Lifescapes

First rose

I'm guest-blogging today at Possum Creek Herb Farm. Come on over and join me. You can check out the schedule for the rest of the week here. Meanwhile, enjoy this Lady Banks rose, the first of the season here at MeadowKnoll. Isn't she a beauty?

Reading note: One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself, 'What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again? —Rachel Carson, A Sense of Wonder

Toad's litany

I cleaned out a small stock tank I was using to corral my collection of potted geraniums and found this guy, about 3" long. Bill says he's a Texas toad (Bufo speciosus) but after my experience with that little yellow butterfly, I'll leave the identification to you toad fanciers. It was a pleasure to meet him--and a reminder that there are whole worlds of creatures around us that live their modest lives from day to day without being troubled by wars or presidential elections or gasoline prices or subprime mortage debacles. They simply are, and are simply beautiful, whole, and entire to themselves.

From the sublime to . . . whatever. you might click on over to my guest post on Nature Woman, where I've included some NEW news in one of my comments. If you're a Sheila Dawson fan, you'll be interested. Just thought you'd like to know.

Oh, and there's still time to enter several of the drawings on my blog tour. Check them out here (deadlines in each post).

Reading Note: A day will come . . . when, after making progress upon progress, man will succumb, destroyed by the excess of what he calls civilization. Too eager to play the god, he cannot hope for the animal's placid longevity; he will have disappeared when the little Toad is still saying his litany, in company with the Grasshopper, the Scops-owl, and the others. They were singing on this planet before us; they will sing after us, celebrating what can never change, the fiery glory of the sun.--Jean Henri Fabre (1823-1915), The Wonders of Instinct

A big day in Pearland today--the annual Red Hat Literacy Luncheon. A big crowd, too--some 300+, all decked out in red and purple. Just love those Red Hatters! Great lunch , good conversation, wild and wonderful hats, and we sold lots of books (many thanks to Barnes & Noble)--all to benefit the Adult Reading Center of Pearland.   

While I was actually in Pearland today, I was virtually at Cozy Chicks. Tomorrow morning, I'll catch up on the comments there and also over at Cold Climate, Rosemary's Sampler, and May Dreams. Tomorrow (that'll be Friday, right? I'm losing track here) meet me over at Nature Woman. No guest-posting this weekend, but I'll give you another couple of preview peeks. Excuse me, but now I'm going to sit down and eat a late supper.

In bloom this week

                                                                                                                



                                                                                                                                                   

Hog plum (Prunus umbellata) in full bloom, decorated with a yellow skipper sulfur (thanks for the correction, Maureen!), slurping up nectar. Update: Troy, on the other hand, thinks it's this: "Southern Dogface or Dog's head butterfly Colias (Zerene) cesonia." No lepidopterist I, I welcome all identifications.

This pretty plum tree grows at the edge of our woodlot and always puts on a show at this time of year. On Sunday, Dolly, a rancher friend, brought me a jar of hog plum jelly and another of prickly pear and apple--and two Caribbean habanero pepper plants for Bill. He and Dolly are both chileheads. Me, I'll stick to hog plum.

Today, I'm guest-blogging over at Cold Climate Gardening, another gorgeous garden blog. (You're getting a tour of the best garden blogs in the country. You know that, don't you?) My topic: the first in a series of five posts on the herbs in the books. I hope you'll keep coming back until you've read them all! You'll find the Cold Climate link here, with the links to Monday's and Tuesday's posts.

Meanwhile, I'm driving to Pearland (south of Houston) later today. Tomorrow, I'm speaking at the annual Red Hat Literacy Luncheon, then driving back tomorrow evening. Please post your questions and comments on Cold Climate, and I'll check them out when I get back.

Oh, and a bit of good news. Nightshade was chosen by Mystery Guild as its alternate monthly pick! Look for it, all you Mystery Guilders.

Reading note. I never ask about sales. It’s better not to know. I feel like I write a book, I give it to my editor, then I go back and write another one. That’s what I do.—Alice Hoffman [Not exactly true for me. I like to know about sales. It's good to face the facts, whatever they are.]

In bloom this week

Passalong plants. Decades ago, Bill's friend Jimmy rescued a spadeful of these early white iris from the Campus Guild on Whitis, in Austin, where Bill and Jimmy lived while they went to college. The iris made three moves with Jimmy and Patti, and two moves with us. They're beautiful this spring, although the wind (gusting to thirty mph today) is hard on them.

I'm guest-blogging at Rosemary's Sampler today, with a post on foods and cooking in China's mysteries. Come on over. Oh, and be sure to enter the drawing. In addition to copies of Nightshade, we're selecting a grand prize winner from the names of those who've entered at least eight drawings. The tour calendar is here.

Reading note. I explore the terrain where I live through myself, myself through the terrain.--Barbara Gates, Already Home: A Topography of Spirit and Place.

And we're off!

