Time to dig up the invasive early spring plant that I thought for years was the Oregon native Marsh Marigold. (Live and learn, thanks to my brilliant blog readers–see the discussion at the end of this post.) The celandine has been spreading voraciously, and setting up colonies in very distant beds, but the coffee break is over for this rude plant.

Like chopping wood, it warms one to dig. Too warm. Jacket tossed. Boots caked with mud. Thank heaven I didn’t have to work alone–

I took out the Lesser Celandine plants and the maybe 4 inches of soil attached to their roots. We were pretty thorough, but I’m sure some of the little root bulbs escaped and will be back, this year or next.

This is when a terrier is just so essential.

I wanted to get these plants off my property entirely. But there were four heavy, wet wheel-barrow loads like this so no.

Instead I have created a Lesser Celandine grave barrow. I will cover this hill and make certain it keeps to itself, even as I add future evil celandine sprouts to it. It will eventually become a pile of soil, but I won’t be spreading it on any garden beds. (I hope it isn’t haunted.)

Max required an immediate bath.

In related news, the havoc in the greenhouse (see previous post) was indeed perpetrated by mice. After chewing on the clematis cuttings, the next night they thoroughly dug up a whole flat of newly seeded pots–eating the seeds. I have since convinced the mice to leave (do not ask) and seeds have arrived in the mail, so today I  plant a bunch of  new stuff in the greenhouse. Yippee!

P.S. If this all seemed too destructive please go back to my therapy post, thoughtfully provided for readers’ mental and emotional renewal.

P.P.S. Kininvie is back so now he can finish the seduction scene I very generously began for him at the Uncanny Death romance novel–I mean murder mystery.

It was a Christmas gift from some years ago, carefully stored but then forgotten, purchased from a seed company called Whatcom. Their specialty is seeds from odd plants. For example, they offer seeds to grow a tree called Midnight Horror, which sounds like a late night movie but they say its seed pods (four feet long and curved down) look just like the wings of a resting vulture. Well we all want birds in our gardens don’t we.

Anyway I looked at every last item in their online catalog, and then researched every interesting looking plant to be sure it wasn’t something like Lesser Celandine (which I am just about to dig up, really I am), and I sent an order which spent all but 20 cents of the gift certificate. So stay tuned for some horticultural excitement to result from that. (And no I did not order any Midnight Horror seeds because really I don’t need more trouble.)

Then it got to be noon and I looked outside and found a lovely sunny warmish day.

It felt like early spring and so you have to go outside–you have no choice– you have to be in the garden, even if everything is just thinking about growing.

But you go out and walk around, and maybe toss a rubber ball for the terrier, maybe the orange one, and he runs and gets it a few times, then you walk around some more.

You find a few dead perennials to cut back, knowing full well you can’t blog much about THAT because you are getting an unsavory reputation for your work with sharp implements…

Then you come across a rose, and it’s Jude the Obscure (shown below in a past summer of course), and you love this rose and you carefully prune its canes and dig out a grass clump by it and then the terrier pokes his nose in and there is a yelp! and he runs off.

Soon someone calls to your attention that the terrier’s ear is bleeding from what was clearly a rose thorn attack, and it’s normally a white terrier but now there’s all this awful wet redness on his little ear and it’s still bleeding and leaving the dreadful blood color on the tips of his fur down his cheek.  And what if the thorn is still in there?!?

So you go inside and comfort  him and lightly touch his ear but don’t feel a thorn but he looks so sad and sits in your swivel desk chair with you which means he sits BEHIND you which means you have to perch on the front four inches of chair. You think of maybe giving the little wounded dog a bath, because he needed one anyway, but then that might make his ear hurt worse, and it only just quit bleeding. So you wait and eventually you and he both go back outside but every time you look at him and see the blood on his fur you feel terrible…

You go into the greenhouse later, with lists and boxes of seeds and you prop open the door and the window because the maple tree still has no leaves and so the sun is making it HOT in there.

You notice that the petunias have sprouted.

Lots of people are negative about petunias. I felt that way too once. Likely because petunias–and geraniums–were almost the only plants my mother ever grew when I was a child. She bought them at a nursery every year and planted them in planters in front of our house, like in the blurry picture here. (You can see I thought they were kind of a joke.)

