Saturday, April 10, 2021

G is for Garden

 Well, while the word count continues to lag this week, I did manage to get a good start on the garden this morning.  It's a fair size. Had originally paced it off at about 30' x 8', but I think it may be more like 8' at the short end and 12' at the far end.  Am helping out with a local church community garden, so won't have to keep on top of the whole space by myself or take all the produce home to my aparment kitchen. Should be fun!  

My mom and sister were nice enough to give me an abundance of seeds to try and to help me design a lay out.  Here is the plan:



Also received an abundance of wonderful seeds in the mail from my friend Intisar.  (Another plug, her second book  in her Dauntless Path Series  Theft of Sunlight just came out!!!)

Got a bit of digging in the soil to plant several types of lettuce (little gem and a mesculun mix with red beet greens), french radishes, and prizm kale.





And worked at  putting up a bamboo teepee for the lazy wife pole bean seeds I'll plant in about three weeks.

There is enough bamboo to make a long  tent style A-frame  trellis at the far end for the several types of squash and cucumbers, but  my scissors wasn't strong enough to cut off the branches to clean the bamboo stocks up a bit.  Will need to come back later with a clippers and twine to work at putting it up.

At that point, thought I better make sure my back is going to tolerate the digging before I try my hand at too much more.  Having sudden flashbacks to two years ago when I dug a potato trench, only to have a back spasm severe enough I couldn't get out of a chair the next morning.  Oops.  

So headed back home and got to work planting seeds in  yogurt cups and peat pots. 



Planted seeds for  early white bush scallop squash, pattison golden marbre scallop squash, hasta la pasta squash, sugar crunch cucumbers, carmen peppers, Mary Yoder's heirloom tomato, pesto party basil, purple basil, genovese basil, and purple zinnias.

Still left to plant from seeds--  italian parsley,  a second type of kale,  moonglow yellow tomato, brandywine tomato, comfield pumpkin, and delicata squash. Plus an abundance of flowers--  celosius red, orange cosmos, marigolds 2020, and about ten other kinds of zinnias (unicorn, oklahoma ivory, lilliput, cupid, pink senorita, cut and come again, benary giant salmon rose, queen lime, and cactus chrysanthemum mix, zinnia 2020). The flowers will all go in an 3 foot by 8/10 foot area.

As plants from one of the other gardeners-  two broccoli plants and 1 kale plant (third type).  And need to track down seeds or plants for broccoli, cauliflower, and brussel sprouts for sowing later in the season, as well as seed potatoes.

Hopefully will turn this bare patch of earth into a hearty and pretty garden space!


Friday, April 2, 2021

B is for Brilliance

 B is for (Oh) Bother  Brilliance

Unless you are someone triply blessed by the divine (divinities? Elizabeth Gilbert's genie in the corner of the room?), the first draft(s) of written work often leave as many words on the cutting room floor in edits and revisions as make  it to the finished page in the final draft.  Most of us are not Alexander McCall Smith with a (consistent and)  successful 1500 word morning writing session today that gets published in the newspaper tomorrow, no further editing required. (*paraphrasing from a brilliant brilliant talk of his I heard a few years ago; of course the 30 seconds of pure demoralized hate-rage from a room full of wistful, wishful writers that followed these comments is also a pretty brilliant memory)

Amazing, blessed writers like that aside, most of us are more in the category of Kristin Cashore (who was awesome and brave enough to show pictures of what the draft stages of her book BitterBlue looked like with its seven original notebooks, followed by an eventual complete start over from square one) or my friend Intisar Khanani (who shows me some of her middle drafts and faithfully compares her final discard word count to her finished novel word count to see which one wins) whose fourth book The Theft of Sunlight just went out into the world.  As I am still in the "seven notebooks" stage of drafting my work into coherent stories, this is quite inspiring. Perhaps I too can one day pull a finished draft out of the morass of notebook page words... And perhaps so can you!

In the meantime, write on blog world friends. Only 24 letters to go.

Thursday, April 1, 2021

A is for Adventure

 In the spirit of bullet journal mini-sprints, I'm diving into the month of April as one giant fun creativity  reboot.  Not sure yet if the adventure will survive past the first week... but here goes my attempt to shake loose winter and writerly sluggishness and find my way back to the page.


Toos for the Adventure:


Bon Voyage, everyone!  and happy writing/creating this month

Monday, January 1, 2018

2018... A Time to Restart

It's been more than two years since I've found my way to the page, here in this space.  2018 seems a good time to pick it up again and see what it might become in this new year.

When I first started this blog, my focus was on writing prompts and finding my way to the page as I worked away at my (still unfinished) novel(s). As I move forward, I am not sure what will find its way to my posts here. There may still be the occasional writing prompt ficlet. More likely there will be thoughts on creativity, explorations of creating positivity portfolios, attempts at textile art, thoughts on my writing as I work at approaching it in new and more consistent ways. Time will tell.

A few books I am planning to work through this year  are:

  • The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron - a chapter a month
  • Outlining Your Novel by K. M. Weiland - with two fellow writing partners
  • Art Quilt Collage: A Creative Journey in Fabric, Paint, and Stitch by Deborah Boschert - with my mom and sister 
Everything else is up in the air on this beautiful, crisp, first day of January.

Welcome, and may you have a wonderful New Year filled with health, creativity, and joy.