Library Notes
May 2, 2003
By Pansy Hundley, Librarian.
If we were to title this week's story, we would have to call it "Pansy and The Weed Eater -- Again".
I've been keeping up with the yard work pretty good, since the lovely time change. I've even gotten in a few walks since that change. When the yard, the weed eating and the clean-up allows time to walk.
The clean-up takes about as long as the mowing. I cannot throw that grass all over the street and walk off and leave it. I have to get it all swept up and picked up before I feel that I'm completely finished. Then it's all neat and nice and short and square and the next morning - overnight mind you - 350 dandelion blooms pop up all over the yard, having grown eight inches during the night.
I see from World Book that the early colonists brought this stinkin' dandelion to America from Europe. It's French name is "Lion's Tooth". I sure wish those seeds or the Lion had died on the ships coming over here.
This thing has a root on it three feet long and trying to pull it up or dig it up, just cultivates it. Hummm - must be a first cousin to Johnson grass.
I got through mowing on Monday afternoon last, rewound new cord on my trusty weed eater, got out my 900 ft. of electrical cord and started eating weeds. Not me, the weed eater!
It ate and ate and threw stuff, turned my legs and feet green and threw rocks to skin my legs. Operating as usual, except the cord decided to get all tight on the spool and would not move. I started to yank that spool out, the one you pull out to fuss at the cord. I pulled and pulled, looked at that silly thing and pulled some more. Nothing happened, spool would not budge. Of course, the screwdriver was in the house. I haven't made a tool belt yet.
I pried and pried and nothing would give. So I pried some more and finally pried it off. I still could not see why that spool would not cooperate. Contrariness, I presume. I did not break the thing, which is surprising.
I began again, or continued on, or whatever. I had finished the front yard and was just trying to stick the weed eater and half of me under a big bush, that should be called a tree, to cut all that stuff under it, when something happened to something. I pulled me and the weed eater out of that bush and it looked as though this feller may have died. The big guard that goes over the cutting part just fell off. Laid there on the ground, like a dead dog and I said "Hummmmm." Thank goodness all the front yard was done and the back yard would have to wait.
I've not had the time, the opportunity, the incentive or the mood to sit down in my office on the back porch and try to ascertain if that well-worked, grass-covered feller has, indeed, gone to that big garden in the sky or if it just turned and took itself off the handle.
Before the next "yard-session" I must do this. If this yeller-feller has, indeed, passed on, then I shall have to start checking sale papers for another one just like him.
There are my latest lamentations for this week, "Lion's Tooth" and weed eater. Let's just forget the whole thing for right now and read a book. Okay!
Jeffery Deaver has a new one!! It has this man, Linc, in it, and Amelia and his title is "The Vanished Man". Here it is.
"It begins at a prestigious music school in New York City. A killer flees the scene of a homicide and locks himself in a classroom. Within minutes, the police have him surrounded. When a scream rings out, followed by a gunshot, they break down the door. The room is empty.
Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs are brought in to help with the high-profile investigation. For the ambitious Sachs, solving the case could earn her a promotion. For the quadriplegic Rhyme, it means relying on his protegee to ferret out a master illusionist they've dubbed "The conjurer", who baits them with gruesome murders that become more diabolical with each fresh crime. As the fatalities rise and the minutes tick down, Rhyme and Sachs must move beyond the smoke and mirrors to prevent a terrifying act of vengeance that could become the greatest vanishing act of all".