But then, a couple years ago, I bought seeds for a very pastel, soft pink petunia, single and simple, and I grew them carefully and they were nice. Then I bought blue. And now I just collect seeds each summer and grow my own big sturdy pale pink and blue-that-is-really-purple flowered plants and stick them into all the places where I don’t have anything else growing. They bloom all summer and are quite useful.

So the sprouted petunias inspired me to start some pots of other things… And then I noticed that Something has been eating in my greenhouse!

I had tiny lobelia volunteers coming in a pot from last summer, and they were almost ready to transplant individually, but the Something had nipped off most of the leaves so that there were just these miniscule vermicelli-type stems sticking up.

THEN I LOOKED AT THE CLEMATIS CUTTINGS. You may or may not be aware that these cuttings have been a source of great stress and worry and blog dissension since last summer. But now I definitely had three, possibly four, doing-just-swell cuttings. And I swear that just yesterday I observed nice green buds on them. Then, last night, Something chomped the buds!  Here is an evidential photograph–

The Something ate at them like they were fruit–while the same Something ignored the pots of lettuce and spinach which sat on the same greenhouse bench.

The whole thing looks quite suspicious.

I will generously suppose I am dealing with a mouse or some invisible bug. (Any other suggestions would of course be appreciated.) I’ve covered all the relevant pots at night and blocked the hole to the sink (which can’t become standard procedure because really the sink, which drains on the grass outside, is for tree frog access and egress).  Max seems to agree that there is some significant creature about–he is very interested in the space beneath the potting bench…

I have faith that the magnificently vibrant clematis cuttings will recover, but stay tuned for updates on this appalling  situation. (I might as well have bought those Midnight Horror seeds…)

And yes I know I kept switching from first to second person in this post but I was certain you wouldn’t mind.

Oh and Max’s ear is fine.

This mellow, cheerful, uplifting  and  calming  post is dedicated to all the readers who might recently have read, SOMEWHERE, anything  toxic, severe, destructive or otherwise disturbing… We are here to help you heal.

Now just relax. Breathe. Think of something fuzzy (no, not mold.)
Or cheerful. (And not a sunflower because they mostly just die.)

Think of a daisy, like grows where the lawn is supposed to be.
Oh but that would be a weed!

THINK OF THE OCEAN.

(sorry, didn’t mean to shout)

There, yes, an ocean…

And so, dear disturbed readers, welcome to the land of happy happiness, a sanctuary where you are safe and hardly at all likely to suffer.

Really it is quite a non-threatening sort of place, very few sharp implements around, poisonous plants are all in a dormant state, power saws turned off…

Welcome.

Breathe.

Relax.

There is no stress about anything, not even about how you haven’t ordered your garden seeds yet or you ordered them and forgot to get the green beans or you ordered them and then a cheaper catalog arrived the next day– no no no, none of that horrible garden performance anxiety at all. Or financial anxiety either. Although seeds are more expensive this year…

But we are letting all that go. Those worries drift off, float away, just like your retirement benefits did~~~ up up up– like the cost of health care~~~

Relax.

Breathe.

And know that behind every flower is a warmly smiling person, waiting to fulfill your every dream…

…and possibly even your fondest nightmares~~~

[Sigh.] Hasn’t this been wonderful? Flowers, and the ocean, and more flowers…

(I wanted to find a butterfly for you but this time of year the ones I found all had pins in them and they look really different like that.)

And so we part. But now you are acquainted with this haven of tranquility and peace, this refuge for the weary gardener and every other ragtag person out there…

So please join us again soon
–because the real world is just not all it’s cracked up to be.

[okay where's my beer?]

So I ran outside and photographed the great drifts.

Okay it isn’t much snow. But often winter brings no snow at all to this valley…

Then recently we had some days of these little accumulations.

They fell, they melted, they fell, it rained, it snowed.

Then it snowed great feathery wet snow.

Then it turned to rain.

Now we are drowning in rain. The rivers and ditches are full. The fields are lakes. Roads are closed, people are evacuated to gymnasiums and churches. Roofs leak. (Not mine, this time.)

The Brick People are under this water, with only their tiny vertical masts showing still…

I did a systematic search outside, and I found no bulbs up, hardly anything growing much at all –except the Marsh Marigold.

It is not surprising to find this native plant growing already in the rain.  It does really well here–in our marshes and in every part of the garden. It is also called Caltha palustris, but I just call it pushy.

Here is a picture of one of these little plants, in the woods garden this afternoon.
[See SPECIAL Follow-up REPORT below on this evil plant!]

