Books and Trees

So, of course, the book that took the Lambda Award in the SF/F/H category is the ONE I didn't read. (I'm hoping that now it's the winner I can talk the library into buying it.)

Speaking of my reading challenge, the Sunburst (Canadian spec fic award) long list has been announced:

Pastoral, Andre Alexis (Coach House)
The Broken Hours, Jaqueline Baker (Harper Canada)
The Troop, Nick Cutter (Pocket)
Consumed, David Cronenberg (Scribner)
Suffer the Children, Craig DiLouie (Simon & Schuster)
The First Principles of Dreaming, Beth Goobie (Second Story)
Head Full of Mountains, Brent Hayward (ChiZine)
Irregular Verbs, Matthew Johnson (ChiZine)
The Back of the Turtle, Thomas King (HarperCollins)
Gifts For the One Who Comes After, Helen Marshall (ChiZine)
Cloud, Eric McCormack (Penguin Canada)
Knife Fight and Other Struggles, David Nickle (ChiZine)
Emberton, Peter Norman (Douglas & McIntyre)
Lockstep, Karl Schroeder (Tor)
Cycling to Asylum, Su J. Sokol (Deux Volliers)
Silence For the Dead, Simone St. James (NAL)
Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel (Picador)
My Real Children, Jo Walton (Tor; Corsair)
Echopraxia, Peter Watts (Tor; Head of Zeus)
Will Starling, Ian Weir (Goose Lane)

So... yeah, we'll see how many of those I can find. I'm still in line at Roseville for Station Eleven, which has shown up on a ton of these lists. I just finished Walton's My Real Children and should write something up about that before I forget all my feels about it.

Anyway, today I got very little done because I was very distractible. I blame Leben, our arborist. Technically, he's not ours, but works for Rainbow Trees. But, we've been using Leben for fifteen years or nearly so to take care of our trees. He's entirely responsible for the survival of the big pine in front of our house. He's been carefully shaping Ella's tree since we planted it. I'm quite fond of Leben because I firmly believe that every profession and hobby has its geeks, and Leben is a TREE GEEK, which automatically makes him one of my people.

When we very first met him, he sat on our front stoop and enthused about our trees. In the middle of all this, he jumped up and said, "Do you want to see a cool insect?!" Of course we said yes. He showed us a treehopper and, frankly, we knew right then we'd be using his services until the day he left that company and then we'd follow him to wherever he worked next. Luckily for us for he's stayed at Rainbow.

Today, he was completely enthusiastic about the new grass I've carefully tended and grown under our front yard maple and then nonjudgmental about the junk trees in the backyard. I continue to be a very happy customer.