Saturdays in the Garden - A visit to the Land of the Internet!

Hello All!  I'm having a brief visit back to the Land of the Internet and I'm mostly excited to catch up with what everybody has been up to.  That is to say, this post will be short and sweet then off to bloglovin to camp out and read for a while. 

OUTSIDE

I haven't been around to keep up with the garden but I was excited to see my favorite peppers were ready to pick (to the left).  This is a Round Tomato Shaped Pimento Pepper and they are the sweetest and most delicious peppers.  I started growing pimentos because I wanted to pickle them and make pimento cheese but as things go I've never harvested enough.  It's fine though because they are one of the best eaten raw peppers I've ever had.  I usually only get 5 or so total peppers from 4 plants and I'm not sure if the low productivity is because of my crappy conditions or if they are just low production plants.  However, they are definitely worth it! 

LIFE

I'm back in the land of the internet in order to help with a Monarch tagging event at a nearby natural area.  As you may know, a vast majority of the Monarchs in the U.S. migrate every fall down to one mountain top in central Mexico.  Researchers at Monarch Watch monitor this phenomenon and the Monarch populations partially through a tagging project.  Basically you catch migrating Monarchs and put a sticker on their hindwing with a unique number.  Anybody can do this and I highly recommend it, especially if you have kids interested in nature.  Monarchs are really easy to handle and tag and your kids learn science-y stuff while burning off a bunch of energy running around with nets:0).  You can buy a tagging kit (it's a non-profit organization) and learn more about it on the Monarch Watch website linked above. 

BOOKS AND THE BLOG

I can tell you one thing about having no TV or internet, I am getting so much reading done.  I had been working on In Cold Blood by Truman Capote but had to pause it for a bit because it wasn't setting the right tone for my stay in a lonely house in the middle of nowhere - Ha, Ha! Its been all Cozy Mysteries since then.  It's allowed me finally catch up with my reading goal for the year.  Books read:

Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch - Absolutely Fantastic!
Aunt Dimity and the Duke by Nancy Atherton - Fun, Like the more mature heroine (My Review)
Kilt Dead by Kaitlyn Dunnett - Okay but relatively charmless
A Taste for Murder by Claudia Bishop - Okay and more charming than the above
Blameless by Gail Carriger - Very funny and a pleasant surprise for me after being pretty meh about book two in this series.

It's been a veritable cozy-palooza and I've enjoyed it immensely even when the books were so so.  They are hitting the correct spot at the moment.

On the blog I do hope to get some reviews posted before disappearing back into the wilds but it is only a short stay in civilization.

What kind of books have you been burning through in the last couple weeks?