Here is a picture of a swath of Marsh Marigold on high ground in April, almost engulfing the terrier.

When it pops up everywhere and is all abloom I want to dig it out, vacuum it up, pave it, anything! It is truly frightenly invasive here, even in clay earth that dries up with the first sunny days of May. But then this plant finishes its imperialistic show and sinks right back to the dirt, leaves and all, and I can kind of forget about it until the next year…

My weather app says rain all day, rain all week, rain forever.

The Bad News: I don’t swim well.

The Good News: we live on a hill.

*********************************************

SPECIAL follow-up REPORT on nasty invasive sneaky plant
-Lesser Celandine, not Marsh Marigold at all-

Thanks to alert readers (please see comments section of this post) I have become aware of a cruel hoax perpetrated against my garden by an old woman who is now dead but probably was clueless and innocent really so I will not say anything bad about her because I am a mature and understanding person sometimes.

In short, my so-called native Oregon marsh marigold plants are in truth a noxious scary weed.  And really I suppose they fall into the “if it quacks it’s a duck” thinking in that they have always ACTED like a noxious scary weed…

REAL marsh marigolds are sweet plants that DO NOT spread around like gallons of spilled milk but instead stay in one place and are hard to grow and maybe just die like a polite plant but at least they don’t take over the world. And this difference alone is enough to convict the imposters. But they also have icky roots which I don’t want to even talk about.

An emergency meeting of the  Garden Committee was arranged.  Present were Max, Tillie, myself and my sharp shovel– Mr. O is off recycling metals and my dad’s ghost didn’t show up since this had nothing to do with the cannon –yet.

Now this was a morning meeting and we drank coffee but really I think Tillie’s coffee was special if you know what I mean…

Anyway we talked about the wicked invasive nature of the imposter marigolds and how they had lied to us, every spring, for some years.  Then we voted and it was unanimous that the plants had to go. (Oddly, Tillie agreed with everyone else but she generally supports death and destruction so I shouldn’t be surprised I suppose.)

soon to be gone not-marsh-marigolds

Some websites recommend poison, which made me think of Hamlet and pouring poison in the king’s ear. But I doubt these plants have ears and if they do I wouldn’ t know where to find them…

Then I also read that it is possible, over time, to just remove this plant, so I made a motion that in this instance we dig the victims up. Of course both the terrier and the shovel were keen on this, and Tillie had fallen asleep, so the motion passed.

Today is rainy and windy –but at the first opportunity We Dig. The big plastic compost bin is waiting, and I am confident that the Lesser Celandine is soon to become lesser and lesser.

]]> http://linniew.wordpress.com/2012/01/20/water-water-everywhere/feed/ 45 linniew rock bed bench palm wet snow lakes bricks marsh marigold marsh marigolds in April Tillie's coffee not marsh marigolds http://linniew.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/a-cold-morning-sir/ http://linniew.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/a-cold-morning-sir/#comments Fri, 13 Jan 2012 00:07:58 +0000 linniew http://linniew.wordpress.com/?p=5196 Continue reading →]]> That is the title of this little F.S. Church print that hangs on the wall above my writing desk.

A winter day like today.

We are in a week of frozen cold starry nights that open into icy cold mornings.  But the sky becomes mostly blue and clear with slightly warm sun at noon –except for in the shady places, which never thaw.  (Just like that day I rolled the car a few years ago in a shady bit of road where only the frosty surface had melted, so there was water over ice. Very slippery.  Just so you know.)

Such a great time to work outside! And no one has locked up the pruners so I cut back some more rose bushes yesterday afternoon. Today I have in mind a huge spirea bush.  I am actually thinking of using a little limb saw in this case.  I won’t photograph today’s garden violence because I do not want to further scar the gentle psyches of my readers after the rose pruning incident of last week.

But wait, Tillie is telling me something… Oh.

Tillie feels the radical pruning of the spirea will build the character of readers! Well all right then,  I will take photographs.

Here is the spirea bush, about to be given extreme care.

Now this bush was on the property when I moved here. It has been moved a couple of times, with a tractor, the last time being last year. It is a very tough and resilient shrub.

And I THINK it is a spirea.

[sounds of clipping and sawing]

There! All done.

I was hoping that having the solar garden light in this picture would make you feel better about the pruning…But here to really cheer you up is a little pansy, blooming in a protected sunny spot near the greenhouse.

