Angela Law

animal lover, gardener, knitter, and gourmet cook
 
gardening & landscaping

hedging bets

October arrived today and we pledged to ourselves that we’d take care of the hedge problem in October, so here we are. We went to Stuver’s this morning to see what they had and they talked us into arborvitae, which is a common hedge plant in these parts. All I knew was that I wanted something evergreen. They didn’t have any actual evergreen trees in stock (and they would have been way more expensive anyway), so we went with the arborvitae. The plants we got are 5-6 feet high, but they aren’t very wide. To fill in the gaps, we also purchased some tall grasses. In the long run, the grasses won’t be necessary, but it’s the short term that I’m concerned with.

Brian’s been digging holes all day and is about to put the 7th (and the last) into the ground. Then, he’ll have 6 grasses to go. Daylight is quickly fading, but the grasses are in much smaller pots, so hopefully he’ll be able to wrap things up tonight.

books

afraid

This was a novel by an author named Jack Kilborn. And if you think that name is made up, it is. The author’s real name is JA Konrath. Or is it?

Anyway, the book was rather Dean Koontz-ish, which is a good thing. While the premise was kind of ridiculous (a “red-ops” unit kills an entire town), I did manage to read it in a week-and-a-half, so it wasn’t all bad.

My rating 3.5/5

gardening & landscaping

compost

As it turns out, the compost bin was in no shape to move, so it has been disassembled and Brian is using the salvageable cedar on some personal projects. Since we’re still planning on moving after Jake graduates, we’re not going to go to the expense of building another bin. I’m going to try trench composting for a change of pace. That’s not going to allow me to compost quite as much, but we’ll see how it works out. I could always move to the “pile” system, but Brian doesn’t find that aesthetically pleasing. However, the pile would be on the border of the property in plain view of our neighbor so that’s one plus.

books

freedom of the mask

This was the latest book in Robert McCammon’s Matthew Corbett series. It started off a little slow, but picked up some steam at the end. And, it ended with a major cliffhanger, so I’m looking forward the the next book, whenever that might be released. I feel like the first couple of books were better than the later ones, but they are all still worth a read. I wonder how many books are planned for the series–this was the 6th one and I’m starting to feel like things need to wrap up soon.

My rating: 3.5/5

movies

monsters

I saw this movie listed on a “must see” article about Netflix and it piqued my interest so I watched it last night. The movie centered around the effects of an alien invasion, which took place six years before the story started, and which was contained to a single area near the US/Mexico border. There were only two main characters in the movie, a photographer who was in Mexico to photograph alien-related activity, and the daughter of the photographer’s boss (and I have no idea why she was in Mexico). Anyway, the photographer is recruited to escort the daughter back to the US and getting there is pretty much the story.

For a low budget production, this was pretty good.

My rating: 3.5/5