Lest you think that I spend all my time writing, here's a glimpse into another part of my life--the garden.
The potatoes look terrific this year, there in the left foreground. I planted them in January, fended off a couple of hard freezes in March, and look at them now! But bushy green tops are only part of the story. I can only hope they're doing their job at producing tubers--we'll know next month, when we dig them. Three kinds here: Yukon Gold, Caribe, and one of the reds, can't remember which.
Behind the potatoes on the left, the perennial onions. They're topsets and blooming now--I'll have to deadhead them or I'll have way more onions than I want. I use the white part in cooking all year and in the spring, when the green tops are tender, I use them like green onions. By fall, I'll be down to just a few clumps, which I'll separate and grow on for next year.
Beyond the onions, kale, chard, and spinach, with garlic at the end of the bed. We eat the tender new leaves, and the girls (my flock of six layers) get a half-bucket of older leaves every day. I love having chickens to eat the garden produce we can't. And their poop goes into the compost, which comes back into the garden. What goes around comes around, in the loveliest possible way.
Beyond the greens bed, a bed of Roma tomatoes and past that, a new bed of Kentucky Wonders and McCaslan beans, both pole-growers. I planted them last Sunday and the McCaslans, eager to see what it's all about, are already up and growing.
On the right, at the back, a trellis of pole peas. I prefer pole beans and peas--easier picking! Beside that bed, two more beds of tomatoes: Better Boys and Porters (the famous TX heritage tomato, a hot-weather survivor). I'll plant the weedy bed, right front, to zucchini and yellow crookneck squash later today.
But I've also been doing writing-related chores. A Wilder Rose--my upcoming self-published novel--now has its own webpage. It has its own Facebook page, too. And its own Pinterest board. I've been making a list of regular book bloggers who might be interested in reviewing the book. If you have a book blog to which you post regularly and think A Wilder Rose might fit your site, email me at susan at susanalbert dot com with a link to your blog.
Happy, busy days here in the Texas Hill Country (although we're still and always wishing for more rain). Hope they're happy and busy at your place, too--and that you have just the right amount of rain on your garden!
Reading note, from Rose Wilder Lane's 1919 novel, Diverging Roads: “I’m sure of one thing,” [Helen] said earnestly [to her friends]. “It hurts to—to let go of anything beautiful. But something will come to take its place, something different, of course, but better. The future’s always better than we can possibly think it will be. We ought to know that—really know it. We ought to be so sure of it that we’d let go of things more easily, strike out toward the next thing. Like swimming, you know. Confidently. We ought to live confidently. Because whatever’s ahead, it’s going to be better than we’ve had. I tell you, girls, I know it is.”