In other winter news: the striped tiarella seeds I gathered last summer have sprouted into teeny tiarellas–and if those are patented or something then these are delphinium sprouts.

I love these plants. Here are the ones in my garden in maybe July.

Doesn’t it help to go back and look at pictures from summer? I think it keeps us from throwing ourselves under buses or etc. during the long cold winter.

And here is a very exciting photograph of one of the six or so surviving clematis cuttings. This plant is poised to burst into vine at the first sign of spring!

AND, here are some lavender plants that I grew from seed!

Well not really, but the Plant Goddess grew them and she recklessly gave them to me. They are so adorable that I am going to try my hardest to not kill them.

Have you forgotten about the chopped spirea yet?

Maybe think about this: soon, if the weather holds, I move on to the raspberry canes…

Which of course had about a 50/50 chance of getting done.

But a miracle happened–today the weather was bright and balmy and I was drawn outside to the winter garden. (Or perhaps I was just avoiding cleaning up the house after the holidays.)

“Max,” I said, “let’s whack those roses–or, you know, train the the canes to perfection.” Max would have agreed to doing most anything outdoors this lovely day, so we got ready.

I found the wheelbarrow, my leather gloves, the hand pruners, twine, scissors and, most especially, Mr. O’s secret roll of baling wire.

Actually the bailing wire has been in the kitchen since it was recently pressed into service by some creative family members when we couldn’t find the star for the top of the Christmas tree. They made a new star from the wire, wrapped with some tinsel stuff –it was perfect and will do for years–and the wire of course was still in the kitchen today.

(The Christmas tree is still in the parlor, for that matter, but I do not wish to discuss that right now.)

So I had the wire located. This is huge.

I used to have my own whole roll of baling wire, kept in the old wood fruit box that serves as a greenhouse drawer. The wire was so useful in the garden, to support horizontal grape vines and hanging pots and a million other things. I used it all the time until one day I had used it all up. So I went back to the farm store but they didn’t sell it anymore.

(Honestly it is just like when, after maybe fifteen years of wasted money you finally find a color of lipstick, called something like Warm Peach, and it doesn’t make you look like a corpse and you decide you love it and use it up and  you go back but then all they have are these great new colors, Moldy Plum and Knife Cut Red…)

Somehow, Mr. O does still have a roll of baling wire. “I am happy to share it,” he will say, just before he puts it away in his shop in an Undisclosed Location. So having it in hand was a big break.

The roses are both American Pillar, a 1902 variety bred for pillorying– I mean pillaring, or possibly pillarizing…  For years there was just one of these plants, sprawled on the ground, planted by some previous owner.  We eventually divided it, so it would have a friend.  Then Mr O built some sacrificial looking structures out of old well pipe,  and since then I have more or less encouraged both roses to stand up and be tall.

Here they are last summer: tons of single hot pink blossoms with white centers, but no fragrance at all, which did not help them get my attention.

I have enjoyed these roses as they just casually leaned against their pillars, kind of a James Dean approach to rose presentation, but I have always wanted to try to “train” them, which sounds like they might do tricks that could go viral on YouTube but really it just means they should be a little organized relative to their support structure.

Here is one of the roses this afternoon, before I cut it back at all. Notice the lovely day– I don’t think I am completely responsible…

Here is the first one, clipped and tied up. There is a second cross support at the top, so the rose can do a turn, but most of the canes were too short. I used twine and the precious baling wire to anchor them and direct them.

I had just completed work on the first of the two roses when Mr O appeared on the scene, rushing by really, on his way to somewhere else. But, so characteristic of him, he took a moment out of his busy day to be supportive: “Jesus honey you cut the shit out of it.”

It is just so wonderful the way people can inspire and encourage each other. Some people can. I’ve heard of such people…somewhere.

Undaunted, I whacked the other bush.

So whatever I’ve done, I’ve done it by two, so at least it will appear intentional, which is sometimes a virtue.

Here are the two roses, pruned into submission. Breathtaking, especially with the vibrant vegetable garden background…

These are the trimmings from the first rose, in the wheelbarrow. I managed to put another whole rose-worth on top of that, and Max and I took it out to the pasture where it will get mowed up in the spring.

