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

Another Monday

I used to go tramping through the woods most days. I learned all the local plants, where they grew and what their uses were. I would take photos of things I didn’t recognize, then come home and try to ID them. Now we have apps that take all the work out of it, but where’s the fun in that?

The woods have always been my refuge, since as early as I can remember and I had a steady connection to them until I moved to South Carolina. Before I moved, I visited the woods at least a few times a week. Different woods had different ecosystems and different plants and I loved them all. Visiting them at different times of the year would yield a different plants too. Spring ephemerals or the parasitic Ghost Plant, or Pinesap that are only there for a brief time were always a sort of secret that I kept. As the forest changed, so did the wildlife. In South Carolina it was all cypress swamps, which were their own kind of beauty but were not my forests. Now I’m back in MD and have been unable to go hiking due to the physical constraints but I’m trying, and I’m making my yard as habitable to wildlife as I’m able to.

It’s the next day and I just came in from trying to do yard work. I have a strip of wildflowers growing along the border of my yard that pollinators adore. The fence was torn down 6 weeks or so ago so I planted cosmos, zinnias, marigolds, calendula, poppies, dill and a few others. I’ve been tending to them daily, and they are now blooming. I love seeing the bees and butterflies going from flower to flower.

Baltimore Comic Con is coming up. It’s Sept 8-10th and I’m dressing as Hellboy. 🙂 Hunter is going as Underminer. I am concerned about my ability to make it through with my knee being so messed up. We’re planning to go to the aquarium Friday night and the Con on Saturday. Then Monstermania is in October. I want to fit the Renaissance Faire in there as well. I’ve had Doctor appointments several days a week and I’ve been working on my shop a lot, trying to prepare for Christmas. Last night I got very little sleep and I’m not actually very coherent so this is it for now. I hope everyone is well.

a wail in the fog warning of impending doom the banshee cries death	Garden refugee writing runes in the flowers a gnome’s wild magic
R’lyeh fathoms deep Cthulhu’s mystery dreams Moaning with the tides	Idyllic planet idols of alien gods calling idle crew

Garden

There’s a blue jay (or two) that has been watching the crows interact with me. Blue jays are corvids also but I honestly haven’t done a lot of reading on them. I should probably correct that. Anyway, the blue jay learned to come look in my window searching for peanuts. He immediately flies to a tree to watch from a safe distance while I put some out. Now he’s learned to caw (or whatever blue jays do with their calls) to get my attention, and while I was feeding Zephyr, he came to the railing. That was a first. He stayed safely at the end of the railing, so I couldn’t grab him and immediately eat him, as I’m sure he was convinced I’d do. But that’s ok. I appreciated his bravery anyway. 😉 He was just here.

I’m feeling pretty melancholy today. I had oral surgery yesterday and my face is swollen so that might be part of it. Also, I’ve been tending a patch of flowers daily that were about to bloom. I pointed them out to my lawn guy. I mowed around them, and I’ve been keeping the tall weeds pulled. It’s not mulched or fenced because it’s not a formal thing, but I thought it was perfectly clear, especially since I walked him over there and showed them to him. When I came home from the dental, I found that my lawn guy had been by while I was gone. He didn’t get all of them, but damn if he didn’t mow over half of the flowers I had been tending.

I just feel kind of defeated. This is not the first time either. I guess I have to look for a new lawn guy. I like to garden, especially for wildlife. I don’t use pesticides. I plant native plants. I plant butterfly hosts and a variety of native flowers to encourage bees, butterflies, moths, birds, etc. I’m disabled so I can’t do as much as I want, which is why I have to hire someone to mow. The person who lived here before me planted nothing but invasive crap that I am constantly battling. So when the fence and sticker bushes between me and my neighbor came down, I had this long stretch of empty land and I planted the flowers I’ve been whining about. It was just quick growing annuals so there would be flowers for pollinators. Anyway. Here’s a native bee on tithonia:

In my regular flower bed I have liatris, purple coneflower, coreopsis, asters, geraniums, rudbeckia and bee balm, to start. The annuals change but usually include cosmos, zinnia, sunflower and marigold. I grow dill and fennel for swallowtail butterflies and have a little milkweed (not enough), although I rarely see monarchs. Now that the fence is down between my neighbor and I, I plan to plant native shrubs all along it. I want to plant viburnums, elderberries, chokeberries, sweetspire and a variety of others. I want to put a little rain garden in the poorly draining area and grow dutchman’s pipe vine for that variety of butterfly, along with native coral honeysuckle and passionflower. I want an exuberance of flowers and habitat. A tree just came down in a storm, and I want to replace it with a crabapple, redbud, hackberry or serviceberry. Right now I’m leaning towards crabapple. But until the fall, when I might do some of this, I had zinnias, cosmos, marigold, dill and calendula growing. To see all my big healthy plants cut down to stubs was just the final touch, you know?

More later. I’m just kind of wiped out today. Below, a fantaiku and a scifaiku using twitter prompts 🙂

Wizards, dwarves and elves An unexpected journey Meek hobbit turned brave

Hologram romance In the dark of Saturn’s moon The ice rings glitter

Bunny wars

I thought I had an arrangement with my yard rabbit. The arrangement being, she can eat all she wants in the yard as long as she stays out of my garden beds. Well she has broken our unspoken agreement. She came with the house, so to be fair, she was here before me, but she’s not the one paying property taxes either. I love seeing wildlife in my yard and I expect some losses.

Sunflowers are a problem. Every year I try to grow them, all different kinds, and every year they snip those seedlings right off. So apparently sunflower seedlings are quite tasty. This year I decided I’d outsmart the rabbit. I got clear cups, cut the bottoms off, and put them around each place I buried a seed. So I have two sunflowers growing out of oh, twenty or so. 😉 Which is more than I’ve been getting. One of the two grew from under another plant, without the cup, so I’m pretty sure it was just missed. Some of the cups were not even disturbed.

Momma bunny is a good momma and has been having her babies in my flower beds. So I get adorable baby bunnies hiding out in my flowers and eating everything in sight. I think they are actually the sunflower thieves. I looked for her nest a few weeks ago but couldn’t find it. So last week I went to water the flowers and watered the babies. They went running every which way. Most of them stayed in the cover of the plants but one little guy ran into the yard. Then he froze. So I picked him up to put him back in the bed where he’d have some cover and he screamed. I don’t know if you’ve heard a baby bunny scream but it is awful. As soon as I put him in the garden bed he went running into the plants so he was safe and I felt like a horrible person. Momma bunny usually doesn’t pay a bit of attention to me, but she was in the yard frozen and giving me side eye hard. I apologized profusely. They were teeny babies, like just a few weeks. I found her nest up under the rose bush

I can chalk up the flowers as a loss. It’s frustrating but come on, baby bunnies! But, around back I have two raised vegetable beds. She usually doesn’t touch those, but this year she or her babies have been helping themselves to anything I put in there. So I lost all my melons, cucumbers, calendula, borage and tomato from one bed. The other one just has tomatoes and they’ve left that one alone. I grow everything from seed, as I like heirloom varieties, and I had some late seedlings since she ate the first batch. I put them out yesterday and today one of the two is snipped right off. So I still have one.

I just came in from watering plants. I’ve made a barricade around my brave little tomato seedling. I think it’s a black cherry tomato. I’ve gotten pieces of garden fencing and put them around it. The tomato cage is over top of it also, but that was already there. The fencing is flimsy but for now that’s what I can do. I’m thinking of making a little moat, and sharpening some twigs for an abatis. I could really geek out on this, but I should probably just let the bunny win.

Now, the squirrel digging up my pots is a different story.

