And What Are YOU Reading?

Sorry for the extremely blurry photo but I couldn't get any closer and wasn't taking much time to try and focus because that little Carolina wren was flitting and flying all over that end of the back porch, hopping from a plant to the top of the ceiling fan to a hanging bird with fishes thing and back to the plant pot and so on and so forth for quite awhile.

Don't look for the bird. She's not in that picture. That's just the hanging bird and fishes thing. 
I suppose it's time for a second nesting for the wrens. Whoa. I just read that wrens can raise up to four different broods a year so it could be the third or fourth. I have one little couple who always seem to want to nest on this porch but they simply cannot due to Maurice. 
Wouldn't be prudent. 
Still, they come right in the cat entrance and remind me so much of a couple looking at a new house to potentially buy. I pretend I'm the realtor and tell them, "Oh, babies, no. This is not the house for you." They don't believe me though. I can't tell you how much nesting material I pulled out of that plant pot this spring. Those birds are definitely energetic and industrious.  

You see that pathetic canning effort? Three pints of dilly beans and three quarts and a pint of just plain green beans. That's about all I got done today and I'm far more exhausted after that than I was yesterday after doing that yard work. I really wanted to get every bean I could in a state of preservation because the vines are looking really shitty and the beans aren't getting fat the way they were and I just don't know what's going on. But honestly- if I've gotten about all I'm going to get- that is fine. 
I've about reached my canning limit anyway. 
I stood up in the kitchen with two different bowls to snap into, one for pickling, one for regular canning. I had pretty strict criteria about which beans went into each bowl and that went pretty fast but not that fast. I stood there so long my back started aching and my left hand went numb which is what happens when I do a repetitive task with it. I broke that wrist many years ago and I'll be paying for falling off that roof for the rest of my life. 
And of course pickling requires one type of canning, the plain green beans, another. One involving the kettle, one involving the pressure canner. I am sure I have discussed this enough and who cares anyway?

But I got it done and I suppose I feel a bit of satisfaction about that but the thrill is sort of gone. I have to tell you though that I cooked some fresh green beans out of the garden and I have not yet become anywhere near tired of them. Nor has Mr. Moon.

While I worked in the kitchen, I was listening to the audio version of "The Other Bennet Sister". The damn thing's over eighteen hours long and I only have about half an hour left and I have to say, "Thank you, Jesus."
I thought the book would be more strong-women forward than it is. I guess that the Miss Bennet in the book has a few radical (for the times) ideas but it's not like she's a suffragette or anything. I don't think she'd ever burn her corset. And the plot is just so hackneyed and cliche'd and stereotypical and, and, and.
I'll stop now. 
I've been having a hard time finding books I want to read or listen to for various reasons. Some because they are poorly written to the point where I cannot deal with them, some because I have no interest in the characters, some because they're about issues I simply don't have the bandwidth to deal with in a literary way. 
For example: I downloaded Elizabeth Gilbert's "All the Way to the River: Love, Loss, and Liberation" knowing that it was going to be a tough book to listen to. But I was going to give it a shot. I hadn't gotten a tenth of the way through it until I said, "Nope," and returned it early. I have read books by Elizabeth Gilbert that I admire greatly. Okay, not really books in the plural but book which was "The Signature of All Things". 
The whole "Eat, Pray, Love" situation was a little too much for me. Eating and Loving are absolutely fine but throw in praying and I'm outta here. Of course there were other reasons I was rubbed the wrong way by it but that was a big one. 
So when "All the Way to the River..." started with Gilbert's dead lover coming back in a way that felt literal and quite real to her and started telling her how incredibly proud she was of Gilbert for her years of sobriety and that she would be waiting for her at the river when she died, I was just like...
Sure.
The other book I don't think I'm going to read is "Nobody's Girl. A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice" by Virginia Giuffre. The book was published posthumously because after she wrote it, she died by suicide. 
I got the book at the library, I thought I could read it. I went to open it and I realized that the things I was going to read in it would enrage me to the point where it would affect my relationships, my mental health, and my ability to function. 
My rage about the men who abused her and who walk free and hold the highest offices in the nation is already dialed up to eleven. 

So bottom line is, I'm not finding anything that is really holding my interest or inspiring me with one exception which is the book I'm reading with my eyes right now, entitled "Marrying the Ketchups" by Jennifer Close and I'm not far enough into it to really have a true opinion of it but I will say that it has some of the best lines in it I've read in a very long time. 

So all is not lost. 

Here's what the Seminole pumpkins are doing right now. 

 

Taking over the world and not one dang bloom yet. 

Finally, for a very short video which I feel represents Florida as well as anything I've ever seen, go HERE.
Thank you, dear Rachel. 
If the link doesn't work for you, I really don't know what to say. I am struggling with technology at the moment. 
I hope it does, though. 

Love...Ms. Moon