Soon after, the wind rose and dark clouds arrived for a  night of rain. I went inside to care for my rose wounded hands (leather gloves aren’t bullet-proof)  and box up the Christmas decorations. The garden is safe until the next break in the weather…

We celebrated. And this blazing photo, enhanced for your moody enjoyment  (or maybe just blurry), proves that the pudding flamed nicely with the 150 proof rum.

But all that is over now.

My idea for January decorating is big bowls of fresh flowers everywhere and sun streaming in through the tall windows of my old house.

But the contrary truth is that the windows reveal a dark afternoon sky today, rain beats against the glass panes and there is no line item in my budget for “big armloads of florist shop flowers.”  (And if you think I have an actual documented budget you haven’t perceived my random nature…)

But I do have big armloads of garden catalogs…

Short days, cold nights –and seed catalogs.  Or catalogues. I can walk through the images of flowers and vegetables and remember gardening–because right now it is just a memory–and plan for the spring.

I do think it is disingenuous the way the catalogs show the flowers all in bunches, set up shots. I can imagine some poor employee gathering and presenting wall to wall nasturtiums or ten delphinium spikes all bunched up together, using glue and duct tape to keep the image utterly floral.

Rain beats on the roof of the greenhouse. The little hollyhock plants look brave.

I am happy for the pot of lobelia I brought inside at summer’s end.

Salad greens continue in the greenhouse. There might also be ghosts of those dead cucumber plants, crouched in corners, rattling their dry roots at night.

And, outside, there is one intrepid rose who feels tenacity is the key. She may be right…

Just wrapping up the year. Cheers!

A big yellow school bus stopped in front of my car. The red tail-lights flashed at me, the “stop” sign swung out from the driver’s side and  I stopped and waited. It was around noon. “It must be a kindergarten child,”  I thought, “home from the morning session.”

I looked at the house. It was small and sad looking, with a “shop” attached where a sign told me that lawnmowers were repaired. A few mowers sat outside, for sale in the winter rain…

But, I worried suddenly, what if there is no one home waiting for this child?

Then a tiny boy made his way down the tall school bus steps and hopped to the ground. He carried a school paper in one hand.  He was very little.

I feared again:  what if there is no one home?

He made his way up the path, past what might have been part of a wheelbarrow, walking with small steps through the cold, up onto the porch.

Immediately a young woman opened the door. She smiled like the blue sky and summer sun of June and she greeted her child with wide open arms, missing him, welcoming him.

I was glad to see he was a rich kid after all.

*****************

I did some wreath-making. It was great.  Mr. O pruned up a bunch of our garden trees, so we won’t have to duck  next summer when we walk beneath them. The wreaths are made of cedar, white fir, redwood and Douglas fir– fragrant evergreens to tie onto circles, round and round, endless and forever like the comings and goings of the the seasons.

I hang the wreaths all indoors, where I can see them and smell a forest in my house. And so the wood spirits can shelter in them. Oh, today is the Winter Solstice! Deepest darkest day– a candle night for certain…

In other news, the Plant Goddess and I had Candy Day.

This is an annual event involving  my kitchen, a bottle of champagne and the soundtrack from Chicago.

This year, among other things, we made marshmallows, to put in the fudge (we made that too), with nuts. The outcome is a candy called “Rocky Road.” But the marshmallows turned out to be more like silly putty, very nearly impossible to cut up, bubble-gum mallows, and for one terrifying moment the sticky stuff grabbed my hair.  We laughed our way through it all (merry does not quite describe the experience) and really the fudge is pretty darn good.

Getting out the holiday stuff–

Years ago we bought this nutcracker. He is German, and a carpenter by trade. A shoemaker actually I think. Every year I find him in his box on the Christmas shelf of the upstairs closet, and I wake him up and bring him downstairs to a mantle– usually in the diningroom.

I greet the nutcracker. “Happy Christmas, nutcracker,” or something original like that. He never answers, but I know he is always relieved that I remember to come for him.

When the holidays are over I take him down again, off the mantle, and rest him back in his box upstairs, and I always tell him goodbye, see you next year, and I hope to heaven that in a year’s time all will still be well enough in my life that once again I will be setting him on the shelf at Christmas.

In recent years I have brought out the Old Toys. I have a few that have endured, from three generations. I do think it is good for the toys to get to participate in Christmas — see how happy they look– and I like seeing them again.

So much left to do this week.

I told my friend Roberta that  my house looked like a bomb site, with cooking and mailing and wrapping happening in every corner.

