pepper update, Tuesday 6/21/16

the poor mutilated seedling



closeup of the crime



its neighbors, now with protective stakes



the pepper fleet, shifted north



When I looked out my kitchen window this morning, I discovered that the squirrels had been at it again. And this time, it's not reparable: they'd snapped the poor leftmost pepper seedling in half, below all of its leaves (and even below the cotyledons). I do not have high hopes for the stem recovering, though I have watered it on the off chance of a miracle.

I staked the other two peppers that have suffered the most depredations. I have also moved the entire flotilla of pots a couple feet to the north, away from the mulberry tree. This means they will get less shade, but hopefully there will also be fewer fallen berries to tempt squirrels past the barrier of repellent spray.

Fucking squirrels.

(I have to say, though, that this particular spray is pretty shitty. Last year I used an Ortho brand product, which is probably full of poisons but smelled kind of sweetish before fading out of human detection and also worked reasonably well until autumn when the need to bulk up for winter overrode the squirrels' general revulsion. This year I'm stuck with Bonide Repels-All, and not only is it failing to repel squirrels, it reeks to high heaven of garlic and rotten eggs, and the stench lingers so strongly that it's stinking up my entire gardening cupboard. Yecch. Unfortunately Lowes and Agway didn't have any Ortho products, and getting to Home Depot is not logistically feasible without a car. *sigh*)

[[original Tumblr post, for when the embedded images inevitably break]]

wherein Liz reads more stuff

I have now read The King of Attolia and A Conspiracy of Kings (and most of the extant Queen's Thief fic on AO3, as one does), and yes, this was a good choice. This is a good series. :)

I hear book five (and possibly also six?) may be released either this year or in 2017? I certainly hope so! I very badly want to see more of these characters, and also learn how their socio-political woes turn out. (Plus that volcano, which is a Chekhov's gun if I ever saw one.)

I think, of the four currently published volumes, The King of Attolia is my least favorite. Which is not to say that I disliked it, just that while I was convinced that ( spoilers, I guess? )

Eh, perhaps these things simply happen in stages.

On a much more trivial note, I am slightly perplexed by one issue of nomenclature: namely, I can't tell whether some of Attolis's attendants (Hilarion, Lamion, and Ion) are meant to be three separate characters or only two. I genuinely have NO IDEA if Ion is meant to be a nickname, and if so, for which of those longer names. I mean, nicknames exist in this setting! Gen has one! So does Dite! On the other hand, there's a character (Nomenus) in CoK who seems to have Ion as his actual full given name, which Sophos takes at face value and directly equates to Ion-the-attendant.

I was unable to find a scene in which Hilarion and/or Lamion directly addressed or thought about Ion, or vice versa, so I can't clear the confusion up that way.

Is there any fandom consensus on that issue?