I'm over at May Dreams today, the first stop on my fifteen-blog tour. Yesterday, Carol posted a lovely photo of purple crocus blooms and a lovely snippet of poetry by Charles Kingsley. Today, I'll be writing about the "Notorious Nightshades." Join us there, and be sure to toss your name in the hat for a free copy of Nightshade. You'll find the link cleverly buried at the end of my post. The calendar for the entire tour is here.

Gorgeous day

This is our Texas mountain laurel, which stands in for the lilacs we can't have here. I wait for it every year and love its grape Kool-aid fragrance. I started this tree (now about 8 feet high) from seeds I collected in Austin (from a planter in front of a now-defunct bank on Fifth Street) about twenty years ago. To my enormous surprise, all 36 seeds germinated and thrived and now live along our creek.

A perfectly splendid spring day here. Daffodils massed along the woods, redbuds arrayed in purple finery, anemones sparkling like stars in the damp grass. A trio of turkey hens stalked through the yard last night, clucking and trilling, and this morning, at dawn, I heard the gobbler’s wobbly, plaintive call. The hens lay a dozen eggs, but the predation loss is high. A researcher at Texas A&M University recently set up cameras beside turkey nests. Over sixty percent of the nests were destroyed by raccoons, foxes, and snakes. We raised chickens here for years, as well as peafowl, geese, and ducks, and I know from personal experience that it’s pretty darn hard to keep eggs safe. But there are enough survivors among the wild turkeys to keep the population growing. When I hear the gobbler calling, I know that turkey chicks—poults, they’re called—are surely in the offing. You've never seen a wild turkey or heard its calls? Go here for some nice photos and audio.

I've found a book networking site you might be interested in: www.goodreads.com. I'm doing a book discussion group there through April 11--you'll find a link on the "authors" page. Click on over and join us.

Reading note. I truly believe that to stay home, to learn the names of things, to realize who we live among . . . then I believe a politics of place emerges where we are deeply accountable to our communities, to our neighborhoods, to our home . . . If we are not rooted deeply in place, making that commitment to dig in and stay put . . . then I think we are living a life without specificity, and then our lives become abstractions. Then we enter a place of true desolation. --Terry Tempest Williams

Wild family

First bluebonnet

Coral honeysuckle

Hyacinth

Lichen

Reading note What a wild family! Fox and giraffe and wart hog, of course. But these also: bodies like tiny strings, bodies like blades and blossoms! Cord grass, Christmas fern, soldier moss! And here comes grasshopper, all toes and knees and eyes, over the little mountains of the dust.--Mary Oliver

Preview 5: Rosemary's Sampler and Crafty Gardener

The Rosemary House.   
I'm a lucky person. I've been to The Rosemary House, not just once but several times. I was a friend of Bertha Reppert (who built Rosemary House). And Susanna and Nancy (Bertha's daughters), have invited me to be their guest on their blog, Rosemary's Sampler. Lucky, lucky me.

Let's start with The Rosemary House, an herb shop in Mechanicsburg PA. You can read all about it here, and about the irrepressible and utterly delightful Bertha, and Susanna and Nancy, and the Reppert-Brill clan. (Herbs seem to run in this family's blood.) While you're visiting the website, check out the remarkable catalog of products, which run the gamut from dried herbs to herb blends and essential oils and books. If you're a fairy fancier, you'll find much to fancy in the Fairie Corner. And right next door to The Rosemary House (owned and run by Susanna) is the Sweet Remembrances Tea Room, owned and run by Nancy. China Bayles and Ruby Wilcox would feel right at home.

Susanna and Nancy have teamed up to write Rosemary's Sampler, their shop blog. To get an idea of the range of their interests, take a look at the "Quick Index" in the sidebar. Crafts, cookery, recipes, gardening--it's all there, all the wonderful things you can do with herbs. (Did you know that you can use chamomile tea as a fungicide for your seedlings?) I especially love the recent post about the Reppert teacup collection.

Here's what the sisters say about their blog: Susanna concentrates on the herbal aspect while she operates The Rosemary House, and Nancy,the owner of Sweet Remembrances, a private party place established in 1990, shares her interest in tea.  In an effort to continue their mother's love of all things herbal, this blog provides valuable information, offers recipes and ideas on how to incorporate herbs and tea into your life, and provides a glimpse into the world of two sisters, the hidden treasures in the garden and kitchen, and their families, continuing the tradition Bertha Reppert established 40 years ago.

I hope you'll visit both the shop and the blog, unique treasures in the world of herbs, and that you'll join me when I drop in on March 25 to blog about the food in the China Bayles mysteries.   

The Crafty Gardener

Now you're in for a visual treat--the extraordinary garden blog of a skilled blogger named Linda, who lives, gardens, and blogs in Ontario, Canada. And The Crafty Gardener (The Garden Side) displays just one side of this blogger. There's Sow Then Grow, which focuses on starting plants from seed. And there's the Crafty Side of this multi-talented blogger, showing off her knitting, crocheting, and fiber arts. (If you're wondering, when does this lady sleep? it's a question I'm asking myself!)

