How does my garden grow? by Barbara Edwards

I realized gardening can be compared to writing when I started my end of summer clean-up this week. Clipping the old stalks, moving plants to a better location, weeding out the weeds all reminded me of the editing I must do on my current book. I have to crop out unnecessary details, adjust the scenes to give a better plot flow and get rid of all those wordy extraneous phrases.

Let’s jump back. The garden/book started with a seed/idea. I needed to do research which can be compared to prepping the soil. Add a little fertilizer, digging up the dirt so the seeds can grow is like doing the necessary research 

Then spend the next months getting it to grow. 

I do check my garden daily. 

And I write daily. 

The garden often is doing better than my writing. Leaves get big and green, the flowers bud, and all I need to do is add fertilizer. Whoa. That’s not quite right. I get on my knees and weed to give my flowers room to spread. Certainly like going over my previous day’s work and chopping the junk so the story is clear.

The feeling of success when a flower blooms is like when I finish a scene and it works! My garden is a source of peace for me despite the work involved, another similarity.

What do you do that to break away from the stress of writing?

Please follow, friend or like me. I love to hear from my readers.

Blog http://barbaraedwardscomments.wordpress.com/

Website http://barbaraedwards.net

Facebook  https://www.facebook.com/BarbaraEdwards.Author

Twitter  https://www.twitter.com/Barb_ed

Amazon Author’s Page http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B003F6ZK1A

GoodReads http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/496095.Barbara_Edwards

I'm plant-cursed by Leah St. James

Despite the fact that I’m a native of New Jersey (the GARDEN state), where I used to have thriving vegetable garden, and a bed of hostas that threatened to overrun the neighborhood, I’ve rarely had success with potted plants. In fact, gifting me with a plant is usually gifting the plant with early death! I’ve even killed plants that have been left in my care, at home and at work. (I did give the owners ample warning. They just didn’t believe the severity of my plant care challenges!) 

I think the problem has to do with my ability to sense moisture with my fingers....I can’t. I mean, I stick my finger in the pot of soil, and I feel temperature, not moisture. People who have this ability get cranky with me when I insist I can’t tell if the soil is moist. “I just feel cold!” I’ll wail in the face of their skepticism. 

So I’ve learned to judge need for water by the weight of the pot. If it’s light (in relation to its normal weight), then it’s dry. 

Gift of hibiscus plant, 2014

Anyway, most of my friends and family know of this disability of mine, and they work around it. But about a year ago, I received a gorgeous hibiscus plant (see left photo) from someone close to me (who should have known better!). 

 After three or four months, under my well-meaning nurturing, it was near dead--droopy, mottled and infested with spider mites. (When I saw the little cobwebs between the leaves, I thought, “Wow, you really ARE a lousy housekeeper! Even your plants get cobwebs! And when I found out they were from bugs...ewwwwww. 

Photo representative of my plant's plight

I immediately quarantined it to keep the little bast—bugs from jumping onto its neighbor, my prized African violet...which I haven’t yet managed to kill. (Another success story I'll tell you about another time.) 

I was desolate, despondent! So I turned to Google and found a site that said the ONLY true solution to spider mites is to give the plant a bath. Yes, a bath...in the bathtub (something I hadn’t given myself, in the bathtub, that is, in years)! 

So off I went to bathe my hibiscus, expecting the poor thing would die a slow and painful death. But amazingly, it worked. Now look at it. It's growing like crazy! (Check out the yardstick measurement!) 

The other day  I was bemoaning the fact that although it seems really healthy now, there are still no blossoms...at which point I turned again to Google, and according to what I found, it might not be getting enough sunlight. So I put the plant on my patio during the day over the weekend, and it got a couple long days of soaking up the rays. No buds yet, but the leaves are brilliant green and shiny (and still not a “cobweb” in sight)! Maybe my plant curse has lifted, I thought!

This year I received a beautiful geranium from the same person who gave me a hibiscus. Flush (and cocky) with the success of the hibiscus, I decided to let the geranium do some sunbathing as well. After all, according to my Google research, they like the full sun, and they’re drought tolerant. 

But I think I’ve struck again! After one measly afternoon sharing the patio in the sun, the plant’s buds withered, and the edges of the leaves turned a sickly yellow. Some leaves turned completely yellow. UGH. And the pot felt really light. 

I immediately brought it back inside and turned to Google. It seems the yellowed leaves mean not enough water...or too much. Aaaaaaah! So I gave it some water, but I think it might be too late! So far it hasn’t recovered.

I give up. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the person who gave me the plant doesn’t ask about its health. Less than a week. This is a new record for me!

If you're the praying type, please add my plant to your list...it needs !

---------------------------------------

Leah writes stories of mystery and romance, good and evil, and the power of love. And her characters don't kill plants. To learn more, go to www.leahstjames.com.

