Kim Harrison's Blog, page 68

Third suet cake this month

It’s official. I’ve got the weirdest birds. Normally I go through a suet cake about every six months or so, but I just put out my fourth this summer, and I kind of expect it to be gone in about four days. I’d say that I’ve got a raccoon visiting at night, except I’ve been watching it disappear during the day, right outside my office window, and it’s birds, and very few of them are woodpeckers and nuthatches. No, it’s a bunch of house sparrows and one very determined robin.

Yep, a robin. A robin has learned how to cling to the vertical surface of the suet cage and hang there, stuffing his face. He taught the baby house finches earlier this summer, and now they are teaching the second nest, so you can imagine when they get going that it is noisy for about five minutes, and then they are gone.

The birds I put the suet up for, mainly nuthatches, downies, and the wrens (who are doing noisily good) still get in there, but when the robin is around, he scares every one off. Interestingly enough, he’s very dark colored. I’m wondering if it’s the suet.

Pintrest link

I’ve been on Pinterest for a while now, and my boards are looking pretty good. It’s nice to have a place I can drop all the photos I use on the website, drama box, face book, and whatnot. So if you’re looking for the wallpapers from previous books, foreign edition covers, old drama box pictures of my garden, therapy knits, fan art that I’ve found, my favorite author book covers, or photos of past tours, (mostly EVER AFTER) you’ll find them here.

http://pinterest.com/kimharrisonbook/boards/

My front page with all my boards looks something like this. This is just the first half or so. And, ah, you won’t have the ability to edit them. I must have taken this screen shot while in the administrative areas.

I hear tiny peeps

If you’ve been following my drama box this summer, you might remember my excitement when I heard a house wren in the neighborhood, immediately moving my box to a more scrub friendly part of the yard and hoping.

I was thrilled when Mr. Wren put my yard on his “sing at” list, and I listened for several weeks as he circled the neighborhood, stopping at my wren box for ten minutes or so before moving on and coming back to it.

I was excited when Mrs. Wren showed up, almost as excited as Mr. Wren, who screamed and yelled at her to check out the nest box.

I was over the moon when I saw nesting material poking out around July 3rd, and now I’m hearing tiny peeps.

Happy sigh.  Just happy sigh.

Everything is going up and down

When I was growing up, we spent our summers on a small, 27 ft sailboat. It was a fabulous fit for both my adventuresome spirit and homebody soul with a new place every few days, and a pattern that was comfortable and predictable. It fit, and it always amazed me how my equilibrium would adapt to either being on land, or sea to the point where the first couple of days ashore would have me feeling the earth move in a slow undulation as I sat and stared at the chalkboard or page.

So it was a happy memory (and no surprise) this morning when I began writing a scene where there was wind, and water, and a small boat, that I found myself moving up and down with the slow gentle breathing of the ocean.

Yep, the memory of water runs deep.

Comic Con sampler

I’m a good gardener. Really, I am. Last night, I even ate a zucchini that I grew. But tomatoes? Sigh. I think I need to stop trying to grow them in pots.

Also, Harper has put together a sampler that contains some of my favorite authors for Comic Con. If you’re there, go hunt them down and get it, but if you’re not making the trek out to San Diego this year, you can still download  it. A couple of pages from EVER AFTER are on there, and a few pages from Trouble on Reserve. You have to be patient, though. It takes forever to download–seriously long, but worth it. http://www.comicconsampler.com/

Too darn hot

Somewhere in my playlist I have a song by Ella Fitzgerald called “Too Darn Hot.” I’m singing it.

 

Holy Cow, it’s hot!

I’m thinking I should go to the lake with my laptop, it’s so hot! But alas, you will find me in my office, the air turned on as I look at the green of my garden and the colorful spots of flower color. Taking a look at the current weather map, I don’t question why. Dude . . . That’s one hot dome of air, and not a low in sight.

But I had a great weekend, wedging a little bit of this, a little bit of that in it, and I’m ready to sit for a while and just move my fingers.

Oooooh, Ahhhhh

I’ve got fireworks in my back yard! Here’s a nice shot of my double? triple? day lilies that I found in a ditch over a decade ago. Actually, upon closer inspection, it looks as if the stamens and pestles have reverted back to petals.

Gonna be a hot one today.

Black dog woke me up this morning with a bunch of sneezes. Mind you, that was just her way of telling me she wanted to go out. She’s too dignified to whine, but she will sneeze over and over until I roll out of bed. Out of bed and into summer.

Wow, we’ve found summer in lower Michigan, and it’s hot this morning as I do my morning work out on my back porch while I try to cool my office down before I get going in there. I turned the air on in my office for the first time, yesterday. I like a warm office, and 82 is tolerable until you crank up the humidity, and that’s what we’ve got now.

Still, it’s not all bad. I was able to graze on my raspberries this morning when I took sneezing dog out. Just a handful, but mmmm, so good when you can eat them right off the cane. My double day lilies that I got out of a ditch thirteen years ago are blooming this morning as well. Downside, I’m watching my zucchini and bee balm like a hawk to make sure we don’t have a repeat of last year’s powdery mildew.

But I think the best part of July will be that the construction guys have completely torn out the upstairs. Everything. I can see the back of my roof and the top of my downstairs ceiling. There is simply nothing left to take out. They HAVE to start putting something back in. (laugh) The house is over a hundred years old, and it’s amazing we’ve not run into any other issues. So far, in this foray into remuddling, we’ve found a white sauce pan in the wall and a emptied bullet in the floor. I’m tempted to leave a signed manuscript in the walls, but will refrain.

I’m trying to start thinking about taking a couple of weeks off this summer, too, but it’s hard when I’ve got so much going on in my back yard.

Creepy Crawly

I found this little guy/gal last night when I took the dogs out. It’s a cicada, and though I often see the exoskeletons they leave behind or occasionally see the adult, I’ve never seen one ready to split its skin and become an adult.

Even if you’ve never seen one, I’ve bet you’ve heard one. These are the bugs that have that long, loud rising and fading whine, usually in the heat of the day. They sound as primitive as they look, and they will always mean summer to me just as a mob of jays sound like fall.