Lifescapes

Early rose

I caught this Zepherine Drouhin yesterday morning, at her freshest. After last night's huge wind, it's looking a bit frazzled. (But photos are forever, right?) The wind took off our porch roof, too--ten panels of corrogated sheet metal. The repair job is more than Bill wants to think about right now, but it will have to be done, and soon, too. The sun on that side of the house can be pretty fierce. The wind kept us awake all night, so we're pretty groggy this morning.

I'm blogging over at Zanthan Gardens today. Bring your coffee and a doughnut (China prefers lemon cream) and join us. Oh, and there's still time to enter several of the drawings--they're open for three days from the date of the posting. Check them out on the calendar.

Reading note. Joys come from simple and natural things, mists over meadows, sunlight onleaves, the path of the moon over water. Even rain and wind and stormy clouds bring joy, just as knowing animals and flowers and where they live. Such things are where you find them, and belong to the aware and alive.--Sigurd Olson, Open Horizons

In bloom this week

Welcome the first clematis of the season. The clematis, crossvine, and honeysuckle have all survived last fall's determined garden-clearing swath (documented today over at Transplantable Rose in a post called "Unbecoming a Gardener"). While you're on Annie's blog, check out the great photo of the two of us in her April 6 post. It was taken at the Spring Fling. Can you tell how much fun we're having?

If you live in the Austin area, please consider joining me at Hastings in Round Rock on Thursday afternoon, 5-7. I hate being all by myself at bookstore signings! Details here. 

Reading note: The truest art I would strive for in any work would be to give the page the same qualities as earth: weather would land on it harshly, light would elucidate the most difficult truths; wind would sweep away obtuse padding. Finally, the lessons of impermanence taught me this: loss constitutes an odd kind of fullness; despair empties out into an unquenchable appetite for life.--The Solace of Open Spaces, Gretel Ehrlich

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

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.

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

First paintbrush

First paintbrush of the season--a brave soul, too. The temp was close to freezing last night--after soaring to 92 just a couple of afternoons before. March is usually a seesaw, but that's ridiculous. It's so dry that the wildflowers will be sparse, so I'm delighted to see this little guy. When the paintbrush bloom, the hummingbirds can't be far behind--another ten days, maybe.

One year, on March 15, it was cold, cold, cold, and the suet log was still hanging beside my office window, in the same spot where the hummingbird feeder hangs in the summer. I looked out, and there was a hummingbird, hovering beside the suet log, staring fiercely at it. Had to be the previous summer's hummer, looking for his hootch. I dropped what I was doing, fetched the feeder, brewed the hootch, took down the suet log, and fed that hungry hummer. I'm sure he'd had a long flight.

Reading note. It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold:  when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade. ~Charles Dickens

Last rose

Endless fussing with photos this morning, since I changed my photo program (the old one crashed) and had to figure out how to get the new one to talk to Typepad. Not as obvious as you might think--at least, not to this non-geek person.

But here it is, my lovely last rose, on a chilly, blustery day in late November. These antique roses defy all kinds of weather. I think they're even lovelier in gray November, when I need to be surprised by beauty.

DD Robin has been with me this week, but it hasn't quite turned out to be the pleasant, nothing-but-visiting week we envisioned. The Honda Element's heater quit--no huge issue here in Texas (at least until the first real cold snap) but a serious problem in New Mexico, where I'm heading next week. Supposed to. If I can get the heater fixed. I took the van to the dealer on Wednesday (this is a 60-mile round trip, 45 minutes each way). They ordered a part, and I took it back on Thursday. Robin and I hung around the dealership from 11-7 Thursday--but they still couldn't get it fixed. I have to take it back Monday. So far, I've invested 14 hours in this repair project, with more to come. But Robin took her computer and worked on her new website while we waited, and I knitted mitts and read a book, practicing patience. So we made the best of a bad deal. But it was still a bad deal.

Otherwise, we've had a wonderful time. She's definitely her mother's daughter. Last night, we went out to dinner in Marble Falls, came back and fell into our computers for the rest of the evening. Surfaced at ten, had popcorn, and went to bed. Back at our computers first thing this morning. She's going to Reading Circle with me on Monday, then to the airport. Boo-hoo.

