With a Bang!

Last week I turned in the manuscript for the novel I've been working on. Hoorah! It was a big, serious push to get the last of the revisions and proofreading done, but it felt wonderful to turn it in.

Something else fun happened last week: I had a poem come out in my favorite online magazine: the Lovecraft eZine! The piece is called "Not With A Bang, But Waves Whispering," one of the first poems written during last year's three months of I'm-writing-a-poem-a-week. I created a lot of poems and poem fragments during that time, and it's fun to finally be able to share one with people.

I've had almost a week off from writing, but I still feel pretty mentally fatigued. I have a short story to revise, but I'm not actually getting anywhere with it--it's a complicated piece, and I'm a bit nervous about wrecking it while I'm in this lunkheaded mode. On the plus side, we've been having a lot of great weather so I've been outside working in the yard a lot! At least it keeps me busy when I might otherwise be frustrated about the whole no-writing business.

This weekend is H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival & Cthulhucon. Is there any better weekend of the year? I don't think so! I can't wait to go catch up with all my favorite Lovecraftians and gorge myself on awesome movies. It's going to be a blast!

Given my obsessions this week, I'm hoping somebody nice will send me a print of this fun painting by Ursula Vernon:

"Garden Cthulhu", by Ursula Vernon

I might just have to buy it for myself, since it's so perfect for me!

Gardening and revisions

Roseraie a Wargemont, by Renoir (public domain, via Wikimedia)

As you can see from this magnificent painting, roses demand a certain amount of structure. Having never owned any roses before we bought our house, I knew roses should be pruned, but I thought it was sort of optional. A light grooming activity, like dead-heading.

Then I realized one of our rose bushes was falling over.

It's a big, older rose bush, probably dating back to the early 70's (it's an Apollo tea rose, still bearing the metal tag nurseries used to use in the pre-plastic-everything era), and last summer it looked magnificent. It grew--intentionally, I believe--with a decidedly left-leaning slant, its large branches spreading an arch of yellow flowers over the birdbath. It smelled wonderful, and grew to about ten feet tall. It became my absolute favorite plant on the property.

I did some trimming in February, cutting back about a quarter of its height and removing a lot of canes that were dead or criss-crossing other branches. When we cut out one big, awkward cane, we actually saw the bush stand up taller. It was amazing to see, and very encouraging.

But yesterday, while I was weeding around the bush (the whole back yard is heavily overgrown with crab grass, bindweed, and blackberries, which are now beginning to jump into serious spring growth), I discovered what had been hidden beneath the winter's leaves and dead grass: a fissure running most of the way around the rose's root line. On the side opposed to the lean, the fissure is wide enough I can stick my finger down inside it.

Needless to say, I will stake this rose and do some more pruning. I will try to fill in the fissure with enriched soil to protect its roots from the questing weedy encroachers. I will keep my fingers crossed. But mostly I will feel a bit guilty that I didn't cut it back sooner. I know it was neglected for about two years before I came to live with it, but if I had gotten around to clearing out some of the weeds last summer, I might have realized that a serious problem was developing.

I can't help but see a correlation between rose maintenance and revising my novels. When working on a novel, it's important to establish a larger shape that you keep to, but don't allow to become overblown. Secondary plotlines and confused character arcs can weigh down that structure, and if you haven't made it strong, they can pull the whole story down upon itself. But of course, it's hard to see all of this happening when small issues--badly paced scenes, poorly turned phrases and the like--obscure the bones of the piece.

The novel sitting on my beta reader's desk has a big advantage over the novel sitting on my own: its outline was carefully examined by my editor and tooled into a strong scaffolding for the work. That outline went through several drafts before I even started writing. The other novel had an outline that I developed quickly and revised haphazardly as I wrote the first draft. It has lots of structural problems because of that, although a lot of awesome actions scenes hid those problems from me as I was writing. (What? Actions scenes can really kick up a book. If there are enough cool fight scenes, I might not even notice the vampires are sparkling and the boyfriends all suck!) Now I have a lot pruning, staking, and restructuring to do as I revise.