Or you can visit her Pinterest page where she has a whole board dedicated to her dream yard. (Yeah, like that'll happen.) :-)

Gone with the wind ... and the rain

I've never seen My Favorite Year, so I'll be blogging GWTW, I guess. And this year, in my garden, it's not GWTW but GWTW: Gone with the Water.

Poor Iowa has suffered, like all places, from climate shifts, many of them (it seems like), in one week. Last year we had a wet spring then a mini-drought. The year before that was a flat-out drought. In 2008, there was massive flooding.

This year there's a good deal of rain. I did some major landscaping in 2012 and the garden is finally maturing. But with that comes what we didn't anticipate. We installed the garden in a drought year. Now that we're finally getting rain (sometimes a real gully-washer, as we say in these parts), parts of the garden are more like rivers. In particular, I have massive stone steps installed. The water appears to be running from the often-clogged drainage area (clogged with pollen and tree debris) onto the steps, which then become a waterfall.

Once the ground cover fills in around the steps, it will be fine, but we had a terrible winter last year and plants are coming in late. This picture shows that -- this is a June picture, and it looks more like early May. Usually by June, it's ALL green with splotches of color.

I've gone through several bags of mulch already this year, trying to keep dirt from washing away, but I think other measures will be required. So today, it's off to the garden center for a load of river rock to put around the steps and on the landing areas. It's not quite the look I wanted, but it beats hauling 50 pound bags of mulch around (yes, I do that on a regular basis).

Gardening always reminds me of the writing process. You think you have a book all plotted out, and BAM, something comes along and it takes a right turn (in my case, it becomes a waterfall). There's nothing you can do except be flexible and turn with it.

I had to do that with my latest release, out now from The Wild Rose Press. It's a past/present story and it took a LOT of rewriting to get it pared down to an acceptable size.I had to stay as flexible as a pretzel when it came to editing that one!

Back to the garden for some more work before it heats up for the day. We have a narrow window of opportunity here to enjoy the outdoors, so I'm taking advantage of it!

GBU: if you garden, you have it all

I'm in the Midwest and we're smack in the middle of Prime Garden Season. We don't get much gardening time here, so we jump in with both feet when it's here.

The good: oh, the colors! After a winter of gray, white, and brown, the pink, purple, red, yellow, green -- GREEN GREEN GREEN -- there can't be enough green after so much gray and white.

The bad: the wind. Is it just me, or is it windier now? It seems like every day there's a few hours of wind, which makes it hard to work in the garden (I'm trying to lay newspaper and cover it with mulch to keep weeds down but with this wind ...)

The ugly: Now that the snow is gone, I can see what winter has wrought. I have a heavily wooded property, and there are huge branches down, lots of weeds springing up, and a few trees that really should come down.

But you know ... if I just wait a bit, the greenery will hide all the flaws. I need to keep that in perspective. April and November are the Between Months, when flaws are easily seen. Once the snow comes and green comes in, flaws are hidden again.

I can wait.

J L
Summer book out now!

Needed Gifts from the Garden by Brenda Whiteside

I've had an absolutely unexpected month with sorrow and joy, frustration and accomplishment. I looked at the May topics and realized what's kept me going are Gifts from the Garden. But I need to make that plural - Gardens. My gardens come in several forms. I have a perennial garden, a vegetable garden and one of my publishers considers their authors a garden.

We moved into our home right after the first of the year. The house had been vacant for two years and the work it took to clean the place up has been back breaking. We have two and a half acres with fruit trees and a garden but of course it all had gone to weed.

So, like I said, this month has had its ups and downs. Spring descended on the northern prairie this month and the gifts helped make up for the downs. It's such a surprise to wander outside and discover perennial plants that I didn't labor over. A gift!

In the vegetable garden, asparagus popped up. What a surprise. Asparagus takes three years to get a good crop. How great the former owner planted them and how great Mother Nature was to keep them lurking and happily waiting for water. We have asparagus every other dinner.

And in my final garden, The Wild Rose Press garden, my latest book will release on July 4th. It's part of a series, The Honky Tonk Hearts. Other books in the series from other authors began releasing in April.

In my world, Spring has sprung and gifts abound.

Blurb:

Can there really be love at first sight?

Abigail Martin doesn’t think so. Unless the sexy redheaded stranger she wakes up with the morning after her best friend’s wedding is telling the truth.

Bobby Stockwood fell cowboy-hat-over-boot-heels for the brown-haired beauty, and married her in an impromptu wedding ceremony.  Now he just has to convince his new bride that the morning after can be the first day of the rest of their lives.

But just when Abigail starts believing the fairy-tale is real, she finds out exactly who Bobby is, and the walls of make-believe start crumbling down.

Excerpt:

A moan.

The man rolled to his back, kicking off covers.

Abigail gasped. Her gentleman visitor wore only a bow tie and black socks.

