Gardening

I have been trying to deal with some difficult truths lately. It has me angry and weepy and I really don’t want to be either. So I’ve been trying to work through them but meanwhile I can’t get much else done. I kind of want to write about it, but I also don’t want to bleed all over the internet. So I’ll talk about Spring instead.

The days are getting warmer and I’m hoping we are past the frost. I have so many seedlings to put out, plus I have plants coming in that I ordered online. Gardening is great therapy. Digging in the dirt and growing things is something that has always brought me peace. I love to grow heirloom veggies and flowers from seed. This year is much harder than usual because my legs are giving me such difficulty but I’m determined. I feel like things keep getting taken away, and I’m trying to fight it.

I garden for pollinators as much as possible. I cultivate host plants for butterflies, and flowers that will feed the bees. If I were able to I’d dig up my entire yard and make it one big garden. When I moved into this house, it was completely circled with hostas. Ok, I like hostas but this was ridiculous. They were jungle thick and nothing else would grow. I had my brother dig them up along the front of the house so I could put flower beds in and I’ve been working on them ever since. Last Autumn I planted a line of viburnums along my border that should provide privacy, pollen and then berries for the birds. I planted native honeysuckles along a partial fence and I have a passionflower plant coming by mail order. I have a few flowering shrubs coming, as well as a crab apple and serviceberry trees. Last year a small tree out front was struck by lightning so I had it removed and the stump ground. The trees were circled with hostas too, btw, so I had him get rid of those too. Now I have an empty circle, where I’m planning to plant the crabapple when it comes in. Below I’m planting a variety of shade tolerant natives. Today I planted trilliums and lily of the valley, and tomorrow I hope to plant Virginia Bluebells and Sweetspire. I have some coral bells and foam flowers coming and I’m growing new columbines from seed. I want to plant a bleeding heart under there too. I’ll fill in with annual flowers until the bed gets big enough.

On the side of the house I have a small boggy area. I planted some milkweed out there already, and will plant wildflowers and maybe a button bush. I grow veggies in raised beds out back, and in the flower beds out front I have a variety of things. I have coneflower, rudbeckia, coreopsis of all types, snapdragons, salvia, asters, false sunflower, catmint, purple liatris, marigolds, beebalm, and more. I planted a few native grasses last Autumn but I don’t think they made it through the winter. I’m growing purple love grass from seed, and have my little seedlings out in the bed. I have so so many more things to plant but I keep wanting to order more seeds. I think I have a problem. 😉

I’m afraid this is it for now. I need to turn my brain off for a bit and veg out. I hope it’s getting to nicer weather wherever you are. xo

Spring

It’s Wednesday night and I’m restless. The weather turned nice this week so I’ve been trying to get some yard and garden stuff done. I have loads of seedlings and got some of them in the ground, as well as planting new seeds. I think I have a seed problem. I just have so many and I never have enough time or space for all of them. For veggies I have a few varieties of tomatoes, cucumbers, a Turkish melon, jalapeno peppers, peas (if the squirrel didn’t dig them up) and several herbs. Flowers is where I have issues. For vines I have moonflowers, morning glory, cypress vine, hearts and honey (a new one for me) and firecracker vine. Flowers I have the perennials, such as purple coneflower, daisy, salvia, phlox, columbine, etc. For annuals I have a few varieties of cosmos, zinnias, poppies, forget-me-not, jasmine tobacco, rudbeckia, dianthus, climbing petunia, evening phlox, snapdragon and several others. My sunflowers get eaten every year so this year I cut the bottoms out of clear cups and put those around the seeds and am crossing my fingers. I have three varieties of sunflower I’m trying to grow- moonbeam, velvet queen and evening sun. Also a Mexican sunflower.

We had a tornado over the weekend so my brother came over to help me with yard cleanup. There is still more to do. Part of my fence is down and I saw part of a shingle got torn off the roof, but those are beyond him. Anyway, I did too much the last couple of days and I’m in a lot of pain at the moment. I wasn’t able to do much of anything today other than sit on the porch and work on potted stuff.

I had hoped Hunter would be down this weekend but it looks like he’s doing Easter stuff instead. Saturday night Rocky Horror is coming back so I’m going to see if my cousin wants to go to that. My crows have been coming around and are always a highlight to my day. Zelda is getting braver.

I’m currently reading Book 8 of The Expanse – Tiamat’s Wrath, and am about 75% done. It’s excellent, as always, but this one had a little bit of a slow start. There’s a short story after this and then one more book in the series. I don’t want it to end.

I had a couple of rejections for writing I sent out so that’s always discouraging, but not too badly. It goes with the territory. Last night I sent out a couple of new submissions and I want to submit some work to a couple of others as well. I got contracts for Strange Horizons and Space & Time sent back. It looks like SH will be published 5/1. I’m not sure about Space & Time or Eye To The Telescope. For now, I’m still pretty wiped out so I’ll write more soon.

I opened the door Membranes between worlds severed Strange beasts coming through

A haunted mirror Foreboding phantosmia Warnings from the dead

A couple of horror/scifi haikus

Moongarden

I always wanted to have a moongarden. I wanted a silver and white wonderland with nocturnal animals and flowers that bloom at night. I wanted flowers that only release fragrance at night in order to attract moths and bats. I wanted the moths and bats, for that matter. I’d love to have luna moths, and statues and a garden bench. I have lists and books and pinterests on the plants I’d have in this garden. I’ve grown a lot of them, but there are still a lot I’d like to grow. I’m on the east coast, but I’d love to be in the west coast desert at night when the saguaros are in bloom.

At the moment I’m growing moonflowers and jasmine tobacco. Both are purity white and both smell like seduction. I have a ramp leading up to my house, so I grow moonflower vines over the railing. They climb up and wind through the rails to spill out onto the walkway. I try to train them to curl back into themselves but there’s always a stray vine. Moonflowers don’t open until dusk. If you aren’t familiar, they are huge white flowers that unfurl in a pinwheel to blossoms much bigger than my hands. Each flower blooms only for a night but in the early morning I can still see them while I drink my coffee. The jasmine tobacco stays open all day but only releases fragrance when it gets dark.

In the past I’ve grown evening primrose, four-o-clocks, datura, evening phlox, jasmine and others. I’ve grown plants that are gilded by moonlight, such as artemisia, dusty miller and lamb’s ear. I’ve grown pure white cosmos and zinnias. But moonflower and jasmine tobacco are my mainstays.

I walk out at night, here in the silence of where I live. Hours can go by without a single car on the road and I feel very isolated. Most of the time that’s thrilling, but when I’m having a bad night it’s just lonely. I walk out and feel the night air, and listen to the chorus of the frogs and insects. I can see the stars scattered across the sky and in the summer I’ll watch the fireflies blinking their secrets signals. Sometimes the only light is starlight and it makes me feel wild. I remember what it was like to be young and yearning and chasing the moon. I remember a night climbing the cliffs on the river with the sound of the waves breaking over the rocky beach and the moon casting its reflection across the black water. I remember believing in impossible, unknowable things. I remember dancing, spinning in the night whether I was in a forest or a graveyard.

Then there’s the moon. I’ve always been half moon-struck. It’s fascinated me since I was a little child. The moon has so many aspects, so many faces. I’ve seen it low, red and swollen when it swallows the skyline, and I’ve seen it high and white and remote in all its phases. Tonight it’s riding high, a pale yellow incomplete moon that isn’t casting much light. In all of is aspects it is beautiful and I don’t think it will ever cease to make me yearn for something wild.