But at least that novel isn't going to fall down--or be swallowed up by bindweed, which lives on in the soil for 3-5 years. In this case, writing is far, far more satisfying than gardening.

Scared by the garden

I stepped out into the side yard today and took a look at my winter- and chicken-ravaged garden. YIKES! It's a disaster out there! Soil all over the place (because one old planter finally burst its seams and leaked dirt everywhere); chicken doodie landmines under every step and jet-launched leaves strewn about like the Nordstrom lingerie section after a white sale. Oof!

What is everybody else doing to get ready for the spring growing season? I haven't even glanced at any seed catalogs yet this winter!

The Week of Massive Productivity

My online writing group dubbed this THE WEEK OF MASSIVE PRODUCTIVITY. So far, I'm off to an okay start. There are some deadlines coming up in my world, so I've been cranking up my editorial minioning, and last night there was a surprise request from the cover artist assigned to the cover of Her Dark Depths, so instead of writing, I spent a chunk of time trying to figure out important details like my heroine's shoe style. (Heroine: boots. Villainess: gladiator sandals.) Tonight I'm just catching up on the blogging universe, because HEY! it's important, too. Sometimes I miss luxuriating over a good blog entry.

Another thing I haven't spent as much time on lately is my garden. But I got caught up this weekend. I even took out the worm bin and harvested the (really incredible mound) of worm casings. I like to harvest the casings the lazy way: tip out the bin onto a sheet of cardboard and leave the mound of casings out in the sunshine for a while. The worms crawl down to the bottom, leaving a top layer of uninhabited poopy goodness.

I was puttering away, planting some fall kale and waiting for the worms to settle, when I realized I needed to refill my watering can. Coming around the corner, I startled a number of sparrows from the bird feeder. It put a big grin on my face. Oddly enough, the sparrows didn't fly up into the trees when they saw me--they landed on the neighbor's roof, lining up on the rain gutter and staring down at me as I worked. The sound of their little claws on the metal gutter made my neck hair prickle.

After a few minutes, the birds went back to the feeder, and I finished with the kale and chard. And a connection fired in my beleaguered brain. Why had the sparrows been watching me so carefully? And why were they chirping so happily on the other side of the house, as if they were eating something especially delicious? Something uniquely tasty and squirmy?

I darted around the corner, startling seven sparrows from the mound of sunning worm poop. One fluttered around the inside of the actual worm bin, scooping up one last red wriggler who'd been hiding in the corners. The sparrow at least looked embarrassed to see me.

I hurried to return the worms to the safety of their bin, begging Sweetie-Pie & the Midget to help with the refilling process (I needed a lot of shredded newspaper). The birds settled onto our roof in the hopes we would abandon the delicious worms, and after a few minutes began to protest mightily. I felt a moment's remorse. After all, the worms might be my very useful friends--but sparrows are adorable!

I hug spotted owls

I just chased a cat off my doorstep after it behaved in a most intolerable manner: it started nibbling on my mint plant. This was after it had already spooked my most regular visitor to the bird feeder, a blue jay who will warily let me get within five feet of it, and whom I've named Gobbler. (He eats a lot.)

I spent yesterday afternoon playing catch-up in my garden, and it was much needed. I usually head out to my containers--we don't have an in-ground garden, merely about a dozen planters Sweetie-Pie has built, discovered or bought--in about mid-February. At that time of year, I mulch, I clear, I dream. I usually get everything organized for some extreme seedling work in March, when I turn stacks of egg cartons into soggy make-shift greenhouses. But this year, I've been so focused on writing that I've neglected the garden.

This is strange for me, because nature is the touchstone of my creative world. From a toddlerhood spent on a farm, believing the animals were just extensions of my family, to a childhood hiking in the woods and falling in love with plants, I loved every living creature. It was hard to be a sensitive kid quite certain that trees were sentient, magical creatures when I lived in a region supported almost entirely by logging, lumber processing and paper mills. It was even harder in the 90s, when the entire West Coast was rocked by clashes between the timber industry and ecology activists. If you've read The Legacy of Luna, Julia Butterfly Hill's story of a tree-sit in this incredibly heated time, you have a sense of the entire region's tension and raw emotion.