Linda has been blogging as Crafty Gardener for a few years now. "My blog started out," she says, "as a place to document what flowers were growing and what birds visited the gardens, and a place to show off my whimsical garden decorations. But now it is a place to share my latest photos and make contact with gardening friends world wide. My regular visitors are always checking to see what else I'm creating. I'm sure that blogging has helped me improve my photography skills as I'm now fascinated by the macro setting and the zoom settings on my cameras and I'm always on the lookout for my latest blog topic."

Linda's trio of blogs are a tribute to the imagination and creativity of a person who views all aspects of her life with energy, enthusiasm, and curiosity. Looking at her blogs, I'm amazed by their versatility, breadth, and visual appeal, and by this blogger's eagerness to experiment. On Crafty Gardener, I love the slide show in her "winter wildflowers" post. Her question, "What do you read on a blog?" prompted an extraordinary number of responses. And her live traffic feed (in the sidebar) told me that during a recent visit, I was joined by readers from England, Canada, and states from Florida to Washington. It reminded me that blogging is a way to reach across the ocean and around the world, and I'm thrilled to be a guest on such a cosmopolitan blog! You'll find me there on April 4, blogging about herbs in three of China's mysteries.

The full calendar of the tour is available here. Bookmark it so you can get to it easily.

Oh, and when you visit these "previewed" blogs, drop a little note and thank these bloggers for sharing their creative energies with the rest of us.

Preview 4: Straight From Hel and Jim Long's Garden Talk

A couple of the bloggers I'm visiting are people I've met. Helen Ginger (Straight From Hel) is a past president of the Heart of Texas (that's HOT!) of Sisters in Crime, and I've attended a passel of meetings she chaired. Jim Long is a long-time herb friend, known over the years we've both been writing for The Herb Companion and presenting programs for various herb groups. Helen's and Jim's blogs are very different, but I think you'll enjoy visiting both.

Straight From Hel

Helen Ginger is a freelance writer, editor, and marketer. ("Of couse," she says on her website, "what I get asked about most often are my three years as a mermaid." Read about it here.) Mermaid or not, Helen may be best known for her fine weekly e-newsletter for writers, Doing it Write, which has provided writing how-to, advice, and market news for the past nine years. Last year, she began her blog, Straight From Hel, seeing it as a way to reach her readers on a daily basis. She writes about writing, publishing, and the book business. She hosts guest bloggers, who write about everything from writer's angst to writing and publishing success. Me, I'm going to write about Pecan Springs as the setting for the China Bayles novels. I hope that what I have to say about creating a sense of place may be helpful to a few writers and interesting to readers.

"I love working with writers," Helen says. "One really great thing about blogging is that it lets me share my experience with others, and, just as importantly, lets me learn from others. Blogging works both ways. Readers comment, authors visit and blog or post, writers send emails. It also prompts me to do a lot of research into the writing world and publishing business--it takes a lot of information to fill 260 days of blogging a year! But best of all are the friendships I've made over the years with fellow writers."

Oh, and another thing you need to know about Helen. She's a bunko fanatic. If you want to know what that is, go here. And if you want to know what bunko fans eat while they do what they do, check out the recipes. There's a Cream of Brie Soup that sounds fantastic. Maybe we can persuade Helen to cook up a virtual pot for us when I visit on Wednesday, April 2. But if she doesn't, you can do it yourself--for real. Looks like it's easy, as well as delicious.

Jim Long's Garden Talk

Isn't this a delightful picture? This is where Jim Long lives and works, at Long Creek Herbs, near Blue Eye, Missouri--far southern Missouri. When you visit the website, you can take a virtual tour of Jim's gardens and shop. You'll want to look through the herb products Jim sells, and check out his many books. (One of my favorites is his Favorite Crackers book--I've had such fun with his recipes!) If you've read Jim's columns in the Herb Companion, the Herb Quarterly, and other magazines, you know what a knowledgable writer he is. If there's something that Jim doesn't know about herbs, I haven't stumbled on it yet!

About his blog, Jim says: "I began my GardenTalk blog because of questions from readers in my magazine and newspaper columns. I wanted to be able to post more information than a column allows, and more often, with photos. My blog has evolved into a garden diary of the people who visit, the plants I grow and my travels to other people's gardens. Because I focus on out-of-the ordinary herbs and Asian vegetables, I get comments and inquiries from around the globe. I enjoy trading seed with others who grow unusual things, too."

Jim has a sharp eye for what goes on in his garden, from the bees that visit his winter jasmine in January and the spring peepers that usher in the month of February, to the dancing tea plants thriving under his grow lights. And if you've ever wondered just how to trim your lavender and sage plants, Jim is your go-to guy. It will be a pleasure to blog on his wonderful site (on Monday, April 7)!

Here's my blog tour calendar, so you can keep track of when and where to find my posts on Helen's and Jim's blogs. See you there!