Read The Attack of the Killer Rhododendrons for Free Online

you haven’t lost your taste for shellfish, wash your dried blood off the knife and cut the fleshy bits from the shell. Check for particles of shell and sand, and place the flesh back in the deeper half of its shell, resting on ice. You will be pleased to know that the juices that oozed out of the oyster while cutting it open, known as liquor, can be strained and then poured over the meal before serving. I am told, although I can scarcely believe, that etiquette now requires you to swallow the oyster whole. Enjoy your meal.
    O N SOME LEVEL, the wedding celebration suffered from its own success. Bini and Arjan are friendly and affable enough as individuals, and are even more engaging as a couple. Between them, the happy pair amassed a guest list of 200. To their surprise, most of this throng wrote back to say that they would be delighted to be part of the happy day in Stavoren, which promised to swell the population of the small town considerably. Beyond us, the guest list included friends from Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, France, Sweden, the United States, and Scotland.
    Bini had planned the day to within an inch of its life, and hadmade it clear that nothing good was going to happen to anyone who dared to show up late. There was to be a general welcome at noon, complete with pre-sailing drinks, followed by a boat trip on the IJsselmeer departing promptly at 12:30 p.m. Anyone who was late would be required to swim to the boat.
    A furious wind had turned the great freshwater sea to foam, and so we sailed up and down the Johan Frisokanaal instead. Two boats were needed to accommodate all of the guests. It must have been down to some Dutch naval regulation, but having boarded one boat, we were absolutely not, under any circumstances, permitted to jump between boats, so just forget it, cowboy.
    Wedding celebration day was also Nationale Molendag (National Windmill Day), on which about 600 of the nation’s 1,000 windmills were opened to the public. Surprisingly, no one that I spoke to on the cruise seemed to know this. It was also Landelijke Fietsdag (National Cycling Day), but I didn’t bring this up, fearing that the other guests would take me for one of those know-it-all trivia freaks. The canal was orderly, tidy and straight, with some very straight and tidy locks. By Canadian standards, the wedding party itself was far too tidy and straight. In Canada, a group like this would soon have descended to throwing beer glasses into the canal and peeing over the rail, and I briefly contemplated holding up my end by mooning passengers on a passing sailboat.
    The day’s celebrations continued at de Potvis, a restaurant named after the sperm whales that were hunted in the region in the past. Not itself a behemoth, the restaurant was clearly not designed to serve as many people as Bini and Arjan counted among their friends. The venue might have been able to seat us all if we had been able to spread onto the patio, but a cold wind and drizzle kept us inside. I ran out of small talk rather quickly. I faced the difficulty of speaking to persons struggling to use English as a second (or third or fourth) language, while trying to smother my embarrassment at speaking only one. I spoke with a teacher, a computer programmer, a bioengineer, an investment banker, several retirees, a dental prosthetics specialist, and a startling number of gynecologists. I askedone of them what made somebody decide to become a gynecologist. She said, “It’s mainly about the babies.” “So, you don’t wake up one morning and decide that your life doesn’t have enough vaginas?” Her glare reminded me that I am not nearly sufficiently genteel to be European.
    P ARTY TIME WAS OVER. It was time to seek oysters in the Wadden Sea. Stavoren, also known as Starum, is in the
súd westhoeke
region of Friesland, also known as Fryslân. To the residents of Holland, also known as the Netherlands, everything is known as something else. Getting to Stavoren