Monday Malarkey on Tuesday

I already shared my weekend with you, since I had such a quiet Sunday, so there's not much to talk about but recent arrivals and weather and blooming things.  It's Monday as I type.  I'm pre-posting because I keep getting ahead of myself with nobody around to thwart my blogging efforts. It stormed, today (and, actually, another round is going through, as I'm writing).  We got marble-sized hail -- totally lucked out.  Just a mile or two away, my son's girlfriend lost her windshield to baseball-sized hail.  

Recent arrivals:

Top to bottom:

• Before Your Very Eyes by Alex George - And, you thought the author of A Good American was a newcomer.  Not so.  When Alex visited my local indie, he told me he had 4 or 5 published titles in the UK. I looked while we were in London, last year, without any success.  But I found a used copy of one of his titles online!  I'm excited to have another Alex George book to read.  Alex ducks and blushes when he speaks about his earlier titles, which just makes me twice as eager to get to this one.  Curiosity and all that.
• The Clover House by Henriette Lazardis Power - from Ballantine Books for TLC tour
• We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo - I got 12 copies of this to distribute to my F2F book group for review and discussion in May from Reagan Arthur Books.  My book group friends are just as giddy as they were the first time I got a pile of books for the group to share (Life After Life by Kate Atkinson).  
• Fever by Mary Beth Keane - An ARC sent by my sweet friend, Melissa.  Thanks, Melissa!

Not pictured:

• Poison by Bridget Zinn - just arrived (purchase).  And, UPS left it outside . . . in the rain . . . without ringing the doorbell.  *sigh*  It's fine, though, because I'm quick to dash to the door if I'm in hearing range. The UPS truck makes a pretty distinctive braking noise.

This is happening in our yard:

We're slowly figuring out what plants we've got in our new yard.  That's one of two Bradford pear trees in the front yard.  From the looks of it, we have about 4 more in the back, some camellias and azaleas and maybe oleander.  The backyard is a bit of a jungle.  On the plus side, that means most of the year we don't have to look at the neighbor's trash cans, which are in full view from our deck when the leaves are off the trees.

I spotted my first woodpecker!  Woot!

We don't have any older trees in our yard; this is a good distance away, so it took a 300mm lens and a good deal of cropping to capture this fellow.  I love seeing redheaded woodpeckers.  They are so gorgeous!

We dog-sat, this weekend.  Teddy is a big, sweet, lovable old guy.  He likes ear rubs.  

That's all for now.  Happy Tuesday!


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