I think growing up like that really colored my life. For one, I spent the last ten years fascinated by green progress and activism. I've been in my share of protests and letter-writing campaigns--enough to make me a little bit cynical and a lot exhausted. I'm a composter, gardener, and hankie-user. And when I write, I write things that, obviously or not, refer to nature. For example, "Peace Signs," the piece I keep bragging about, comes out of all the hysteria of those early 90s times. Especially living as close to Eugene as we did, there was a sense that the ecology nuts would do anything to win. They didn't care who they hurt or what collateral damage they inflicted to kick timber industry ass. (Obviously, I'm just describing what I thought I heard and understood as a child. I'm not actually condemning anyone who fights for the environment.) Deep down, I always wondered what would happen if they did--and that story is set in the world of that wonderment.

Another writing issue I have is that when I write about magic, it's usually an earth-based magic. I don't have much interest in other kinds. (Well, okay, unless you're talking about evil blood-magic, drawn out after midnight by the light of candles made from the fat of a hanged man ... bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!) I'm wrapping up the final draft of a story that's about earth-magic users, and I'm loving it. In fact, I love it enough I think I've gotten an idea for another book! Now, if I could just come up with a plot to go with the set-up...

Blog before I go

Well, the plants are mulched and watered (that was a workout, believe me), most of the bags are packed and the garbage is emptied. Yep, we're ready for vacation. I'm pleased and only a touch nervous. Pleased to get underway and to see my mom, and nervous about keeping two kids occupied on a 7-hour car trip. And keeping my dad from driving me insane during our 3-day visit.

And nervous that my teenage niece will actually water my babies. I mean, the pumpkin is starting to turn orange! The melons are getting bigger! The tomatoes are the size of my fist and showing sunset colors around the stems! Can my lovebugs survive without me?

Whew. Enough drama. I'm going to gather up my dulcimer strings and prepare for my father's irritation with my lack of practice.

Uno & Jerusalem artichokes

Sorry the last couple of days have been so quiet, but my brother has been in town, and I've been busy playing Uno like a fiend. Uno is a great family game--we play it with evil rules when we play at night, and easy rules when we play with Fi. She's getting pretty good at it, too!

It's pretty hard to get worked up about gardening while it's pouring torrentially, but I found some Jerusalem artichokes at New Seasons the other day, and I am going to plant them tomorrow. I tried in the fall, but something kept digging them up, and then one day they were just gone. Darn squirrels! I hope these do a little better, because Jerusalem artichokes are pretty tasty in their own weird way.

Closing the loop

Today it was time to transplant my baby garbonzo bean plants out of their egg shells. (We save the halves of our egg shells and put them back in the egg carton to make a no-mess seed starting pot. It beats the heck out of those peat pellets, which are environmental nightmares!) It's too cold to put their fragile selves outside, so I just took a couple of Trader Joe's Graham Cracker boxes, filled them with potting soil and a special amendment, and then popped the little egg cups full of baby plants into the dirt. Okay, first I squeezed the egg shells so they would be full of cracks and holes at the bottom, giving the plants' roots plenty of places to creep out and find their new soil.

That special amendment? Worm castings! I finally got enough worms out of one end of the bin to harvest the castings today. I've been feeding only the front end for about three weeks now, just waiting until I needed some delicious compost. It looked like pipe tobacco, a rich warm brown, and smelled nice, very earthy. Not stinky at all! Then I threw down some more bedding and rotated the bin. I'll be ready to collect the next half in a couple of weeks, and then I'll let it hang out for a few months, building up matter.

I love my worms!

Seed Catalog

It's officially seed catalog season, friends! I keep finding myself going through mine, over and over, visualizing this year's garden. Could I really put in enough stakes and strings to support all those beans? And how much space does a zucchini plant need, really? Visions of weird lettuces and obscure herbs are dancing in my head.

I can't wait to get planting! In fact, now that I know that Everybody's Garden Center has moved, and is now only ten blocks from my house, I just might pick up some grow lights and start spring early!