Month: June 2023

Sublime

Having a fruitful lemon tree is sublime and the thought of having a fruitful lime tree even more so. It has the special taste important to a margarita and a mojito. Unfortunately, my lime tree is looking decidedly subpar. It was planted in 2019 when the vegetable garden was extended into the lawn. I carefully removed any fruit for the first year to let the roots establish. In subsequent years, it has never had more than six limes and it has remained small.

This year, there were quite a few limes but they began to drop off when quite small. Then the leaves began to turn yellow and to drop. I had fed it as usual, so gave it epsom salts as a boost, but it did not improve. The garden centre people thought it might have been over-watered. That’s possible, as I often tossed a bucket of water on it after cleaning up after the chooks and water from the garden sprinkler does tend to run down into that corner. We have also had a lot of rain.

On Friday, I called in at a very nice garden centre – just to look – and came away with a new lime tree, a large pot (half price) and potting mix. I put stones and bark at the bottom of the pot to ensure good drainage. My thinking is that a pot might prove more successful. I also dug up the old lime tree, made a new hole, filled it with stones for drainage, then potting mix and replanted it just in case it might recover.

Today, I bought some companion plants and put them around the new lime tree in its pot. There’s alyssum, silver thyme and dill. It looks sublime. Fingers crossed.

Who rules the roost?

On this dreary, drizzly Winter Solstice day, Vera is keen to come inside. Sorry, Vera, no such luck.

Meantime, Felix – who can choose inside or out – has taken up residence in the warm, dry henhouse.

Later, Felix finds another spot to ‘roost’.

This makes reading the paper problematic and lunch has to be fetched by someone else…

Who does rule the roost?

Booked!

Not so light and flighty on closer inspection

It’s like being a kid again, coming home from the library with an armful of books. All of these are by authors I’ve been following. Some are the latest in a series.

Privilege in Perpetuity is perhaps the odd one out. It is one of the small texts I have been reading published by Bridget Williams Books. Fragments of a Disputed Past by Joanna Kidman et al, The Inequality Debate by Max Rushbrook, and Marilyn Waring’s Still Counting (which I read twice in the last two weeks) are some of these. All are about issues affecting New Zealand society.

Behind these choices of books is my decision to stop attending our new-format book group. Instead of an enjoyable meeting of friends to discuss literary fiction and non fiction, the hosting bookshop has turned it into a ticketed event which, after attending three times, I find has lost its spark.

Now it’s time to read for sheer enjoyment. Which isn’t to say you don’t learn something worthwhile from ‘lighter’ fiction, such as the Richard Osman Thursday Murder Club series. The author seems to have found his stride in the third book which I have just finished reading. The characters are sympathetically drawn and given a voice through the alternating points of view. Various levels of criminal offending and moral choices are ‘played with’ but never heavy-handed and there’s plenty of humour to entertain the reader.

Some books just let you be a passive reader and I don’t enjoy those very much – but, for sure, they have their place – balm for the troubled soul as Stephen Fry described the books of P.G. Wodehouse. On the other hand, books from which you learn about a culture or a time in history or consider a different experience or philosophy, invite you to be an active reader.

Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series plunges you into suburban New Jersey and reminds me of my social anthropology studies at university. Yes, I know she’s a popular fiction machine, but there’s a good reason for her popularity. It’s fun. The ancient Roman settings of the books of classics scholar Lindsey Davis are better than a time machine – everything is translated for one thing! Vaseem Khan’s Malabar House historic fiction series also takes you to a different place and time and, like Sujata Massey’s Indian books, into the lives of Zoroastrian Parsi, who first migrated from Persia around the 8th century. Graham Norton’s intense interest in people is clear on his television show and is very much present and enjoyable in his fiction. I’ve written about Denise Mina’s book Conviction in a recent post and I’m looking forward to another edge-of-the-seat adventure in Confidence. Deanna Raybourn’s Victorian series featuring detective Veronica Speedwell has entertained me from time to time, but Killers of a Certain Age is a one-off about four retired hit-women who get together to save their own lives when the tables are turned.

So, which book to read first? I can’t wait to get started!

Continue reading “Booked!” →

Humans and other animals

Somehow, I felt compelled to buy this pillow case yesterday. Why was that?

I heard someone explain once that the ‘dominion’ given to humans over animals after we were expelled from the garden of Eden was mistranslated. It should be ‘guardianship’. Well, we know that now to our cost.

Guardianship is how I see my part in Felix’s life. I’ve not managed to keep him inside for the first 10 months, as the vet advised. I haven’t even kept him inside at night. Consequently, I had a sleepless night when I couldn’t locate him after hearing a fight-to-the-death cat fight in the distance.

I suspect he was a spectator rather than a participant, as he appeared in the morning, unscathed.

He brought a mouse into the house on Thursday night and proceeded to lose it under my bed. I opened the french doors so it could escape, but it chose to run further into the house. It sat under a side table in the living room for a while before I was able to get it to the front door – only to be greeted by Felix, and I thought we’d have to go through the whole saga again. Fortunately, not. The mouse lives to face another day, like the bird I rescued from Felix a couple of months ago. In that case, I applied a choke-hold on Felix until he let go. I had seen this technique used successfully by the owner of an American pit bull which had my border terrier in its vice-like jaws.

Animals just do what they do, as an interview on the radio this morning revealed. Human animals, with the double-edged sword of ‘superior intelligence’ tend to overthink everything. The ability to catastrophize is perhaps the worst thing, in my experience, certainly when we have animals in our care. But, as the photo shows, Felix just takes life as it comes, and it looks pretty good to him.

Edge-of-the-seat thriller

What a great way to spend a winter Sunday! This book is one of those absorbing, fast-paced stories which blocks everything else out. It races about all over western Europe pretty much, revealing more and more surprising details about the characters as they encounter increasingly hair-raising situations.

I was first aware of Denise Mina as a presenter of a documentary about Coleridge and Wordsworth and, later, one about Boswell and Johnson. She and Frank Skinner visited the places travelled by the writers, Mina always distinguishable by her shock of silver hair, fingerless gloves and boofy skirts: out at the hips and in below the knees – and her Scottish accent. Researching her for this, I found she has done far more than those two docos and has written at least 15 books.

After I discovered she was a writer of crime fiction, I looked for her books in the library. It was difficult to get the first of each of her series, so I opted for this stand-alone novel (borrowed as an ebook) and am pleased I did. I’ve placed a hold on the next one: Confidence. Can’t wait.