Don't Be Afraid of the Dork: SATURDAY in the GARDEN

I like to garden and generally putter around in my yard and my Saturday in the Garden posts serves as my pseudo- garden journal, plus a round-up of my week in reading, watching and blogging. Occasionally, I'll whine, rant or gush about something in a GAK section.

OUTSIDE

You may have heard before that prairie/prairie plants are fantastic at holding soil, preventing erosion, loss of topsoil and improving water quality by keeping the soil out of streams, rivers, lakes and ponds. This is why:

Holy roots, batman! Prairie plants have prodigious root systems! That little squiggle on the far left is Kentucky Bluegrass, the most popular lawn grass. Buffalo grass is a prairie grass often suggested for lawns because it stays quite short, like Kentucky blue, but it's root system does not - it's the plant on the far right. One of my favorite prairie plants has one of the longest root systems and it is having a spectacular year in Iowa this summer. It's Compass Plant (Silphium laciniatum) and is 5th from the left in the diagram above.

It's tall, has a bright sunflower like bloom and staghorn shaped foliage. They make me happy everytime I see them looming over the prairie at work or in the prairie roadsides. Definitely a plant I will try to establish if I ever have a sunny yard, though I will need to be patient - Compass Plants take a few years to mature to the point of looking like the above but once they do each plant can persist up to a hundred years! Now that's a perennial. By the way they are called compass plants because their leaves tend to orient in a north-south direction so also useful for navigation in case my yard is so large or I get so dotty that I get lost easily:).

In my vegetable garden, I am excited, as I often am, about root vegetables. I am actually, for real, getting some edible beets for the first time, ever! They aren't huge but I have 5 at the moment that are of a size I can cook and eat. Wow. I gotta get excited by the little things.

Yum!

WATCHING, READING and BLOGGING

Watching

I finished the K Drama I was watching, Faith - it was okay but not one of my favorites.

I started watching some episodes of Shetland on Netflix which Greg at A Book Haven brought to my attention. This is a British crime drama set in the Shetland islands. Doug Henshall is the lead actor who I last saw chasing dinosaurs, and looking, quite frankly, awkward about it, in Primeval. He is a much better fit here.

Reading

Finished Since the Last Time I Posted:

Checkmate (Lymond Chronicles #6) by Dorothy Dunnett: The last one *sobs*!
The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson: YA epic fantasy that has been on my TBR for ages. It's pretty good though I do agree that the body image/eating disorder stuff is a little on the sketchy side which was the main complaint I heard about it going in. Overall, though I found it to be mostly kind of generic so not sure what the buzz about it was? It's fine, just nothing special in my book.
The Screaming Staircase (Lockwood & Co. #1) by Jonathan Stroud: A middle-grade novel about ghost fighters in Britain. This book is great - gave me some Jackaby feels. Will be continuing with this series.

CURRENTLY READING

Intuitive Eating by Tribole and Resch: Non-fiction about eating psychology and biology. I've been dipping in and out of it for the last few months!
The Demon King by Cinda Williams Chima: Epic YA fantasy that sounds super duper amazing! Starting to make some headway on this one though I am having a little bit of trouble engaging. Problem isn't the book, I don't think, but the fact that my mood right now is for mysteries.
Career of Evil (Cormoran Strike #3)by Robert Galbraith: Listening to in the car. I think Robin may be a target in this one (to get at Strike) and I am not sure I feel good about this? But so far liking it.
A Perilous Undertaking (Veronica Speedwell #2) by Deanna Raybourn: A mystery set in the Victorian Era in Britain, featuring a pair of Natural Historians as the amateur sleuths. Book one was one of my favorite reads during the first half of the year.

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!

Merivel: A Man of his Time by Rose Tremain: This was on sale on Kindle and it looked like an intriguing Historical Fiction novel about Robert Merivel, who was a courtier to Charles the II during the Restoration period in England. He apparently made an appearance in one of Tremain's earlier novels as a side character.
They Found Him Dead by Georgette Heyer: Got this through Audible's sale this week. I love Heyer's mysteries almost as much as her Regency Romaances. Almost.
Berkley Street by Ron Ripley: This was free on Kindle though I found it through the Audible sale. It sounds like a mystery but more on the horror/suspense side?
A Useful Woman by Darcie Wilde: Another through the Audible sale. This is a mystery with a female sleuth, set in Regency Era England. Yay!
Heart's Blood by Juliet Marillier: A retelling of Beauty and the Beast by one of the masters of fairy tale re-telling. Recommended by Fine Print.
Time and Time Again by Ben Elton: An interesting looking time travel novel recommended by Mogsy at The Bibliosanctum.
The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter by Theodora Goss: Also recommended by Mogsy at The Bibliosanctum. This is a YA novel that features a gang of some of the daughters of historic "monsters" (such as Dr. Jekyll, and Dr. Frankenstein).
All System's Red by Martha Wells: A science fiction novel about a "murder bot" who achieves sentience and independence. Recommended by Greg at A Book Haven.
Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner: I've never read anything by Ellen Kushner and since I recently read an article about how she is one of the authors that is a huge fan of Dorothy Dunnett, I decided I need to. This one was recommended by my favorite podcast, Get Booked.