Lifescapes

The working garden

I like to look at the "backsides" of gardens--the places where gardeners do the kind of work that results in fine vegetables and showy flowers. Here's the backside of mine, overseen by St. Francis in the left foreground, whose feastday is coming up on Sunday Oct. 4. You can see the garden gate and fence (click for a larger view) that encloses the raised-bed growing area and keeps it safe from opportunistic deer, rabbits, and raccoons. In front of that, left toright, a pile of oakleaf/cow manure processed compose, a pile of dry cowpies, a bin (black, covered with sheet metal) of fresh cowpies, a compost bin and a second compost bin. A hose, of course. And (you can't see it here) a garbage can of cowpie tea. Soil amendment/soil building is the big project in this part of the garden. We're very alkaline here, so I put a lot of effort into bringing the pH into the neutral range. As I work, I often think about the importance of the soil, the undisturbed grass, and the trees as carbon sinks: organic sponges that soak up at least some of the greenhouse gases that are changing the climate of our planet.

Working this week on the Darling Dahlias (up to 74,000 words now, so I have to start tieing up loose ends). Just got some good news: the large-print rights for the first book have been sold to Thorndike. The large-print editions do well in the online bookstores and in libraries.

Speaking of which, Bill and I drove down to Boerne last night for a full house at the Boerne library--thanks for hosting me, guys--it was great to see the room full of interested listeners who actually laughed at my jokes. (You really shouldn't do that: it encourages me to go on . . . and on . . . and on.)

Family news. As you can see from the featured post at the top of the page, we've welcome Jasper Owen into our family. Mom, baby, and dad are doing well. Grandma Robin is polishing her baby-minding skills. And g-gmama Susan gets to sit back and admire. How nice!

One more thing. Peggy has set up a cameo-character raffle for me. If you've always wanted to see your name in a book, now's your chance! We're raffling off chances for a cameo appearance in one of the upcoming mysteries. All proceeds go to benefit Story Circle Network. Check it out, take a chance (or several), and help to support an organization that helps to support women who have stories to tell. (You have a story, too, you know!)

Reading note. What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.—Muriel Rukeyser

Welcome, Baby Jasper!

Meet the newest member of our family: Jasper Owen Bruton, born at 8:47 a.m. today, 7 lbs. 11 oz, 21" (perfect size for a baby, wouldn't you say?). Proud grandma is my daughter Robin; Jasper's proud daddy is Robin's son Jason, and Emily is the strong, hard-working happy mom. Jasper is their first child and my second great-grandson. Full hearts, and all happy.

Reading note: Women are strong, strong, terribly strong. We don’t know how strong until we’re pushing out our babies. Louise Erdrich, The Blue Jay’s Dance

Water Issues: Drought Notes #7

Cooler, more rain, and the morning glories on my garden fence are celebrating the new season. Now that we've passed the equinox, maybe fall is really here. But we have seen Octobers with 100-degree days, so the jury is still out. And it's official. So far, this has been the hottest, driest, most intense drought on record in the Hill Country--although not yet the longest.

And although the rains (we've gotten about 5" here) have eased the situation a little, it's still critical as far as water use is concerned. Our aquifer (always low production) seems pretty much the same--we're careful about the way we use the water. But the rains have done nothing to replenish the lakes because the soil absorbed every drop that fell and the lakes that supply the water for most of central Texas are still dropping. The LCRA, the gov't agency that controls the lakes, is curtailing agriculture use downstream, to preserve the water for human use in the cities. Curtailed water means fewer food crops, job loss, economic hardship. Serious stuff.

And climate change predictions for this area suggest that periods of extended, intense drought may be the new normal throughout the Southwest. It's going to take some getting used to, require adaptations in our use of the land and its resources, in the way we define ourselves. I hope everyone who lives here is paying attention, but I know they're not. I still see local TV ads for swimming pools and sprinkler systems.

I'm over at Blood-Red Pencil today, chatting with Dani about my new memoir. Drop in and leave a comment. And I've posted some photos of our animal friends--cows, sheep, horses, geese, dogs, cat--on the book's website. Take a look.

And one more very important note. The USDA has launched a new website: Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food. Check it out. This is a hugely significant effort, and the USDA needs all the encouragement we can give. They're also on Facebook. Please, become a fan. We need to redesign our food systems and redefine ourselves in relation to them. This is our food future. Let's all be a part of it.

Reading note: As much as we live in a place, we live in place; we inhabit a condition of the soul. We live where we have made definitions, and in the process of making definitions, we create a place in which to live. Sallie Tisdale

Salvia: In bloom this week

I thought I had lost the salvias in the drought, but here they are, bursting into exuberant bloom after the rain two weeks ago.I don't think I've ever seen them bloom so abundantly. These natives (Salvia coccinea) are terrific for dry-land landscaping and the bees and hummingbirds love them. Here in the Hill Country, they bloom in spring and again in fall--in the years we have rain. In this photo, the white flowers in front belong to garlic chives, which are wonderful in omelets and soups.
 

