Disclaimer by Renee Knight

Disclaimer by Renee Knight

This turned out to be a thriller/suspense novel that I couldn't put down !!

Catherine, the main character in this story, has  a long-time secret that she has kept hidden for years from anyone. 
One day a book is sent to her and she finds on reading the book that it is telling her secret  and that the Book is specifically about her. Who is the author of this book? and why are they doing this? Only one other person knew about her secret and that person is dead.
As she tries to unravel the mystery and why this is happening, both her husband and son become involved and get to read the novel.  Eventually Catherine believes she knows who is at the bottom of this and intends to find out  and do something about it as her life fully unravels.

Much more complicated than some thrillers I have read and  definitely a page turner.

Challenge painting- Easter Bunny Dress-Up

Challenge painting- Easter Bunny Dress-Up

Water color 8"x 10"

I can't say I liked this challenge very much.I just couldn't get interested in the subject. The pose was good, the colors varied , but I found the composition complicated and muddling ( Is that a word?). 
I decided to close in on the subject to paint but even then I wasn't that happy with the result. But I did it .
I think the other artists on http://paintanddrawtogether.blogspot.com/  must have felt the same way as there were only 5 entries this month.See the other entries on the link.

Original challenge photo

Then again, it might be it's summer and there are plenty of other things to do!

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.

This is a book I picked up at a book sale and it has been on my bookshelf for months if not years! Flicking through the pages I had picked it up one or two times previously but never got round to reading it. It didn’t look too interesting.

Then one evening I was going to bed and I always read last thing in bed and hadn’t a book that I was reading, so I picked up this older book.( pub. 1998)

Well, what a surprise it was! I got hooked pretty quickly on the plot line and in fact found it a very interesting book. Just one of those books you can’t put down.

Here is a start to get you interested.

In 1958, a very devout, evangelistic, Baptist preacher decides his calling is to be a missionary so he takes his wife and 4 daughters to the Belgian Congo.They are all quite unprepared for this adventure. The girls don’t particularly want to go and even the mother is apprehensive but Father say so and so of course , that's what happens.

They eventually arrive and find the small amount of modern things they have bought with them are not much help in the jungle. They have to learn to adjust to a new land, new food, and a new language. Father knows best  but isn’t learning to adapt as well as his young daughters. Mother quickly resents being placed into this setting and having to work so hard and struggle with day to day living. What follows in the book is the story of their lives in the three following decades  plus the events of historical importance with the split up of the Belgium Congo to become independant and all the political disturbances that occurred. The family eventually all decide to go their own way but the telling of their story is fascinating and well told.

it was well worth reading.

A Plant Unknown.

A Plant Unknown.

Sometime in early Spring, like February or March, I was wandering around my garden checking to see if there were signs of early Spring flowers and I saw this one growing. It was like a spiky green rosette.

There were actually 4 of them growing among the dead leaves.
I asked around, checked various plant photos books and even the internet but couldn't get any conclusive answer to "What is it ?"

IT looked remarkably like the lantanas sprouting up everywhere at the same time but even so -different.
I watched it grow through the following months, and grow and grow and grow and soon it was taller than me.

 It was still green and whispy with delicate fine leaves but at the top blossom was forming.






And then it  popped! 

It produced the most beautiful bright cardinal red colored flowers and now I could really look it up in the plant books.
It is a standing cypress plant that grows wild in Texas. Just lovely.
I just wish I had more planted.Only one has bloomed so far.

Next fall I will look for the seeds and plant many together , even if I have to wait for a couple of years to see them bloom again.

Ipomopsis rubra (L.) Wherry

Standing cypress, Texas plume, Red Texas star, Red gilia

The stiff, unbranched, 2-4 ft. stem of this sparsely leaved biennial can reach 6 ft. Showy, red, tubular flowers, widely flaring at the rim, are marked with orange or yellowish spots inside. Flowers are arranged in a thick spike, opening from the tip of the stem downward.

The Beautiful Larkspurs.

The Beautiful Larkspurs.

 Anyone who has read my blogs will know just how much I love larkspurs. 

I guess I like them because of their lovely colors, all different tones of purple and blue, pink and white. They grow very easily, indeed some would say, too easily, and a few seeds will give a good show in your garden, They are fairly tall especially if they get lots of water in the spring , last a good couple of months in bloom and make it look as if you actually know something about gardening !!

 So they are great for a beginning  gardener, who like to potter around in welly boots and old hat and shirt, try new things to grow and be outside in the sun , listening to the birds and relaxing. ( My kind of thing).

I didn't realize how well larkspur would grow when I threw my first seeds out in the garden a couple of years ago.I also didn't realize the amount of new seeds they would produce each year. I thought when I had pulled up the old plants when they had finished blooming  that  was the end of my beautiful flowers.  But indeed not. As the bloom fades, the seeds form and shoot out all over the area but the plant continues to produce more flowers so little do you realize that you are getting quantities of seeds falling all over the place. 

Where I once had a grassy lawn( that was a joke- more like a weedy patch of assorted green growing stuff) this year I have a vast array of larkspurs.

And guess what ...
I LIKE IT!

Kitty and the Book

Kitty and the Book.
I had forgotten to add this one to my blog page even though I think I had put it on Facebook.

This is the painting I did for the Monthly challenge a while back. The challenge was "A Book".
I thought of doing a still life of a book but that didn't seem very interesting. Then I thought of a book  laying wide open with sketches over it showing the subjects within the book but that looked like it was going to be difficult to do.
My cat is always jumping on my lap when I start reading  and at the same time I saw on the computer all kinds of photos of cats and books so that gave me the idea to show a cat looking over a book and this was the result.
All the other artists seemed to like it but then usually everyone loves kitties and if you have a cat , you will know they all seem to want to share your book !!

The Alphabet House by Jussi Adler-Olsen

The Alphabet House by Jussi Adler-Olsen

I often read books by Scandinavian thriller- mystery writers so when I saw this one at my local library I knew I was in for a good read.

This novel varied from the usual type of thriller that I have previously read and it seems like a WW 2 military story at the start. 
Two close English friends, pilots Bryan and James are on a photographic mission over  Dressen, Germany  They are shot down and escape in a passing German hospital train.

They take the place of 2 German patients, by throwing them off the train and lie low only to find out that this is a train reserved for taking wounded, mentally, disabled German soldiers to a sanatorium hospital deep in German territory.They realize that their own chance of not being discovered, is to fake illness or insanity, they know that escape will now be much more difficult.

Their plight becomes even worse as they are subjected to a routine of drugs, electric shock treatments and other experimental medicine. Also Bryan doesn't understand any German so he has to pretend he is a deaf mute.
Then the situation deteriorates as other patients are also “malingerers” on the ward, trying to escape fighting in a lost cause. Communication between the friends becomes almost impossible. James rapidly becomes threatened and   uncommunicative even with his friend. Bryan, thought to be a high ranking SS officer is moved to another ward. and his escape plans are no longer an option to be carried out with James.

Brian eventually makes his own daring escape, making further enemies as he does so.
Here the story could end but now 30 years pass and Bryan, worried by unwanted thoughts and dreams, goes back to see if he can find out what really happened to James.

“ Did he really die when the sanitorium was bombed?”.
" What really happened to James?"

So now the mystery really begins and with it a complicated story of past memories and intrigue.

Difficult to read in places with horrific details, it holds the reader’s interest  with a good interesting story line and a very involved plot.