I'm really posting out of order today -- I've been reading a bunch of books at the same time, and book #38 is actually a book that I read completely today in less than an hour, at the library, and then returned.

Book #38 was Yossel April 19, 1943 by Joe Kubert. The author is apparently a very well-regarded artist in comic book history, and in reading this short graphic novel, I can see why. His drawings are simple, but at the same time, they seem breathtakingly detailed. It's the story of a Jewish boy in Poland. He is ordered to move into a ghetto with his parents and his sister, who are soon transported to Auschwitz. He isn't sent with them because his gift as an artist has caught the eyes of the Nazi soldiers who guard the ghetto and their commanding officers. Ultimately, the novel is about the Warsaw ghetto uprising that took place on April 19, 1943. It's extremely graphic and disturbing, as only a novel about the Holocaust can be.

little_tristan, I think this is a novel that would definitely interest you.

Book #39 was Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, and co-written by her husband Steven L Hopp and older daughter Camille Kingsolver. Her younger daughter Lily also contributed, but more as a member of the family/co-farmer, it seems, and so she wasn't given a co-author credit. Her mother explains in the book that she wasn't old enough to sign a contract with the publisher, though I have certainly read books written by younger children. But those were children's books.

Anyway, their family decided to "eat locally" for a year, moving back to the farm that has been in their family (but rented out) for hundreds of years. For one year, they only bought food raised in their neighborhood, grew it themselves (the youngest daughter raised chickens and turkeys for eggs and meat, and sold the excess), or learned to live without it.
As a book on gardening and farming and the world in general, it won't ever surpass my beloved From the Ground Up, but it has its gorgeous moments:
Every gardener I know is a junkie for the experience of being out there in the mud and fresh green growth. Why? An astute therapist might diagnose us as codependent and sign us up for Tomato-Anon meetings. We love our gardens so much it hurts. For their sake, we'll bend over till our backs ache, yanking out fistfuls of quackgrass by the roots as if we are tearing out the hair of the world. We lead our favorite hoe like a dance partner down one long row and up the next, in a dance marathon that leaves us exhausted. We scrutinize the yellow beetles with black polka dots that have suddenly appeared like chickenpox on the bean leaves. We spend hours bent to our crops as if enslaved, only now and then straightening our backs and wiping a hand across our sweaty brow, leaving it striped with mud like some child's idea of war paint.
Oh, *yes*. Exactly.

And book 40 was read one night when I couldn't get to sleep -- another old and dear young adult favorite, From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg. I'm tired now and about to go to sleep. Those of you who've read this book know why I love it. Especially those of you who have been to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. I couldn't walk anywhere in that museum without having Claudia and her brother Jamie tagging along in my mind. Any of you who haven't ever read this book -- you *should*.

After seeing valis2's garden pictures this evening, I realized that I haven't posted pictures of my garden in awhile. So here they are!


Here are two 'yellow pear tomatoes' in a pot on our deck. I bought these two teeny little seedlings from a neighbor's garage sale some weeks ago (for a quarter apiece). They looked so tiny and helpless, I put them in a pot instead of the garden (besides, I was out of tomato cages). Apparently, they like it there.


Remember those early pictures of my straggly little parsley seedlings? They were still pretty scrawny when it became nice enough to put them outside, but I was nervous that the bunnies would be very grateful for it, so I planted them in a hanging basket, and sprinkled a bunch of parsley seeds on the surface of the soil along with the seedlings. I guess they like it, too. *grin*


I forgot to buy a package of zucchini seeds this year, and happened across an ebay auction for some, and bought them on a whim. I planted them all (25 seeds) divided between 4 hills, remembering that zuke seeds don't always do that well for me. They must have been really good seeds!


My green beans are finally going to be successful, thanks to some good advice -- several people advised me to use chicken wire to keep the bunnies out. But The Home Depot had it only in enormous rolls, so I bought these cute green wire fences instead, and THEN planted a big bunch of bean seeds. As you can see, the bunnies have not been able to invade.


The cucumbers are not nearly as tall as the ones I started inside earlier this spring, but they're coming along. Assuming that we continue to alternate rainy days and hot days, I'll be good and sick of cukes by October.


Next time I take garden pictures, I hope I'll remember to take them earlier in the day. Hopefully the shadows of the early evening don't make this picture too hard to decipher. The green cages (4 of them) each have 2 cherry tomato plants that I bought at the grocery store. The silver cages (3 of them) each have 2 or 3 tomato plants that I started from seed. I got those mixed up, so I'm eager for them to start producing so I can tell which plant is which! Like the yellow pear tomatoes pictured above, they're starting to get flowers.


And lastly, here's a fuscia New Guinea Impatien. The more important thing in the picture is the flowerpot that I got as a birthday present from my friend Jean a few years ago -- she painted it herself, and I use it to grow something special every year.
(The window you see behind it is my bedroom window.)

ETA: Corrected a picture to show the flowerpot instead of the tomatoes again.
Also, if you look behind the zucchini plants, you'll see that the rhubarb patch is growing back very nicely after the spring harvest. There WILL be rhubarb cake at LoonCon. And maybe for WriterCon, too, if it is requested.