A Handsome Eastern Box Turtle

This brightly-colored fellow  was behind our house yesterday morning -- maybe roaming around in search of a mate. Box turtles -- and they are turtles, not tortoises, in spite of their preferring land to water -- are the North Carolina state reptile.  There's glory for you!

They're very abundant in our area and always, after a heavy rain, they seem to be out wandering and, all too often, hurling themselves in front of cars. Over the years I've rescued quite a few from busy roads and brought them back here. This may be one of the rescuees -- they're quite long-lived -- or it could be a descendant.

Male box turtles have red or orange eyes while female's eyes are light brown. It's kind of a tough call in this case. So I picked the turtle up to have a look at the plastron -- the shell on the underside. If the plastron is flat, it's a she; if concave -- he.

Looks concave to me.

 That's Mr. Box Turtle to you!

Only Three

Three pictures were all I could load . . . and that after several tries...

 I think that the fault is with our connection or our server -- John's computer seems to be running slow too. 

After getting the garden planted and hoed before our several days of rain, I took on the major task of cleaning and reorganizing my work room -- and I'm not done yet. Big bags of paper odds and ends are in the car headed for recycling, several boxes of books and magazines are going to the library, and I'm slowly making progress -- quilting stuff here, books about the Civil War there, old photos to be scanned . . . you get the idea.

I thought about taking before and after pictures but the before was/is too disturbing. Dust and dead ladybugs everywhere and such an embarrassing jumble of the various activities that I have, at one time or another, attempted. 

Should I hang on to the huge basket of gourds? Is gourd crafting ever going to be something I want to do again? And what about all those odds and ends for collages and mixed media pieces I was sure I'd do some day? I wonder if  the oil paints have all dried up -- it's been about seven years since I used them.Do I keep all those 'good ideas' I tore out of magazines?

It's kinda like a trip down memory lane -- a memory lane so overgrown and tangled that one doesn't stroll, one hacks one's way through the towering ephemera, the teeming memorabilia, and the rampant trivia that threaten to overwhelm the weary explorer.

Onward!

 

Oh, Blogger, Oh May!

 

 

 

 

Oh, May!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Angry Readers

Back in 2005 when my first book had just come out, I met Charlaine Harris. She was one of a small group of Sisters in Crime who were having dinner together after a book sellers convention and I, new to the mystery world, asked her what she wrote. "Well, I have a new series about vampires," she told me, as I gave her a ride back to her hotel.

I hadn't a clue that this soft-spoken, pleasant lady from Duck Pond, Arkansas was just on the verge of becoming a major bestseller with her Sookie Stackhouse novels -- novels which became the very popular TV series 'True Blood.'

But as time went on, Charlaine's fame and popularity grew and grew -- and still, by all accounts, she remained just as sweet and just as hardworking -- turning out book after book with clockwork regularity.

This month, DEAD EVER AFTER, the 13th and the last in the series hit the shelves and the you-know what hit the fan.  Many  long time readers were outraged -- not so much that the series was ending but at which of three romantic interests Sookie, the telepathic waitress, ended up with.

 There's an article HERE detailing some of the really awful things readers have said and supposedly Ms. Harris has decided not to go on tour with this book because of the violent reaction there has been to the novel.

Folks, I find myself wanting to say, get a life! This is FICTION! These are not real people.

Of course it speaks well for an author's skill that she can create characters her readers feel so passionately about -- but it turns out to be something of a double-edged sword, in this case.

It's happened before -- Conan Doyle tired of writing about Sherlock Holmes and tried to kill him off in what was meant to be a final book but reader clamor forced him to resurrect his detective. 

As a reader, I'm still a little annoyed about some of the characters Patrick O'Brian killed off though, as a writer, I think I understand his reasons. 

Have any of you had characters you cared for so much that you were angry when things didn't go as you wished? 

 

Epiphyllum...and There Are Kittehs in Stuff

 

 

 

 

 

 

Frozen Lemon Pie with Pecan-Chocolate Crust

Good friends were coming to dinner and I decided to combine two of my favorite dessert recipes --  the pecan crust from Frozen Chocolate Pie with a frozen lemon filling -- basically a Lemon Semi-Freddo but actually the same frozen filling my mother used back in the Fifties in her popular Lemon Freeze on a Vanilla Wafer Crust. Oh, and some chocolate chips melted on the pecans, just because...

Pecan Crust

2 cups coarsely chopped pecans

1/3 cup firmly packed brown sugar

3 tablespoons melted butter

Semi-sweet chocolate chips

Stir first three ingredients together and press firmly onto bottom and up side of a 9 inch pie pan.

Bake at 350 F for 10 or 12 minutes (after 5 minutes, sprinkle on a handful of chocolate chips then finish baking.) Cool.

Lemon Filling

3 eggs, separated

1/2 cup sugar

Grated rind of one lemon

1/4 cup lemon juice 

1/2 pint whipping cream

Cook together yolks, sugar, lemon rind and lemon juice, stirring till thickened. Cool.  Fold in stiffly beaten egg whites and whipped cream. Pile into pecan crust and freeze.

 

Top with grated chocolate. You may want to make a little more whipped cream and top each slice with it to increase the level of decadence.