greenhouse

Cleaning. Sorting. Living the Dream.

It’s been the usual mad dash between seasons here. The weather has been lovely. I’ve done chores that need to be done before summer ends leaving Husband with time to work on the upper greenhouse.

I began pulling up the rocks around the frog pond. It needs redoing like crazy and now we’re expanding the area around it. Who knows if it will stay above ground level when we have a hard rain, but if it does, what a lovely place to sit and watch dragonflies. So knock on wood…and stone, I guess…pictures may follow though, as I often do, I forgot to take before doing anything photos. This morning, I wasn’t aware I’d be moving rocks at all.

We had the first fire of the season last night. I choose to blame the occasion for my tardiness with this amazing post. “Amaze” in the sense of trying to fill you—the reader—with wonder or astonishment. I don’t know if it will work though. Let’s try an inkblot speed test. What do you see in the next two pictures as you scroll down to the next bit of text? Don’t linger; let your mind go…

What did you see? (You’re only getting an approximation of what I saw. The woodchip was far away; the dead bug, I espied through thick, unwashed window glass.) My mind leapt to flying creatures. An angel and the albino hay field fairy queen to be exact.

Along with those “What is that?” seconds of wonder, I also have personable vegetables this month. I cut into this pepper and not only did a round white thing roll out of it, but I saw this angry face. My only thought when the round white growth rolled out was “What now?”

A day later, this carrot that was far too sexy not to have a photo shoot showed up.

Writing has been ongoing and interesting. I was astounded to receive an email stating I made the longlist in Forge’s contest for a nonfiction piece. I have two stories coming out in Sledgehammer soon and BeZine took a story that received kind words at several places before being picked up. Thank you universe!

So that’s the news from here. I hope you’re doing great and that your town’s version of Ivanka and Jared never get you down. Cheers!

Draft #whatever is done, on to other things

Chyo has my book on her Kindle and she’s killing me by either not reading it or waiting to tell me what she thinks. Regardless, I’m not sending it to XO Man until I hear from her. That book has wrecked me, but I feel it’s over–at least for now so I’m off to write other things–including this blog post which is a week late–mia culpa. I was in an editing/polishing zone and I really couldn’t break free until just the other day.

Everything was left to slide, including the garden. Yesterday, I spent most of the day out there and was pleasantly surprised that the minor love I’ve been giving it is paying off–the weeds aren’t out of control and the slugs haven’t devoured my pepper plants as of yet. I hate those slugs. They have an entire yard to graze upon but year after year they hunger for my poor peppers.

The irises have come and gone, but today, two of the peonies were in bloom. Here’s one:

peony

The baby pines either thrived or died. I don’t know, it was bad timing when those saplings arrived. I’m grateful my brother-in-law was here that weekend to help with the planting. This one is the best looker of the remaining bunch:one

And the wisteria is beginning to bloom:

two

Otherwise, it’s a hot sticky day and the last of the plants in the greenhouse were taken outside so I’ll probably clean that room, maybe finish Gina Miani’s Avalon, get further into Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch. Hell, I might even start a story for The Molotov Cocktail Monster Flash contest. Maybe I’ll even paint.

Thanks for checking in!

 

(*These are my Creekside Reflections. Your experiences may vary.)