The Reading Backlog

 I have a lot of books I want to read.  There are a multitude that I have accumulated here.  Backlogged  reading in the form of  purchased books in the thousands.  Mostly that is from historical practice, though I still add on when I find an intriguing number on the cheap.  And, occasionally, there is something I know I need to possess for some reason.

But I have worked hard to get on a program where most of my reading is done via the Seattle Public Library, one of the preeminent libraries in the world in my impression.  I feel bad that actual human librarians are probably employed in much lower numbers these days everywhere, including the SPL, than in the past, given the change to on-line operations.  Librarians have always been in my highest esteem; through my school years, there was almost always one or more that I considered a great friend and confidante.

As of tonight, I learn that I have the following checked out:

Hillerman - Shapeshifter (cd): not sure I will get to this, borrowed for car trip
Jance - Dead to Rights: will be on this soon
Grodstein - Friend of the Family:  hope to get around to this, read earlier by Marg
Gilman - The Elusive Mrs. Pollifax: I've read one in the series (at least) and we have listened to 2
Follett - Whiteout: I've had to turn down several huge Folletts recently, but have hopes here
Safina - The View from Lazy Point
Meredith - Without a Map
Harris - High on the Hog
Lee - Emily and Einstein
Wallace - Consider the Lobster and Other Essays
Lehane - Moonlight Mile
Hoagland - Sex and the River Styx
O'Farrell - The Hand That First Held Mine (for Marg)
Robbins - Skinny Legs and All
McMann - Wake  (at least I am working on this one!)
James Cain - Omnibus (I read and cherished the primary Cain way back when. M. Pierce was my focus here.

I'm thinking, as I hope you might be, how does a mere human reader deal with all of this.

We'll see!

Garden Fever

It's not been the greatest Spring, even here in the Pacific NW.  But I gather we are the lucky ones, considering reports from elsewhere.  I'm talking fine details of temperature, not wind-speeds over 100mph.

We have had a couple 60F+ days.  But we have also had night frosts in the outlying areas as recently as last week, I hear.  Mercifully not in our neighborhood, small consolation.  I felt obliged to sequester basil, pepper, and tomato starts we picked up at school plant sale in our "potting shed" beneath the deck.  This is at least enclosed, and presumably far more congenial for sensitive starts than the out-of-doors.

But we as always over-did it at plant sale, racking up several weekends of work neither of us really need, in my case in particular conflicting with breaking into and starting those seed-packets I just bought!  Ah well.  Prior work on that front involved getting four tee-pees worth of peas going, and chard, lettuce, mesclun, and sweet peas going in pots.

With tremendous weeding assistance from my partner, I planted out seedlings of lettuce, beets, Swiss chard, broccoli, and onions.  Lots more to do, but that was a great start.

And, a great mercy, after upper-back heroics with the pole-pruner yesterday, I will do no more on the apples this Spring.  Asian pear, while lower parts have been attended to, may need some more work on the superstructure, if only to keep her within reach.  There are still a lot of those 3+-foot watersprouts way up high.