A Just Between You and Me Weekly Link Round-Up

 

Ssshhhh... I don't want this to spread around, but this leg of mine has actually shown a lot of improvement lately (and I want it to stay that way). I think it decided to straighten up and fly right due to the appointment I have with a new doctor today. We'll see how it goes. Fingers crossed!

I've been minding my P's and Q's even though it's been annoying. I've spent a lot of time in my spruced-up reading and blogging space, and I've watched the young verdin (very small flycatchers) leave the nest in the top of the cactus outside this big picture window. I've watched a lizard climb up and down the cactus, too.

Speaking of the cactus, it was covered in blooms this year, something that's never happened before. (The senita is a night-blooming cactus, by the way, and I got a kick out of Denis going out almost nightly with his camera to keep an eye on it.) What we've been learning is that the huge Aleppo pine tree that died and was removed is a well-known water hog, so its demise has meant that the other plants on the property are getting more water than they ever have before. 

In the midst of my making plans for Albuquerque day trips next year before Left Coast Crime, I've also gotten a box of yarn for future afghans, and my seat at the picture window has gotten me acquainted with the comings and goings of my neighbors, which is a good thing. At least I can see and not be seen so I won't become known as the neighborhood curtain twitcher! And one last observation before I turn all these links loose: at around 4 PM every day, a hummingbird comes and hovers just above the ground between the fairy duster shrub and the cactus. I've learned that there tends to be a small colony of gnats that frequent that spot, so the hummingbirds are taking advantage of the extra protein. (Yes, the little jewels eat bugs, too.)

Enjoy the links!

►Books & Other Interesting Tidbits◄

• How does a book get adapted for television or film?
• Scientists create flat scored pasta that morphs into 3D shapes when cooked for more efficient packaging.
• A tale of witchcraft and murder in Jazz Age America.
• Who wrote it: Dr. Seuss or Roald Dahl?
• A new Oregon Trail game revisits westward expansion from the Native perspective.
• How black pepper won Europe from a tastier pepper.
• The rise of the millennial cozy mystery.
• How an eccentric old house allowed a writer to blur the lines between fact and fiction.
• Gilded Age parties were even wilder than you can imagine.

 

►Channeling My Inner Indiana Jones◄

• Runes found on a seventh-century cow bone could change Slavic history.
• How the Inca discovered a prized pigment.
• A rare silver coin portraying King Charles I was found in a field in Maryland. More from the Washington Post.
  
• Egyptian archaeologists accidentally discovered 250 ancient rock-cut tombs.
• A Vesuvius victim has been identified as an elite Roman soldier sent on a failed rescue mission.
• An enormous Roman shipwreck has been found off the coast of a Greek island.
• New archaeological research says that Greece's Parthenon temple had the wrong name for centuries.
• Archaeologists in Greece have found 3,500-year-old royal tombs.

 

►Channeling My Inner Elly Mae Clampett◄

• Egg-laying mammals and peacock spiders: meet some of Australia's weirdest creatures.
• Here are 65 animals that laugh according to science. More from Live Science.
  
• An estimated 50 billion birds populate the earth, but four species reign supreme.
• An engineer built an action film-inspired backyard obstacle course for squirrels plotting to steal birdseed.
• Seven of the most destructive invasive insects.
• Watch compassionate humans help a frantic mother duck rescue her ducklings from a swimming pool. (I have a pair of mallards stop by for a swim in mine each March.)
• Got some old socks? A Colorado company wants to turn them into cozy dog beds.
• A mouse deer born at the Bristol Zoo is the height of a pencil.

 

►The Happy Wanderer◄

• The late 70s and early 1980s heyday of Spain's Costa del Crime.
• The ten longest place names in the world.
• The three cities of Northeast England.
• The five mass extinction events that shaped the history of Earth, and the sixth that is happening now.
• Why a 200-year-old building in Morocco is the only National Historic Landmark outside the U.S.
• Ten incredible national parks in Africa.
• How Disney's Frozen may have solved Russia's Dyatlov Pass mystery.
  

 

►Fascinating Folk◄

• Runner Anna Rutherford says stock cubes helped her smash the record on a 212-mile run in Scotland.
• Eugenie Clark, the marine biologist who fought sharks' bad reputations as "gangsters of the deep."
• Female public defenders are unsung heroes. It's past time to change that.
• Eight proper facts about Jane Austen.
• Before he wrote a thesaurus, Roget had to escape Napoleon's dragnet.

 

►I ♥ Lists◄

• Books by Haitian and Haitian American authors.
• Twelve facts about the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum robbery-- the world's biggest art heist.
• Twenty-six cozy book nooks to burrow into next winter.
• Jane Fonda's reading list.
• Ken Jennings' reading list.
• Amy Tan's reading list.
• Gillian Flynn's reading list.
• Kamala Harris's reading list.

That's all for this week! Don't forget to stop by next Friday when I'll be sharing a freshly selected batch of links for your surfing pleasure.

Stay safe. Stay healthy. And don't forget to curl up with a good book!