Saturday in the Garden | Pepper Surprise!

OUTSIDE

At the end of last year I bought a gardenia and jasmine plant and one of them bloomed!  I didn't keep the tags and can't tell them apart!  I think it was the gardenia!  It was nice and smelled pretty.

I have had no luck growing milkweed at home, because of the oft whined about fact that my yard is shady and any moderately sunny bits have food plants growing.  My work place has LOTS of milkweed though and I came across this fellow on Friday.  A big ole Monarch butterfly caterpillar, munching away. nom, nom, nom.

Good news and bad news in the garden?  I have a pepper?!  A very odd pepper.  I don't remember that either variety I chose to plant was long and skinny like this....hmmmm.... The bad news?  My first and biggest tomatoes have blossom end rot.  This happens every year, dang it and is due to a lack of a particular mineral in the soil (calcium maybe?).  The culprit for there being a deficiency is usually a watering issue, usually not enough.  In the past, I have sucked at watering because I am lazy but I thought I was doing so well this year. :(  Back to good news!  I harvested the garlic!

GAK

It's been a short but sadly traumatic week at work.  Several people were abruptly fired and a major re-organization took place.  It was done in a manner that showed a real lack of empathy and respect and at least two of the folks that were unceremoniously laid off had 30+ years of service in an agency where the majority of employees are passionate about what they do and see it as a vocation and calling.  They are not just working for a paycheck, in other words.  Being fired is not just scary from a I just lost my job perspective but also means that this thing you care about and have devoted your life to is not valued and is going to receive at best, much less care.  In other words it's devastating.  The positions were eliminated because of budget cuts.  

Along with my sorrow for these people, is also the fear and anxiety this causes for the future.  Could this happen to me?  Is someone who has no idea what I do or what impact it has going to decide my job is non-essential because of politics essentially?  Will my decisions, instead of being motivated by what would be best for the resource I am charged with protecting, start to be colored by what is politically acceptable in the current climate?  It's a slippery slope that undermines morale, and has an insidious effect on how everything is done.  All I can do is do my best, try to hold onto my self-respect and start socking away as much money as I can in an emergency fund.  

So. How do you deal with uncertainty?

In other news, I offered Ella one of my precious few sugar snap peas and SHE GROWLED AT IT!! What sort of rabbit am I raising?

WATCHING, READING and BLOGGING

Watching 

Weirdly, I am having a similar issue with both my current TV show and one of my current books.  They both have gotten SUPER angsty in the romance department and I guess I'm just not in the mood so I'm dragging my feet with only a teeny tiny bit left to go. My lack of tolerance probably has to do with the real life drama this week has thrown at me (see above).  The TV show is the K Drama I started last week, Faith (or The Great Doctor).  I actually really like the central couple a lot, they may actually be my fave K Drama pair ever, though the rest of the show is just okay, but they have gotten so freakin' emotional.  Because she's dying of poison. Again. Pfft. #KDrama-Drama

Reading 

Finished Since the Last Time I Posted:

• Strong Poison  (Lord Peter Wimsey #6) by Dorothy L. Sayers: This one was a little disappointing for me, I'm sad to say and I think Lord Peter's grand romance is a bit of a let down but I'm guessing it picks up a bit in future books.  
• A Murder in Time by Julie McEwain:  About an FBI agent who ends up sent back in time to Regency era England, just in time for a series of gruesome murders to take place which she must solve.  Fun book though it had some problems.  
• Grace (Eventually) by Anne Lamott: Anne Lamott is a famous writer about faith from a very liberal standpoint.  This is a series of essays with no strongly discernible theme besides getting through life, while trying to be a decent human being.  It was good.

CURRENTLY READING

• Checkmate (Lymond Chronicles #6) by Dorothy Dunnett:  The last one *sobs*!  This the book I'm dragging my feet on a bit (see above) - I KNOW.  I can't believe I'm saying it.  It's one of my favorite romances of all time and this is still my favorite HF series but only 40 pages left to go and I just can't even with Lymond and his lady love.  *exasperated sigh*
• The Screaming Staircase (Lockwood & Co. #1) by Jonathan Stroud:  A middle-grade novel about ghost fighters in Britain.  
• 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!  I haven't made it too far into this yet because I'm physically reading so many things right now.  If I can just finish Checkmate...
• The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson:  YA epic fantasy that has been on my TBR for ages.  Listening to this on my phone.  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.
• 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.   

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!

• Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley: Historical fiction about a woman, stuck in a subservient home who decides to buy a traveling library. Recommended on the Get Booked podcast.
• Spoonbenders by Daryl Gregory: Multigenerational tale about a family of psychics.  Recommended on The Bibliosanctum.
• Royal Bastards by Andrew Schvarts:  As the title suggests, this is YA fantasy that features a band of friends, all bastards of the nobility. Recommended by The Book Smugglers and Mogsy at The Bibliosanctum.

On the BLOG since I last Posted:

TUESDAY:  My Favorite TV this Year
THURSDAY: REVIEW |  Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo  Absolutely adored this duology.

HAVE A RELAXING WEEK!