Happy Memorial Day if you are in the US

Fever dream horror Burning eyes and warped wishes A djinn’s rage released

Cargo woke early Jade tendrils questing from pods Void the transport bay

Spring and Writing Catch Up

Zoltan just left. I hadn’t seen him for a few days and I didn’t see him at my door at first. He started cawing at me to announce himself. Usually Zelda is with him. She used to just sit in the tree and he’d bring her food, with her bitching (cawing) up a storm the entire time, but she’s gotten much bolder and now will come down to the porch railing. She still bitches a lot. 🙂 She doesn’t get as close to me as Zoltan. While he gets in touching distance, she is not having it. I imagine the entire time he’s so close to me that her caws translate to “Get away from that human! You don’t know where it’s been!” Yeah my mind is kind of a strange place. 😉 I’m thinking maybe Zelda is sitting on a nest. I am not so secretly hoping for crow babies to be brought to meet me.

I keep wanting to upload video clips but WordPress won’t allow it. One of these days I’ll get a real website. I should do that soon I suppose.

I got a contract back for Penumbric, and the editor told me that it will be at least a year until publication. They have issues scheduled out that long! I’m expecting Space & Time to come out soon and will post when it does. That one is a hard copy magazine though. I think Strange Horizons comes out in a week or so and Penumbra should be coming out soon also.

It’s Spring and I am busy growing stuff. We had some erratic weather so unfortunately the first plants I got in the ground got frosted and at least some of them did not make it. Others are still struggling but it’s not looking good. I’ve been looking for houses also but the market SUCKS right now if you’re looking. There is nothing around here. There are some around Hunter but not a lot in my price range, and that’s a long way from here. It’s a big step and I have a lot of thoughts churning. I have never been lucky in love.

Books. After I finished “Tiamat’s Wrath”, I read “Video Night” by Adam Cesare. It was a fun read of 80s nostalgia and alien horror that had a few issues. Perhaps I’m holding it up to too high of a standard, but I loved his book “Clown in a Cornfield”. For a while, I did not read Clown because it just sounded so cheesy. And it is.. but it’s also a fun read that I tore through. I think Video Night came out before Clown. It seems like an earlier novel. Still a good read but not as polished as Clown. I want to read Clown 2: Friendo Lives, because of course he does. 😉 After Video Night I started “The Drowning Girl” by Caitlan Kiernan. It has not grabbed me so far and I’m thinking of DNR’ing it and moving on to something else. It’s not like I don’t have scads of books waiting to be read.

I shared an anthology call I came across on twitter – prose, poetry and art, that benefits shelter pets. I usually see anthologies listed on horrortree.com, and I saw one recently that sounded interesting. It was A Necronomicon – RomCom mashup for a Necroromcom. 😉 I think I’m going to enter that one. This is it for now.

Below are a couple of horror haiku.

traveling salesmen snake oil and fetid tonics sideshow death dealer

a strange tidal wave towns submerged and cloned creatures  Leviathan hunts

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

Spring and Publications

It’s almost Spring and I’ve been busy growing stuff. I have a load of seedlings that are getting a bit unruly at this point but it’s still too cold at night to plant them out. I have cucumbers and jalapenos and three different kinds of tomatoes and a Turkish variety of melon. I’ve never had much luck with melons. I like heirloom varieties. I have a lot of flowers growing too. But my urge to grow gets ahead of my abilities and I end up ordering more seeds every year so I have a huge variety at this point. Unfortunately my back and leg problems prohibit me from doing nearly as much as I’d like to. If I had my way I’d have no grass, just flowers everywhere.

In writing news, I told you I’d had an acceptance at Space & Time Magazine. They sent me this graphic to share:

So I’m excited! I also had a sale to Eye To The Telescope’s ‘Fungus’ issue. I was short listed for another magazine and am *still* waiting to hear the final word on that. I think the Strange Horizons one comes out next month but am not sure. I have some things out at a few others too but really I need to be doing more. I have a lot of stuff to find homes for and I should be writing more. Some days I’m just really uninspired, and I’ve been trying to do more work on my shop lately too.