She wrote back to me :   “Enjoy the chaos while it lasts. It’s a sure sign of life.”

Happy holidays everyone~

]]> http://linniew.wordpress.com/2011/12/21/christmas-houses/feed/ 25 linniew old toys making wreaths wreath fudge nutcracker old toys max http://linniew.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/cold-with-a-chance-of-salad/ http://linniew.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/cold-with-a-chance-of-salad/#comments Tue, 06 Dec 2011 20:50:31 +0000 linniew http://linniew.wordpress.com/?p=4896 Continue reading →]]> In the outdoor world someone forgot to pay the utility bill and the heat has been turned off.

But I have been very jealous recently of other frost images, so,
due to the New Weather, here at last is the Cotinus, iced up. [Cotinus?]

Energy costs are astronomical. We’re heating with wood and letting the oil tank sit, most of the time.

Burning oil reminds me of one of those mob movies where the guy in the double-breasted jacket lights his cigar with a fifty-dollar bill…

We try to be more like cave dwellers who hauled in ginkgo trees, or whatever they burned–dry fronds from giant ferns maybe, over which to boil water for a coffee press made from a hollowed out stone…

Sometimes I bake something in the kitchen and get a shot of guilt-free heat from the oven, in addition to the resulting bran muffins or cinnamon rolls.

Max and I brought in some of the last of the apple crop yesterday. It was a sunny and cold afternoon, but we wandered across the pasture for fun  (I do so envy Fay and others who have endless lovely walking places in their neighborhoods).

We found some lingering fallen apples beneath the two old trees in the pasture, trees from when the house was still part of a big farm. Because initially the land was what was called (in 1852)  a “donation land claim,” which was 640 acres given to people just for showing up in the Oregon Territory. I doubt the trees are so old as that, but they look plenty ancient for apple trees.

Nice big apples though. (“Perhaps I will bake some, to warm the kitchen,” she rationalized, because she was a little hungry.)

In other news, there has been murder in the greenhouse.

The stems weren’t cut and the mobile crime lab found nothing in the substance testing. There were however traces of gardener neglect evident in the lack of recent fingerprints. There have been no arrests, but the detective on the case suspects a conspiracy between the sun and the broken thermostatic lifter things that are supposed to open windows when the temperature goes up. . (There Kininvie. Terse and to the point. Won’t happen again though…)

Okay, no cucumbers this winter. But the other stuff in the greenhouse looks fine.

I cut leaves from the lettuce for salad– it just keeps going.

I do the same with the spinach.

Sometimes I will plant the spinach outside in early spring, and it does well, but bolts rather soon, worn out as it is after growing inside all winter.

In the gardens it is almost time to cut evergreen boughs for my holiday decorating enjoyment. I make a few wreaths early, and store them on the cold porch until closer to Christmas. I trim the small parts off the big limbs outside, then bring in these short pieces to use in the wreath making, which happens in the kitchen.

Yes it makes a terrible mess, with needles everywhere, but it smells nice and I have a good time, which of course is the Prime Directive.

Well I really must go now, I have important things to tend to–
the funky-crust apple pie is out of the oven…

…and my computer has a bug.

I haven’t seen these people but I think they must be really quite tiny, to get around under there.  I know they are there because every winter they create constructions between the bricks.

Here you can see the brick floor of the grape arbor, covered in leaves: grape leaves, birch leaves, maple leaves.  More still falling.

This is where the brick people live.

When I am not looking (it might be at night– I don’t know because I am not looking) they come out and build things.

They use mud, and sand from under the bricks, to hold up various bits of vegetative ornament.

The popular design usually includes at least one vertical element and several side-arms, usually composed of grape stems.  Some builders employ a few leaves, along with the other basic elements.

Some brick people are minimalists.

Others  import exotic materials to add color and texture.

I think the simple ones are quite nice really.

But perhaps the constructions are embellished over time.

Are you acquainted with the brick people?

Their creations may be houses. I like to think they are art.  At the least they are artistic houses…

I look down at them and wonder.

But sometimes I look up.

MYSTERY UPDATE: I’ve made a permanent page for my discussion of Uncanny Death, The First Ever Transatlantic Twitter Crime Novel. The link is at the top of this page.

I’m having a good time with this project. Of course my co-author, Kininvie, is semi-impossible, but I am mad with the power of controlling all those characters. (I’ve scheduled another seance, just for poor Fluffy…)