The Nature of Things

City of Bones by Michael Connelly My rating: 4 of 5 stars My husband and I recently watched the Amazon series Bosch based on Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch books. I thought it was excellent and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys that sort of thing. The story told in City of Bones was one of the ones that was dramatized for the television series, but there were differences between what appeared on screen and Connelly's written version. I think I like the book better, although the dramatization was interesting also. The story begins on New Year's Day when a dog returns to his owner, while they are walking in the Hollywood Hills, carrying a bone he has dug up. His owner is a retired doctor and he recognizes the bone as the humerus of a child. He contacts the police and Harry Bosch, working the holiday, takes the call. Harry goes to the area and begins the search for other bones. He finds them pretty easily. They are scattered over an area up in the hills. It looks l...

My beloved Houston Astros are having a good season this year. They are presently leading the Western Division of the American League and they have done for much of the season. They have some very exciting young players who play the game with the abandon and joy of Little Leaguers. They are great fun to watch. That hasn't been true in recent years. In fact, we fans have suffered through several years of below par baseball when our Astros had the worst record in the Major Leagues. 2015 is our reward for staying with them in all those years. All that being said, I do have some empathy for the plight of Phillies fans this year. Their favorite team has fallen from the great height they achieved in 2008. This year they, too, have played like Little Leaguers but not in a good way. They haven't had much joy.  In fact, there is no joy in Mudville...er...Philadelphia these days. Their season has turned into a horror movie.  

In 1938, Langston Hughes wrote this poem which was influenced by the reality of life under Jim Crow laws for people of color in this country. Sadly, the words of the poem still seem quite current here in the 21st century. I am particularly struck, though, by the hope and dream expressed in the last several lines of the poem beginning with "But the day will come-"  The yearned-for day still hasn't arrived, but we continue to look forward to its coming. Kids Who Die by Langston Hughes This is for the kids who die, Black and white, For kids will die certainly. The old and rich will live on awhile, As always, Eating blood and gold, Letting kids die. Kids will die in the swamps of Mississippi Organizing sharecroppers Kids will die in the streets of Chicago Organizing workers Kids will die in the orange groves of California Telling others to get together Whites and Filipinos, Negroes and Mexicans, All kinds of kids will die Who don’t believe in lies, and bribes, and contentment...

All that lovely rain that we got during the first five months of the year is now only a distant memory. Since the beginning of June, things have gotten much drier in my zone 9a garden here in Southeast Texas, and since the beginning of July, we have been positively parched. Combine that with the triple digit (Fahrenheit) temperatures that we've had most days in August and you will find a garden that is struggling to survive. My plants don't have much energy left over just now to produce blooms.  Still, there are a few plants that soldier on without regard to heat, drought, or whatever else Nature might send their way. Hamelia, for example. It blooms from summer right through fall, providing nectar for the migrating hummingbirds, and it is not fazed by heat and drought.  Neither is Anisacanthus wrightii, another mostly fall bloomer that is a favorite with hummingbirds, butterflies, and bees.  Crape myrtles, of course, fairly relish our hot, humid weather. This is an old tr...

A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment : A Royal Tern basks in the sun on a beach in Galveston. *~*~*~* In Colorado this week, we saw an attempt to clean up a mess that went horribly wrong. EPA workers were attempting to clean up a mine where the ceiling had fallen creating a kind of dam that was backing up water. In attempting to plug the mine and keep contaminated water inside, the workers accidentally breached the dam causing the contaminated water to instead flow into the Animas River . The river has been closed to humans for public health reasons, but no one yet knows how it will affect all the animals that depend upon it for life-saving water.  *~*~*~* The El Niño weather pattern currently building in the Pacific could turn out to be the most powerful one on record , bringing record-breaking heat but also plentiful rain to the western part of the country. *~*~*~* Drones invade the airspace of territorial birds at their peril. This was proved again in Austr...

The Case Has Altered by Martha Grimes My rating: 4 of 5 stars When it comes to light summer reading, perfect for sweltering days spent in air-conditioned comfort in one's favorite chair, it's hard to beat one of Martha Grimes' Richard Jury mysteries. She's up to her usual standard in The Case Has Altered although there were one or two things that annoyed me. But I'll get to those in a moment. In this fourteenth entry in the series, the mystery involves the murder of two women. One was a guest at a country home of local gentry in the isolated fens. She was the ex-wife of the owner of the estate and a thoroughly self-centered and evil person who was disliked by everyone who knew her. Plenty of possible suspects for her murder. The second victim, killed a few days after the first, was a barmaid at the pub called "The Case Has Altered" who also worked part time in the kitchen and as a sometimes maid at the estate. She seemed to be a thoroughly inoffensive pe...