Good-bye, Robert B. Parker

With all of the information zooming around us at any given moment, it's hard to beleive that I missed an event which brought me such sadness. Robert B. Parker, the author of so many mysteries starring the quirky Spenser private eye, died in January of this year at his desk while writing.

I had no idea that he had died. I only found out last night after watching a Jesse Stone movie on TV, which was based on another character Parker had created. When I saw the dedication to him on the screen, I rushed to the compuer hoping that it was a relative of his who had died.

The Spenser books are some of my all-time favorites. I love the great dialogue, the friendship between Spenser and Hawk, and the interplay between the Boston PI and his girlfriend of many years, Susan.

I read that there are a couple of Spenser novels yet unpublished. Here's hoping that they come onto the market soon to give all Parker groupies one last outing with the characters they love.

It's hard to believe there will be no more novels written by this terrific writer. I hope he realized how much pleasure he gave to so many through his books. What a legacy to leave behind.

Good-bye, Robert B. Parker. We will miss you.

Yoo-Hoo, Birds!

Today we are awaiting the arrival of some of our bird friends to the new feeders we have hung from our upper deck.

They were all ga-ga over the seed we have been putting out, but today things are quiet. Guess they are taking it easy, getting used to the new feeders before they commit to a visit. That's the smart thing to do, and since I have begun dealing with birds, squirrels and the like, I have decided that they are much smarter than we would like to believe.

For one thing, the nasty blue jays have designed a way to get seed to their mates and friends. One of them perches on the feeder and knocks seed to the ground with his beak. It's much easier to eat it that way, although he may have to shoo a squirerel away from his bounty once in a while. For a blue jay, this goes with the job description.

Back from the Beach

We took a few days off to visit Ocean City, MD. It was warm and sunny and pretty much perfect. Since we were there during the "off season" -- typical for us -- there were not too many folks around. The Springfest celebration on the Boardwalk promised to bring bigger crowds and kick off the summer fun.

Beach vacations are some of the best kind. A lot of walking, shelling, reading, eating, ice cream and then repeat. I got a little reading done including starting Anna Karenina, which is proving to be a very LONG book. But I will keep at it and shoudld finish sometime this year!

Making a Rain Garden

When I heard about a class in installing rain gardens, I was intrigued. It sounded so pleasant, so relaxing; the makings of a spot to sit and drink lemonade and commune Thoreau-like with nature.

In reality, a rain garden is something you create to capture excess rainwater on your property to keep it out of storm and sewer drains for many good reasons, including reducing the threat of flooding.

My property does not lend itself to making a shallow depression in the ground and planting deep-rooted native plants and grasses to hold onto the water as it is slowly absorbed into the ground. But as is often the case, if you can't do one thing, you can do another, so I will look for other ways to help reduce runoff and keep it out of the small creek at the bottom of our large hill which often oveflows its banks when we have heavy rain or snow melt.

Thoreau would have liked that.

Like an Aster, You May be a Late (Retiring) Bloomer

Guest Blogger John Brady:

As a successful Baby Boomer, you’ve worked hard, raised the kids -- and most importantly -- learned valuable lessons about life along the way. Retirement will be here soon, and it should be an autumnal blast of beauty and joy in your life, much like asters bring your garden back to life in the fall.

Retirement could be your second chance on life -- if you spend some quality time thinking about what you want out of this next phase of your life. But, if you don’t make that investment, your retirement could fizzle. Even if you have worked hard all your life, a beautiful retirement is not guaranteed by what you have done so far.

I write a lot about the best places to retire on my website, www.TopRetirements.com, which has a lot of resources to help you find where you should live in retirement. The where question, however, is not the only decision you have to make in retirement. For an enjoyable and satisfying retirement you must also answer the when, why, what, how questions. Planning, evaluating your options, and ranking your priorities will greatly increase your likelihood of success in retirement.

Anyone can skip this planning process and still enter retirement. The problem is that if you haven’t done the right spadework, you might miss your chance to bloom in the third season of your life.

To help get you started on your personal planning process, I have prepared an article that explains the most common retirement planning mistakes that people make. (Teri was once kind enough to link to it in her wonderful newsletter). Although the article concentrates on the negative, you will easily see how to turn those common errors into positive choices, taking the steps to achieve a happy and fulfilling retirement.

Spend a few hours planning and discussing your retirement with your significant other and you can effectively start your life over again, becoming a late bloomer like that beautiful flower, the aster.

Earth Day, Libraries and Free Jewelry

I have always hated waste. I try not to buy too much or too little, but like Goldilocks, try to find what is just right. That's not always easy to do, as we all know, but it's a worthy goal.

Since the world is now so focused on going "green," attempting to be just right has become a way of life. Sitting at a board meeting for our local library one night this week, I realized that libraries, so often threatened by budget cuts, are the ultimate green spaces. As we honor Mother Earth today, we should extend that to our libraries where being just right is an everyday thing. Want to read a book? Borrow it and return it, no waste involved, no cost either, another glowing tribute to our library systems.


In honor of Earth Day, I will be giving away two Bead for Life bracelets through this blog. These bracelets -- fashioned from recycled paper by women in Uganda who are now able to make a living wage through their labors -- are lovely and a terrific use of recycled resources. To enter to win, simply send an email with your mailing address to tkflatley@gmail.com.
Happy Earth Day!


Congrats, Jade, on winning the contest! Your beads will soon be on their way.

Twitter Times Two

Some days, you think you are zooming along on the Cyber Highway, thinking you've got everything under control. That is until you try to do something new and then it's a different ballgame.

I signed up for Twitter last week and when finishing up my profile I was told that my email and Twitter UN were already in use. But how could that be? It was me after all. So I redid the whole profile thing and got a confirmation that all of those details were good, only to find later that I now had two Twitter accounts.

I am not quite sure how that happened, but I guess what they say about it being easy to sign up is true.

So I am sticking with the second UN -- twitter.com/boom_this -- since that one has the most tweets and followers so far. Who am I to mess with success, no matter how small?