snakes, corn, and peaches

I do know what happened to the wren nest. I went out in the garage Thursday night to roll the big trash can out to the street, looked over at the shelving unit and saw

a young rat snake. Oh you little bastard, if you look closely you can see at least three lumps in it’s body, and I guess it’s been laying low hiding behind the other things on those shelves while it digests its meal. I can’t really be too upset. It has to eat too and it does me a service keeping the mice down but now all five nests located this spring have failed. This is my third sighting this year of a live snake. Also found a dead one coiled up about 18” off the driveway. At least the house finches had some successful nests as I seeing juveniles begging food from their parents at the bird feeder, mostly being ignored.

My neighbor’s brother grows hybrid sweet corn (no GMO) and that’s where I get my corn to put up every year. Leonard brought me 4 dozen ears Friday morning. 

Marc and I got all 48 ears shucked yesterday, 

now today comes the blanching, cutting it off the cob, and vacuum sealing it for the freezer. Nearly every ear had some worm damage, even exposed over a dozen worms of various size. 

Some people might think that’s gross but to me it’s reassuring because if a worm won’t eat the corn then I don’t want to either. 

I also got some local peaches yesterday. They're small but sweet. 

My own tree which gave me about 50 peaches last year, isn’t doing that great this year. It bloomed but not as much, set fruit but the little starts are falling off and the ones still on the tree don’t seem to be growing. Been too dry I guess though I try and water it at least once a week.

Summer is pressing down on us. Mornings are still pleasant but supposed to get into the high 80s today. We’re going to try to hold out on the AC until the end of the month but it depends on the humidity.

That’s about all I know. SHARE was busy again last Thursday, mostly big food orders. It was a food delivery day, plus we got some donations in as well as what we get from HEB, Walmart, and the dollar stores. HEB sent us +/- 50 bouquets of flowers. Seems they over ordered for Mother's Day. They came complete with a plastic sleeve with handles and a vase for about $40 I think, so everyone got flowers with their food order for as long as they lasted. I brought home two bouquets and divided them up into three vases, one of just the roses.

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book reviews:

Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng - Set in the US after the Crisis, a years long depression eventually blamed on the Chinese for which Americans of Chinese heritage pay the price, the PACT Act, laws written to preserve American culture, credited with bringing prosperity back to the nation based on suppression of anything considered unAmerican. Children are removed from their homes if their parents aren’t considered patriotic enough and placed with ‘proper’ American families. The story centers around poet Margret Miu and her son Bird. One line of one of Margaret’s poems written before the Crisis becomes the motto of the resistance of which she has no part and Margaret abandons her husband and 9 year old son before the authorities come and re-home him. Three years later Bird follows clues left by his mother and finds her in New York where Margaret is in hiding, working on a project to fulfill a promise made to the parents of the missing children, families she has tracked down to bear witness. 

King Sorrow by Joe Hill - Arthur, a college student with access to the rare book section of the university’s library is coerced into stealing rare book to keep his mother, who is in prison, safe. When his friend group, Colin, Donna, Van, Allie, and Gwen, finds out they come up with a plan to free him from the drug dealer who sells the books to pay a debt. One of the books he was ordered to steal is the Crane Journal, a grimoire bound in human skin, which includes instructions on how to call forth the dragon King Sorrow from the Long Dark and one drunken and drug fueled night they implement the plan. they strike a deal with the dragon, Arthur’s tormentors will be dead by Easter and they will be protected. What the group thought was a one time deal was a deal in perpetuity and if they didn’t provide the name of a victim by Easter, the one of them must die instead and so with Colin taking the lead they feed King Sorrow names of heinous people in an attempt to justify murder. When Arthur comes up with a plan decades later to free themselves from the dragon, things go sideways. More than one person doesn’t want to send King Sorrow back to the Long Dark. Joe Hill is an excellent story teller and while this book is long, 870+ pages, it keeps you engaged.