The book (Wormwood) is shelved for a couple of weeks. The latest post on the Pecan Springs Journal will tell you where I am in the project. The mitts I'm knitting (for Robin) are of handspun alpaca yarn, from a carded fleece that my friend Jane (thank you, Jane!) brought back from New Zealand earlier. Here's what Jane wrote when she sent the fleece: "The alpaca wool blend comes from a female called Dusk and the owner of Dusk was serving in the store the day I was there. She said Dusk is a young female who had just had her first cria (baby alpaca) and was turning out to be a very good Mum. When the newborn baby was having trouble finding the milk, Dusk lifted up her back leg to help baby figure out where he needed to be." That's the kind of Mum to have, wouldn't you say?

Reading note. The secret of patience is doing something else in the meanwhile.--Anonymous (no doubt a woman, multi-tasking.)

Present perfect

Well, not quite perfect. A few tiny blemishes here and there--but nothing is perfect, right? I wanted to show you that there are still a few beautiful things in the garden. The roses (antiques) are mostly rebloomers, and four of the bushes are in bloom. I've had to do away with some of the climbers, sadly. But the shrubs cheer my heart. And so do the clean garden beds, soon to be leveled and sown to wildflowers. One of the beds will become a brick patio, another (next spring) will become a mulched area for plantings in large pots. My garden life has just become much simpler!

Beatrix Potter Tea Party. I've been meaning to let you know about this event, at Bookwoman, on Sunday afternoon. We're having tea and cookies, talking about Beatrix, taking a few peeks at the film "Miss Potter," and enjoying ourselves. Details here. Join us if you can, to support Bookwoman (a fabulous women's bookstore).

Books all shipped! The last batch of Hawthorn House is going out today. I'm sorry for the delay--we had more orders than books, and had to wait for a second shipment. Contest winners: yes, yours are on the way, too. Thanks to all of you who are ordering books through the website. Your purchases support Story Circle.

Pecan Springs Journal. Stay tuned for news on this blog. I'm plunging into Wormwood (China's next adventure) and about to begin regular posts to China's blog. In the meantime, zip on over to Paula's new blog, Redneck Crime. It's a hoot and a half. No, this isn't the surprise I've been promising you--the one Paula and Peggy and I have been working on. That's to come, in a few weeks. But it's worth waiting for, I promise! I'm glad I said yes when the opportunity offered itself.

It's a good week. Lots of doing (most of it fun), thinking (some deep, some shallow), dreaming, planning, playing. I hope your week is as rich.

Reading note. And yes I said yes I will Yes.--James Joyce, Ulysses

Tawanda!

I feel like Kathy Bates' character in Fried Green Tomatoes.

In the past 24 hours, I've destroyed--as in utterly--three large gardens. I've been ruthless, savage, and unbelievably heartless. Everything in those spaces is gone or going (there are a couple of rock piles for Bill to move, and a few things I'm moving somewhere else). And there's more coming, although the jury is still out on a couple of the areas. I'm sorriest about the rosemarys, most of which were 7-8 years old and five-six feet in diameter. But they were very dead, drowned where they grew. Several of the roses have to go, as well, I'm afraid. It was a disastrous summer.

But I've already downloaded the wildseedfarms.com catalog and made a list of the wildflower seeds I want to order for what will be a prairie meadow. Bluebonnets, of course. And also poppies and blue flax and Drummond phlox and paintbrush and winecups. Gaillardia, horsemint, coreopsis, standing cypress, and primrose we already have in abundance--they'll seed naturally, courtesy of the birds and the wind. Bill is happy that his mowing job has been made easier, and while I'm sad, I also feel lighter. It's time for a change here. And as my buddy Paula says, it'll be a heckuva lot less work. Thanks to all of you who have written to share your own stories of gardens lost and remind me that death and dying and loss are all part of the gardener's experience. That helps.

Fired with the enthusiasm of clean-up but forced by the heat to take a break, I'm getting to work on my office, which I have to clean up before I start serious work on Wormwood. I've brought out my stack of Shaker research materials, some plot notes I made a couple of weeks ago, and I'm getting excited about beginning the book--always my favorite time. But I somehow can never begin until all the stuff connected with the other projects is put away. So today, I'm reshelving books, tossing papers and junk mail, and (gasp!) actually sweeping the floor.

On the writing front, one very nice bit of good news this week: we negotiated the contracts for Books 6, 7, and 8 in the Cottage Tales series. I didn't actually think Berkley would kill the series in the middle (or nearly), but I've learned not to count my chicks until they're hatched and peeping. Oh, and one other nice thing: I mailed the manuscript of the memoir to UT Press. So that's off my desk, at least for a while. There's more work to be done on it, but the hardest part is over.

Tawanda.

Reading note. You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.--Collette