The Nature of Things

Hot. Dry. July.  It takes a tough plant to withstand our brutal summer heat and still manage to send out blooms. Here are a few of the survivors in my garden this July. Crape myrtles, of course. Crinums of all kinds continue blooming. These are called spider lilies for obvious reasons. These are milk and wine lilies which I've showed you before.  And these are 'Ellen Bosanquet.' Justicia 'Orange Flame.' Hamelia patens , or hummingbird bush, with a visitor who definitely isn't a hummingbird. Blue plumbago, probably my most dependable summer bloomer. Nothing seems to discourage it. Clerodendrum 'Cashmere Bouquet.' 'Coral Nymph' salvia. 'Mystic Spires' salvia. Old-fashioned 4 o'clock. Sunflowers are made for July, of course. The white cat's whiskers appears to be thriving. The crocosmia has not bloomed as plentifully as it has in the past, which probably means it is time for me to divide and move some of it.   Dwarf 'Katie' b...

Deadline by Gerry Boyle My rating: 2 of 5 stars When I met my soon-to-be husband many years ago, he was the owner of a small weekly newspaper in East Texas. He was also the publisher/editor/writer/photographer/advertising manager and probably a few other jobs that I'm leaving out. It was hard work, with a lot of pressure and little financial reward, and, as we started our family, he sold the paper and opted for jobs with daily newspapers, from the Lufkin Daily News to the Houston Post , that offered a little more security and a little bit more money. Nostalgia for those years with the weekly led me to pick out this book from among several that were recommended to me for reading, for it features the editor/writer at a weekly newspaper in rural Maine as its main character. Jack McMorrow had been an investigative journalist with The New York Times before feeling that he was being outclassed by the competition, the up-and-coming young journalists who competed to work for the Times. ...

You say you missed all six seasons of Game of Thrones and you want to know what happened? Never fear. Samuel L. Jackson has got it covered.

I'm melting...melting!!!

Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler My rating: 5 of 5 stars The retelling of classics by modern authors seems to be all the rage in the literary world these days, witness the Austen Project from which I have now read three books . This book is part of another such project, the Hogarth Shakespeare Series . It launched in 2015 and this is the third book to be released in the series. I am perhaps an even bigger fan of Anne Tyler than I am of Shakespeare - and I really do like the Bard - so the prospect of the two combined was completely irresistible to me. Anyway, I generally try to read Anne Tyler books pretty much immediately after they are published and so I pounced on this one, and, boy, am I glad I did! It's a hoot! This is a retelling of The   Taming the Shrew . There have been countless adaptations of this story of the stubborn woman who rebels against society's expectations of her. I remember well seeing the old movie, Kiss Me Kate , starring Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson, that ...

Boris Pasternak was perhaps best known for his fiction, such as Dr. Zhivago , but he was also a poet. This is one of his, a haunting and expressive poem that conjures up a picture of the "meadow-scented month July" "unkempt, untidy, absent-minded" "with summer air and thunder." July is only "a temporary guest" and with temperatures approaching 100 every day, we can be grateful for that!   July by Boris Pasternak A ghost is roaming through the building, And shadows in the attic browse; Persistently intent on mischief A goblin roams about the house. He gets into your way, he fusses, You hear his footsteps overhead, He tears the napkin off the table And creeps in slippers to the bed. With feet unwiped he rushes headlong On gusts of draught into the hall And whirls the curtain, like a dancer, Towards the ceiling, up the wall. Who is this silly mischief-maker, This phantom and this double-face? He is our guest, our summer lodger, Who spends with us hi...

The Kill Artist by Daniel Silva My rating: 3 of 5 stars One of my blogger-buddies, Carmen , is a big fan of this series and my husband has recommended it to me on various occasions over the years, so I finally decided to pick it up and see what all the shouting was about. After all, the series has been very popular since this first book was published in 2001. There are many who love it, so it must have some interesting qualities to recommend it. Of course, the only way to read a series, in my opinion, is to start at the beginning, so here I sit with the first of the Gabriel Allon spy thrillers, The Kill Artist, in hand, and, overall, I did find it to be an interesting read. For those unfamiliar with the books, Daniel Silva's creation, Gabriel Allon, is a former agent with the Israeli Mossad. He left the spy service some years before this first book and settled down to become an art restorer. He was very successful at this profession and has become one of the most acclaimed restor...