Well, let’s see. The short short story anthology, “Crossed Wires and Other Very Short Stories” drops tomorrow. So, it will be available at just about all the ebook retailers out there. I will update links as I see them go live (or as quickly as I get to it, anyway.) It is already live, and available for pre-order still today, on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and Apple Books.
It appears that the warm weather has finally arrived to stay. The lawn has been mowed a few times, and fertilized. I planted a few containers for the front of the house with flowers, and sowed thyme, oregano, and chive seeds. I also planted a few hostas in the front foundation bed, along with an astilbe that our neighbor gave me when she was thinning hers. Yesterday, I cleaned out the area just off the back porch where a gravel bed for the rain spout to drain into sat. The plastic? rubber? whatever mat thingie it was on was pretty rotted, so I pulled the pieces of that out, used the small border fence sections I had to make a rectangular bed, added the birdbath, moved a couple of ferns from the area that is going to get dug up when the landscapers grade that side of the house, and planted flowers for bees and butterflies. Then I put the gravel back on top to help discourage birds and chipmunks from digging up the seeds. We’ll see how successful that is! It looks cute even without the flowers growing yet.
Next up will be inventorying the containers I have. Our yard is pretty shaded since we are surrounded by tall, leafy trees, so I am not sure if we will be able to grow a lot of vegetables out there. One side seems to get a fair amount of sun, especially in the morning, so what I want to do this year is try some stuff in containers over there and see how it goes. That way, we don’t spend a small fortune digging, putting in beds and soil only to find out things won’t grow well. If it works, next year we can do more. On the weekend, we will go to a local garden center and pick up what I want to experiment with, as well as more flowers for the deck boxes.
It looks like the small tree at the corner of the front of the house is a crabapple. It is now covered with pretty white flowers and the bees love it. The rose bushes are leafing out well, as is the hydrangea. And the small Japanese maple has fully leafed out. The azaleas on the side of the house are starting to bloom, from the bottom up. Weird, but that’s what they are doing. I pulled all the weed block from under the mulch on that side bed. I want to add more perennials, as well as some bulbs in the fall and they just won’t spread with that stuff under there. There doesn’t appear to be any under the front bed, which I am happy about. We are also having some of the big tree branches that are overhanging the house trimmed out, as well as one big broken one that is just caught on other branches but is going to fall at some point. With the new roof we had put on the porch a little while ago, we just don’t want to risk a branch coming down in a windstorm and damaging it.
It’s also been nice enough that we can sit out on the porch and have dinner and relax in the evening. We can watch the birds at the feeders in the yard, and the hummingbirds coming to the feeder hanging off the porch. It’s nice.
Upcoming fun: We are heading to Mechanicsburg, PA this weekend for a chili cook off. It will be the first since last August, and it should be fun. It will be good seeing some friends we haven’t in a while, and just getting away for a few days. And Memorial Day weekend we are having family here for a little shindig. Nothing fancy, but it should be a good time.
That’s all the news from here. Let’s make this a great week!
It’s Live Tomorrow!
“Crossed Wires and Other Very Short Stories”. Twelve scifi and twelve fantasy short stories that can each be read in minutes. Available for pre-order at Amazon, Apple, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo today. When it goes live tomorrow, it will be available at the above sites, as well as Smashwords, and most other e-book retailers. More information here
I have written science fiction, fantasy, and urban fantasy stories. There are novels, novellas, and shorter pieces to fit everyone’s reading time. There are even some free stories, both here on the site and in other places. You can go here to find out more about the books I have published. They are available at Amazon, Smashwords, and most ebook retailers. Thank You!
And So On... 