Here's another salvia, S. guaranitica, blue anise sage or Brazilian sage. It's not a Texas native, but this one has more or less adapted, I'm happy to say. Neither of these species is the same as the Salvia that has gotten all the attention lately: S. divinorum, a psychoactive herb--as you might guess from the name, which can be translated to "sage of the seers." I've had my share of adventures in the past, but these days, I'm not inclined to smoke my garden salvias to see if any of them might share that characteristic.

And then there's plain old garden sage, S. officinalis, which of course is never plain or old. It's the first herb I remember, because it's one of the few my mother grew in her 1950s garden (parsley and dill are the others). She grew it specifically for poultry stuffing and pork sausage. Mine did well in the drought. In fact, most of the salvias prefer dry soil and resent it when their feet get wet. During the drought, they just curled up and waited patiently. I love plants like that.

Lots going on in the garden: melons, zukes, spaghetti squash blooming, English peas and snow peas, too. A few eggplants ripening, Irish potatoes looking good, tomatoes coming along. Remember those tomato seeds I sowed in the ground? The Early Girls are about six inches high and looking fine, but I think I got them in too late. Don't think they'll have time to set fruit. (Hope I'm wrong!)

A good writing week past, another coming up--except that I have to take a break on Tuesday and go to Austin for a photo session. Time for another author photo for book jackets. I always have to tell the photographer to put away her airbrush on these photos: when I'm speaking to a group, I see people looking down at the photo on their book jackets (a year or two or more old, depending on the book), and comparing the image to the real person. Makes for some interesting questions, sometimes.

Speaking of speaking. I'll be in Boerne TX on 9/29, at the library. I'll also be in Groesbeck, San Marcos, and Austin and a couple of places I need to add to the list: Wimberley (11/7) and Mason (11/15). Check out the page and mark your calendars. Used to be, authors wrote a book, the publisher distributed it, bookstores sold it, and that was that. No more. Like every other author in the country, I'm expected to get out there and talk about the books. It's a good thing I enjoy doing that. But if I didn't, I'd have to do it anyway.

Reading note. The shelf life of a modern hardback writer is somewhere between the milk and the yogurt.--Calvin Trillen

Rain! Drought Notes #6

After an inch-plus of rain, the fall garden is beginning to look almost lush. So far, we haven't gotten the huge downpours (15" and more) that hit Salado and the area north and west of Georgetown, but we're grateful. It's good timing for the winter pasture grasses, which need rain now if the livestock (cows, sheep, and yes, the deer) are to have anything to eat this winter. Also bodes well for next spring's wildflowers, which need September/October rains to germinate and December rains to feed growth. It's all in the timing, m'dears.

And the timing of these rains--courtesy of a large low-pressure area that has parked itself over Central Texas--is just about perfect. Not a drought-breaker yet, at least not here. But if El Nino can produce a couple more of these storms this fall, we'll be okay. It was a joy yesterday to see puddles in MeadowMarsh, the swampy area along the edge of the woods. As the dogs and I took our evening walk, they ran through the water, splashing. We're all joyful.

File this in the best-laid plans department. I was looking forward to a weekend with the copy-edited manuscript of next year's China Bayles book, Holly Blues. Unfortunately, it arrived on Friday--in the form of an electronic file, instead of print pages. I'm learning Word Track Changes, which is okay, not hard, and has its advantages (especially in terms of efficiency and cost). But I've always loved making pencil changes on the typescript, curled up on the bed or in my favorite chair. Now I'm working at the computer, which means seeing the book again on the screen--so screen-based errors will be as invisible to me now as they were before. (They jump out at me on the print page.) A few people have told me how easy this is, and it is--when you're dealing with short stuff. This is a 287-page book, and that's a whole different animal.

Companion photos for Together, Alone. It's so expensive to reproduce photos in books that I decided not to use them in the memoir, which came out late last month. Instead, I'm building albums of "companion photos" on my website. The first of these is available now. Go here and look for the album. We'll post another of these albums soon.

And Sharon Galligar Chance posted a lovely review of the memoir on her blog today. She's reading the book for SCN's Memoir Challenge. If you don't know about this challenge, check it out. We need to know the true stories of women's lives (not a fictional representation of women, and certainly not fictional representations of women by male authors, bless their hearts). That's what memoir, at its best, is all about. True stories of real lives.

Reading Note: Sometimes of late years I find myself thinking the most beautiful sight in the world might be the birds taking over New York after the last man has run away to the hills. I will never live to see it, of course, but I know just how it will sound because I've lived up high and I know the sort of watch birds keep on us. I've listened to sparrows tapping tentatively on the outside of air conditioners when they thought no one was listening, and I know how other birds test the vibrations that come up to them through the television aerials. 'Is he gone?' they ask, and the vibrations come up from below, 'Not yet, not yet.'"--Loren Eiseley, The Immense Journey