A Garden Surprise

 Catherine Dilts

Summers in Colorado tend to be go-go-go. We want to fit in all the outdoor adventures that don’t involve snow sports. The growing season is short at higher elevations. If you want to stop to smell the roses, you’d better do it quick!

One of my favorite hobbies is gardening. I’m far from alone. 55% of the US population lists gardening as their hobby. Over 70 million households engage in gardening activities.

There are dozens of reasons for digging in the dirt. For me, gardening gives me a connection to the planet. I’m more aware of the changing seasons when thinking about seed starting, planting, and harvesting. I get exercise carrying bags of soil, bending and squatting to weed beds, lifting watering cans to hanging flower planters, and generally getting my butt off a chair and into the outdoors.

My garden is modest. I do enjoy some produce, and might do a little canning and freezing if the harvest is good. As the years go by, and the pine trees shade my yard more, I’ve moved almost exclusively to container gardening.

When your chosen career involves hammering away at a keyboard for hours at a time, you need reasons to step away. Move around. Eye health requires looking away from screens every hour. Focus on something further away than your fingers.

During one step-away session, I went outside to admire our grapevine. In the half dozen years of its existence, it has never produced grapes. I was surprised to see tiny green globes for the first time.

I typically have a flaw in my writing schedule. Winter is more conducive to sitting at my computer for hours. It’s a way to avoid facing the gloomy, short days happening outside. Summer should be lived closer to nature. Yet I frequently end up tackling new projects or doing heavy editing in the summer.

In June, my co-author / daughter and I released book one in our YA series, Frayed Dreams. Book two, Broken Strands, will be out before the end of July. I’m doing final edits on my cozy mystery, book three in the Rose Creek Mystery series, The Body in the Hayloft. I won’t list the half dozen other projects I have going. My ambition exceeds the hours in a day. And my own energy level.

Marathon sessions should be for hiking, not sitting in my desk chair. To maximize my participation in summer, I work on the deck in the fresh air, as weather permits. If I hadn’t stepped away from my computer, I wouldn’t have seen the grapevine surprise.

I’m refreshed by the sun slanting through the ash tree, the sound of birds singing, and the scent of flowers wafting on the breeze. Time to get back to work.

A writer's summer life

 Summer always feels like a mishmash of competing interests and attractions, with little sustained direction or goal. Especially up here in Canada, after enduring many months of cold and darkness, we greet summer with a kind of frenetic euphoria. We tend to cram a lot of living into the brief months of sun, heat, and long, languid evenings. Friends to invite over, trips to take, family to visit, and there doesn't seem to be enough days in the week or weekends in the summer for all our plans and wishes. Serious life seems to take a back seat.

But a writer's life doesn't take breaks. The inexorable march toward the deadline continues, the momentum of the current WIP has to be maintained, or else we'd forget where the story is going. As a novel writer, I have developed a habit of trying to write one scene every day. It's the only way I know to actually reach the end. But in the summer months, with all the visits, trips, and outings, that plan is often derailed. I alternate between feeling guilty about neglecting the obligation hanging over my head and believing that there are other things in life and the summer is too short to miss a moment of it. 

So I find myself writing in fits and starts. I have a modest but beautiful lakeside cottage and I love to have family and friends come for a few days. We swim, we boat, we cook and eat, we laugh and play games late into the evening. I ignore that little voice that says this novel is not going to write itself.  In between visits, to compensate and appease that little voice, I binge write, burying myself in my writing and churning out several scenes each day, emerging from my cave disoriented but euphoric at the end of the day. Sometimes, I take time off, but that is usually filled with the other boring details of life like doing the laundry, battling the weeds in the garden, and shopping for food.

In the past couple of weeks I have hosted two "writers' retreats" at the cottage with two separate groups. These are informal get-togethers with good friends, that have taken place every summer for years. I have to confess that although we talk about writing, brainstorm the odd plot problem, and gossip about the book industry, we seldom do any actual writing. This weekend marks the end of the lazy summer season; after Labour Day, life gets serious again. I know I have to buckle down and get back to my daily writing ritual. The deadline awaits.

But man, this is fun and rejuvenating while it lasts!

Summer Time and Writing

Barbara's post this week captured a bit of what I'm feeling at the moment. I'm having a hard time concentrating on all the work I planned to get done during the months from end of spring semester to beginning of fall. I have deadlines to meet and writing to be done. But the blue sky and the sunshine is calling to me.

This is rather odd because my favorite season is autumn. I love the chilly mornings and evenings, and the leaves changing colors, with the hint of smoke in the air, and the taste of hot apple cider, and the sense of snuggling in for the winter. Summer, on the other hand, leaves me anxious. I don't like heat and humidity. Dawn comes too early for a night owl. And -- worst of all -- I need to pay attention to the weather report. I don't like thunder and lightning, especially being caught outside or on the road when a storm sweeps in.

But I love the colors. I love looking across our one-way street at the lavender and other plants along my neighbor's walk. I love the yellow daffodils growing beneath my front windows. I have purchased seeds for wild flowers and waited for warm weather to sprinkle them. I intend to plant them in my pocket-size backyard. If the seeds become a riot of color, I'll be able to watch the butterflies who come to drink from them.

I'm thinking of putting up a bird bath. The birds would enjoy it, and so would my cat, Harry, who would sit in the window watching them with his tail twitching. 

Not an outdoor cat, my Harry, but he sits in the window, sniffing the air on summer mornings.

In summer, I want more color around my house and on it. My vinyl siding is a pale cream. Not a color I would have chosen. This summer, I want to paint my front door. Change it from teal to pink or orange or blue gray. Paint the steps slate gray or navy blue. And when I drive up to my house, my  house will make me smile. Maybe a pale yellow door. . . and more flowers in my front yard.

I think that the colors of flowers, houses, and clothing worn by people in sandals and sneakers are the best part of summer. That and ice cream -- a bowl of butter pecan or a fancy dish of vanilla with crumbled cake and nuts from the ice cream shop in the mall with the open design that is perfect for summer strolling.

If I have ice cream in summer, then a salad is all I need for dinner. In summer, even a small meal is sufficient when it has all of the colors of the season. 

Seafood, too. I'd like to take a walk along the shore and stop for lunch.

Maybe I should find a place to sit down in a park and write there. The best part of summer is that I can decide where and when I'll write.

Summer still reminds me of when I was a child. The endless days filled with possibilities. Not a bad feeling when there is writing to be done.