3 D.N.F.

 These are the library books I reserved and brought home last month and I've already read five but have 

 had three surprising Did Not Finishes  - they are probably fine, just not for me this time.

I've read several of the Mike Ripley Albert Campion stories and enjoyed them but this one took ages to get anywhere, jumping between Campions job in the Second World War and his 70th birthday party and got a bit tedious. 

Sycamore Gap by L.J.Ross is the second in a series about DCI Ryan - I read the first recently but this story annoyed me. There is still a high up policeman involved in satanic rights and lots of cover ups and plotting to kill other policemen - No - couldn't be bothered.

The Last Green Valley is fiction but based on real events and follows a family fleeing Ukraine and the Russian advance during  WWII and I know would have been an excellent story to read but too sad. I can't do sad anymore and much too close to real events happening now. I don't want to read books that make me depressed even if that means I'm a wimp and not facing reality.

I'm now reading the second of the two in the photo by Donna Leon, then there are plenty to read from my own shelves.

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Thank you to everyone for comments about the mini sink pond, it's something I've tried in several homes and usually attracted in a few frogs. It's not in a the place in my small garden that I would have preferred but anywhere else and it would have filled up with leaves during the autumn, and the slabs will be round the sides to keep the grass from growing close to the sink so I can keep it mown.

Back Tomorrow

Sue

Peppers and Pond

 Two more peppers, sliced and  put into the freezer. If the other plants hadn't have been nobbled they all would have looked like this. There is one pepper left which I'll use fresh this week. I only grew this pointed variety this year but next year I'm planning on growing some of the orange block shaped ones that I grew last year, because having  all one sort is a bit boring.

I used the one remaining green pepper, my one small butternut squash, an onion, some potatoes, a courgette and chopped small some of my  runner beans plus half a jar of Korma curry paste and a tin of coconut milk to make a pan of curry which divided into 5 portions for the freezer = about 70p a portion

This is the beginning of my small sink-pond, still a lot to sort out.  It will eventually have slabs and stones all round to hide the pond liner. I need something to put in it to allow critters to climb out and something to put across a corner for shade and then I'll get some oxygenating plants and some pond snails.  Need more stones too - I had a bag of white pebbles bought during lockdowns with the  

 intention of painting them and Granddaughter brought me a few round pebbles back from their holiday, Brother-in-Law donated a bucket full of flints that he had sitting around in his garden but lots more needed and they are not easy to find in this part of the country where we have no natural stone - only flints - which are usually small.

 Perhaps it will attract some frogs next spring......or not!

Back Tomorrow

Sue

One Little Book Bought

 This was the little book I found last month in the second-hand bookshop at The National Trust Property - Oxburgh Hall in Norfolk.   

 Henrietta's War by Joyce Dennys, which I'd read many years ago. It's a little fiction book of  'letters to a friend'  with Joyce's humourous illustrations, which I quickly re-read and will keep with my Home Front collection.

Joyce Dennys was born, in 1893, in India. The Dennys family relocated to England in 1896. Dennys enjoyed drawing lessons throughout her schooling and later enrolled at Exeter Art School. As she got older, her drawing took a backseat to the domestic and social duties of a mother and doctor's wife and she became increasingly frustrated. She voiced her frustrations through the character of Henrietta, a heroine she created for an article for Sketch. These writings were later compiled to form Henrietta's War, first published in 1985.

 Illustrated by the author. Purports to be wartime letters to a friend serving overseas, written by a doctor's wife who lives in a seaside town in Devon.

The  follow up  - 'Henrietta sees it Though' was also published by Bloomsbury. I read that years ago too.

Joyce Dennys died in 1991 aged 97

Back Tomorrow

Sue