Saturday in the Garden | Butterflies in April!

OUTSIDE

It's a gray Sunday morning (the photo above was from yesterday) which is actually kind of nice.  It seems more peaceful than a normal morning.  The dog park in our town is ridiculously scenic and I was noticing that the trees are finally starting to leaf out after they had become kind of frozen in time by the recent cold snap.

This last week brought a surprise with a good number of butterfly sightings.  In April! The only butterflies we usually see this early on are those that overwinter as adults like Mourning Cloaks and Question Marks.  This year I've already seen quite a few sulphurs, cabbage whites and red admirals.  No pictures of any of them of course:(.

I've been super duper lazy about the garden this year.  I haven't really done anything to  clean up the yard, prepare beds or plant much of anything.  I've got kale, chard and green onion seedlings that could go in and lettuce and carrot seeds that should really be sowed.  I usually do most of my garden work on the weekends and I've had to work a lot and had social things going on each weekend so whenever I get a weekend totally free I just want to nest.   #weekendgardenerproblems

LIFE

TWOP! TWOP is coming back!  What the hell is TWOP?  Television Without Pity was my absolute favorite place on the web when I was feeling particularly obsessive about a TV show.  It featured hilarious, snarky, well-written recaps of  episodes and well moderated forums for discussion (on which I mostly just lurked).  It was closed down by its corporate owner a couple of years ago but I got a note in my facebook feed this week that it is coming back!!  Very excited to see what they do with it!


So I get really frustrated with myself when I don't post regularly on the blog especially since I compose at least 5 posts a week.  The problem is that most of this composing happens in the car.  I have to be on the road a fair amount for my job and this week I had 7 hours in the car during which I wrote several blog posts in my head.  I want the technology that translates this into digital written words which I know exists at least at some level.  Okay I know there is nothing that could turn my thoughts into text but there are talk-to-text programs.  Do any of you all use anything like this?  I need to get my multi-tasking on!

WATCHING, READING and BLOGGING

Watching 

Oh man.  I have descended into quite the obsession this week.  It all started with a review of Cress (by Marissa Meyer) on the Story and Somnomancy blog.   The review compares Cress with Felicity Smoak from Arrow, the superhero show on the CW based on the Green Arrow comic books.  I had actually tried watching the show once and only got through the first episode and a half before turning it off in boredom.  However, I was intrigued by the comparison of this character on the show to Cress because I love Cress and became even more intrigued when I read up on the show and found out that this goof ball computer geek, actually becomes the main love interest on the show :o!   So that's where I've been this week :/.  I will likely finish all three seasons that were on Netflix today because I have been sucking down episodes like nobody's business.  It's a lot of fun and I would go so far as to say that Oliver (the Green Arrow) has more than a few characteristics in common with our delightful Captain Thorne.  So live action Cress romance?  I'm way into it!

Reading

I was making progress on catching up with my Goodreads Challenge and then Arrow happened.  I got very little reading done this week, sigh....

Finished Last Week: 

• A Darker Shade of Magic (Shades of Magic #1) by V.E. Schwab: I've been wanting to read this for ages. Yay me!  It totally met my expectations!

Currently Reading:

• One Magic Square by Lolo Houbein: A gardening book about maximizing food production in a small space.  An ARC from Netgalley (though I think it's an older title).   
• The Round House by Louise Erdrich:  I started this in D.C. on my kindle and it pretty immediately sucked me in despite the brutality of the subject matter (violent rape against a minority).  
• The Wicked and the Divine, Volume 1 by Kieron Gillen, Jame McKelvie, Matt Wilson, and Clayton Cowles
• The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches (Flavia DeLuce #6) by Alan Bradley: This is a fun historical mystery series that I thought had a planned end but looking and there are two more books listed.  I wouldn't mind but I'd actually like Flavia DeLuce to move forward and grow up a bit.  I'd rather she not be a perpetual 11 year old.
• Timeless (Parasol Protectorate #5) by Gail Carriger: The final book in the parasol protectorate.
• The Colonel's Lady by Laura Frantz:  This is a Christian romance novel - quite a bit out of my comfort zone but I have my reasons and I am enjoying it, mostly.   BOTH this and the next book are on hold because I was too slow and I had to return them to the library. I love the library but this aspect of it really sucks!
• A Fatal Grace (Inspector Armand Gamache #2) by Louise Penny:  This was a mystery series I discovered last year and loved.    ON HOLD

Added to the TBR:

This is a list of books that I have added to my Goodreads TBR list this week.  It helps to burn the books I want to read a little more firmly into my mind, maybe get them on some other folks TBRs and gives me a chance to recognize a lot of the awesome bloggers that add stuff to my TBR!

• Sawbones by Melissa Lenhardt:  I actually bought this one immediately after reading Mogsy's review on The Bibliosanctum because it sounds really freakin' fantastic.  Historical fiction about a lady doctor in the the late 1800s in America who heads west.  

Blogging 

On the BLOG LAST WEEK:

SUNDAY: TV | Glee - Season 4.  Some thoughts on Glee's fourth season.
TUESDAY: Top Ten Tuesday | Ten Books Every Anglophile Should Read.
THURSDAY: REVIEW | Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho.  Great book! 4 out of 5 stars.

Well I am frightfully behind on my demanding Arrow Binge Watching schedule so I'm going to sign off.  May you find entertainment to delight you today:).