub cleaner, and all the other junk that accumulates in the bottom of the linen closet), so I started pulling things out one by one until I finally cornered the critter. Cute little deer-mouse, very lively after its adventure. I took it outside and turned it loose in the grass, and can only hope that it made its way home, though I fear it is the lot of mice to be dinner for something or other.
It's a shame that the mouse had to spend those particular days indoors; I think those were the only rain-free days we've had all summer. Somehow it cleared up while my family was visiting - a good thing, that; we got to see a baseball game and the town fireworks display and all. But once they left, another band of thunderstorms came through, so Mr-or-Ms-Mouse had to make its way in a soggy world...
accomplishedJul. 1st, 2009
11:19 pm - Random hit-and-run LJ post
I keep meaning to post things and then putting it off until they're no longer current; gotta work on that!
This evening I was pleasantly buzzed on a margarita (2 parts Cuervo Gold, 1 part Triple Sec, 2 parts Rose's Lime Juice, salt on the rim) and was frittering away my time watching TV. I saw the first half of Clean House's "Messiest House" episode - I like "Clean House" because watching other people's disastrous levels of clutter make my own look positively tidy by comparison - and was vastly amused at one scene in which Trish ("the yard-sale diva") examined a bowl of kitschy decorations - and made a cute little coughing-up-hairball face that made me laugh out loud. Switched away from the second half of the episode to watch Fashion Show, a kind of poor-man's-Project-Runway (I'm not into fashion at all but it's fun to watch people trying to create things under a deadline), and in this episode the challenge was to design on a a Tarot-card theme. They didn't go nearly as wild as I would have, Tarot cards being what they are, but it was still rather amusing.
Recent BookCrossing activity: I released a copy of Zenna Henderson's Pilgrimage in memory of Bumma; started a book ray for Gritty Grace, my Dad's first book (a collection of columns he wrote for his local paper), and was surprised to find a book about how to write poetry that was informative, hilarious, and snarky - Stephen Fry's The Ode Less Travelled.
Garden stuff: It's been too wet to do much outside; I replaced my tattered old hammock with a nice new one, and have only been able to spend ONE afternoon in it. The slugs are so numerous that half of my seedlings haven't survived, and the plants that have survived are either drooping under the weight of the rain or are just sitting there waiting for some sunshine. [The strawberries seem to love this weather; alas, the slugs seem to love the strawberries.]
And, for the first time that I can recall, I had to turn the heat on - in July. If it was this clammy and dank in medieval England, those Arthurian romances suddenly take on a very different ambiance...
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