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Infinite Country by Patricia Engel | Thoughts

   Published : 2021   ||    Format : print   ||    Location : Colombia ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆   What was it about the country that kept everyone hostage to its fantasy? The previous month, on its own soil, an American man went to his job at a plant and gunned down fourteen coworkers, and last spring alone there were four different school shootings. A nation at war with itself, yet people still spoke of it as some kind of paradise.. Thoughts : Infinite Country follows two characters - young Talia, who at the beginning of this book, escapes a girl’s reform school in North Colombia so that she can make her previously booked flight to the US. Before she can do that, she needs to travel many miles to reach her father and get her ticket to the rest of her family. As we follow Talia’s treacherous journey south, we learn about how she ended up in the reform school in the first place and why half her family resides in the US. Infinite Country tells the...

The Sunday Salon: Garden excitement


The Sunday 
Salon.com

Yet another Sunday Salon from me. It's getting harder for me to blog, not least because of time constraints, but also because I rarely sit on my computer after getting home from work. 8+ hours of coding at work tires me enough that all I like to do after getting home is watch TV and sleep. Those weeknights get even more perfect when the husband volunteers to make dinner. Whining aside, I am not close to giving up on reading or blogging and just probably need to work out a routine that works.

This past Thursday we had a close repeat of the Irene aftermath last year. Whichever thunderstorm that was that passed through town - wasn't even that strong - knocked out our power for a day. At least, it wasn't like last year, when we didn't have power for a week (and I had to do the icky task of cleaning the freezer of all those melted gooeys). Still, no power is no fun, considering how every damn thing runs on electricity. Friday, I could go to work, where there was power, but the husband and my brother (who is staying with us while he looks for a job) had a fun day outside watching movies, and hitting cafes. We then had dinner at Panera Bread, and I swear the whole town was in there.

This morning, we had a friend-cum-ex-colleague of mine stop by our house with her husband, and we spent a delightful hour catching up on stuff and other gossip. I spent sometime after that cleaning our backyard, which we had never worked on yet. It's a lot of back-breaking work that we can do only in spurts but we hope to get it ready for seeding before Fall. Nevertheless, we did plant some vegetables early in spring and we just tasted the first of our produce today (sugar snap peas). It's my first time having my own vegetable garden and eating the peas has me super excited. Even though they're not my favorite variety of peas, I can't wait to cook them.

This week, I'm hoping to post a couple of book reviews - I just haven't decided which. I was a quarter of my way into Stonewall by Martin Duberman (which is very good) when I decided that what I really wanted was to read some trash or really-silly book. Which is how I started reading The Vampire Diaries. I already devour the TV show so the book should actually not be that silly.

Comments

bermudaonion(Kathy) said…
Have you ever eaten a sugar snap pea raw? They're delicious!
Sounds delightful. I want pics. :)
Vasilly said…
Good luck on your garden. The work is always back-breaking but rewarding. :-) Plus, you fall in love with seed catalogs. Do you have one from Seed Savers?
Helen Murdoch said…
I am so not a gardener, but as a kid I loved visiting my grandparents' so that we could pick the shelling peas and eat them straight from the vine!
Athira / Aths said…
I have. They are certainly delicious. I think I prefer them raw to cooked.
Athira / Aths said…
Not yet. But since you mention them, I have to go get some. Ever since we bought this house, I've been thinking about gardening and what to plant. It's just so exciting.
Athira / Aths said…
I wasn't into gardening either until we bought our house. Even though my gardening IQ is still woefully low, I'm interested enough to do some planting. My FIL is big into gardening and he's the one who started our garden and got me interested.