Currently Reading and Gardening

Whiskey and Water by Nina Wright, a mystery featuring a real estate agent Whiskey Mattimoe and her Afghan hound Abra, set on the shores of Lake Michigan.

Next on the list, The Sudoku Puzzle Murders by Parnell Hall, a Puzzle Lady Mystery with crossword and sudoku puzzles sprinkled throughout the book for the reader to figure out. Solutions also included.

I mean to also read The Moon in the Mango Tree by Pamela Binnings Ewen about a young singer in the 1920s whose husband is a medical missionary who becomes physician to the royal court of Siam. She travels around the world to find her place as a singer. The part about Siam intrigues me, especially the Siam of the early 1900s.

I have also borrowed from the library, The Eye of Jade by Diane Wei Liang, a new detective series set in China, written by a Beijing-born woman who took part in the Student Democracy Movement in the 1980s in China, has a Ph.D in business administration from the U.S., and left teaching after 10 years to write for a living from London, where she now lives. More Chinese mystery novels!

In the meantime, I also have to tend to the garden, where spring flowers have finished blooming and summer ones have not yet come up. The spirea bush needs trimming, and the mushroom mulch needs to be tucked around roots so that the roses and clematis start producing flowers again! Trying to use only organic type of fertilizers but will have to spray the rose bushes as they have some sort of brown spotting on the leaves.

Can't wait till winter-spring to use what I learned in a three-hour tree pruning workshop I attended two weeks ago. (How much can you learn in 3 hours?) The Rose of Sharon and the red acer palmatum (Japanese maple) in the back as well as the green one in the front both need some shaping and controlling. Alas, I don't have the skill of Japanese gardeners, but will have to experiment.