She crept to the edge of the bed. His face was turned away, further hidden by red curls hanging down the nape of his neck and onto his cheek. A visual sweep of the attractive body brought a smile to her face when she paused on his more than ample endowments. A true redhead. An encounter of this magnitude should be easy to remember.

Abigail smiled in spite of her throbbing temples. Inching closer, she nudged his boots aside with her foot and leaned over to see his face. Mmm. He smelled good, like rich leather and fresh cut wood. As she bent to get a closer look, Kirby, her sixteen-pound Siamese cat, entered her room and announced his hunger.

The visitor stirred, grasped her arm, drawing her down across his hips.

He rose up on his elbows and looked at her. “So, Abby, you’re a morning person, are you?”

Abigail launched off the bed, trying not to come into contact with anymore of the warm body than she already had. Tripping over the boots, she ended up sprawled on the floor. “Who…” She gulped. “Who the hell are you?”

Visit Brenda at www.brendawhiteside.com.

Or on FaceBook: www.facebook.com/BrendaWhitesideAuthor

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/brendawhitesid2

She blogs on the 9^th and 24^th of every month at http://rosesofprose.blogspot.com

She blogs about prairie life on her personal blog http://brendawhiteside.blogspot.com/

Gardens I have known

I'm one of those people who needs to have something to focus on. I need something more than my day job -- I want a challenge.

Before I discovered writing for publication, I discovered other things: needlework (made many an afghan, sweater, wall hanging, table runner in my day), painting (never was good at that), reading (I was always an avid reader, but I did some reviews). Then I found gardening.

At our first house in Pittsburgh we did some extensive gardening: retaining walls, new flower beds, front yard makeover. It was an odd yard since part was "up top" near the house and part was down a hill (if you've ever been in Pittsburgh, you know of what I speak). We couldn't grow up "down hill" because of shade, but I had fun trying.

Then we moved to Minnesota and I really got into gardening. I remade the back yard of our house into an English country garden. It took years to do because there was a LOT to do, but it was interesting. Put in a pond, made paths through the garden, tried different plants. I got a degree in Landscape Horticulture (AAS) and did garden designs and plans for friends.

Then I discovered writing. And alas, all other things were put aside. I work full time so my writing occupies all of my free time. But I still love gardening. So this year, I set aside some money and I hired someone to re-landscape the front of my house. I now have about 80% of it planted by the landscaper, with plenty of spots for me to add my own touches. I can't tell you how nice it was to watch guy after guy wheel past me with loads of mulch, dirt, rocks, etc. I remember doing all of that myself, and it was SWEET to watch somebody else do it.

So now I can garden and write. In fact, I can write IN my garden. I has the Happy.

If you want to see the garden, check out my Facebook photos (https://www.facebook.com/jayellwilson). I can't wait to get out there and write!

Start Gardening With Something Dead and You Won't Be Disappointed

Laura Breck

We live in a condo downtown, but we have a little dirt area surrounding our patio where we have plants. When we moved it, it was filled with a grungy collection of scratchy, overgrown perennial bushes that baffled me.

A few years ago, one of our neighbors suggested we rip it all out and start a rock garden. We tugged out the miscellaneous shrubberies and offered them to friends who have much more room for bushes.

We drove our SUV to the local landscape nursery and weighed in. (You drive onto a huge scale as you enter and they record the weight of your vehicle.) We spent hours cruising through the rock section. It's amazing how many different kinds of rocks there are for landscaping. We chose a stratified red and brown rock and spent another hour picking through the pile for just the right chunks. (Yes, we brought gloves, thankfully.)



The rock we chose is evidently very upscale as well as very heavy because when we re-weighed the truck on the way out, it cost over a hundred dollars for seven basketball-sized pieces of rock. There went our budget!

The next stop was at the garden center's perennial plant area. We looked at all the beautiful ground cover offered but when we added up the price for the number of plants we needed, it wasn't in the budget.

Until we found a discount table full of Dead Nettles. Hubby laughed, and said, "These you couldn't kill. They're already dead."

Ha ha. He's SO funny. Yes, I'm a plant killer. Not proud of it, but when greenery looks at me, it sees the grim reaper.

The plants were pretty. Variegated leaves and the promise of delicate white, pink, or purple flowers. Sold! We loaded up a couple boxes and got out of there for under fifty dollars. And with a shrug, we admitted that if they didn't work out, we could always replace them with something more expensive next year.

Six years later, we love them!

The cheap little plants have grown beautifully around the expensive rocks. They flower at various times during the summer. Our lawn care person even commented on how nice they are. And the best part is - they're alive!!!

So, the grim reaper of gardening has found her perfect match.

I'd love to hear what your favorite plant is, and why.

Happy Saturday!

Laura

LauraBreck.com
Secret Vegas Lives
Scandalous L.A. Desires
both available from Red Rose Publishing