I finished “Devolution” by Max Brooks. It was a lot of fun! I started reading “The Bone Witch” but was having a hard time getting into it so I DNR’d it and started The Expanse Book 8: “Tiamat’s Wrath”. I guess it’s time to finish the series. I hate for it to end but I guess I’ll just have to read it again some time. 🙂 I’ve only just begun that one but all the books have been fantastic and I expect no less from this one. This about wraps it up. I hope everyone is having a great week.

topside sliced apart lone astronaut says goodbye strange moon waxes full

noctiflorous plants their questing vines top our ship verdant sentience

scifaiku

Melancholy thoughts, Gardens and poetry

It’s late and I’m a bit melancholy tonight. My mouth is still tore up from the dental work but it’s slowly getting better. It’s the state of my relationships that has me down though, as usual. Sometimes I’m sure things will work out, but then something will be said or done that makes me think it’s hopeless.

For Comic-con Hunter and I are going as Chucky and Bride of Chucky. I got part of my costume in yesterday and I think it’s going to be really cute. 🙂 I hope we get to go to the Horrorcon too. We have several things planned that I’m looking forward to. I wish I could let myself go all in and enjoy this but there’s always a part of me that knows the rug might be pulled from under me, so to speak. Without getting into details, there are reminders.

It’s the next day and I just had one of those reminders. I’m ok though. I’m not good at separating my emotions. Like, at all. But I think I’m freezing that part as well as I can. And I keep telling myself I need to see other people but so far I haven’t met anyone interesting and local-ish. The only interesting ones live far away, but isn’t that how it always goes?

I went out to water the garden this morning. I need to get some photos. The purple coneflowers are exploding. One is standing close to 6 feet and is covered in flowers. It’s so weighed down that some of them are falling over on top of the other flowers so I have to go out and trim or prop them up. They are covered with bees of every type. I don’t know the names of half of the native bees. There’s a swallowtail butterfly out there flitting about and it smells wonderful. My jasmine tobacco is blooming also. It’s only fragrant at night but if you go out early in the day you can still smell it. I also have a crimson tobacco that has a faint scent but is gorgeous. Black eyed susans and liatris are in bloom and the zinnias are just getting started. Orange cosmos has just started blooming as well, and marigolds are growing for their fall display. My elfwort is blooming for the first time this year. It’s in a bad spot so I may move it. The native bee balm is winding down, much to the regret of the local pollinators. That’s a favorite. I have hummingbird moths that hit that up. I love those little guys. They are so cute and completely fearless. I saw a baby toad out in the grass that I’m going to be worried about now when they come to mow the yard. My yard needs a serious grooming and the lawn guy isn’t really doing it. It’s not so much the grass as the sides that are creeping in. If I had my way I’d get rid of the grass and grow something that feeds wildlife and doesn’t need mowed. Clover at least, but I would prefer a native garden.

Around back I have raised beds for veggies. I grow heirloom veggies from seed, but this year I got a very late start. Then my first batch of seedlings got killed so I had to start over, making it even later. As a result, I just harvested my first cucumber. 🙂 Some of my tomatoes are loaded up and should be ripening soon, but a few of them are still pretty smallish. Ah well. What I get, I get. I always look forward to fresh tomato sandwiches. It’s one of the pleasures of summer. I’m currently growing Brandywine, Rutger, Black Cherry and another black variety whose name currently escapes me. All of them are good.

On my way back in, I stopped by my herbal pots to harvest some summer savory and thyme. The damn squirrel keeps digging in those pots and has killed half the savory. He also killed a tobacco flower. The basil, oregano and rosemary are ok. I really miss my old house and gardens but I’m making the best of what I have here.
Below are a few things I’ve written.

(Yes I know there has been far too much of this. This is the last one in my queue.. then I have some regular stuff. )

It was too hot to think,
caught in your orbit and body on fire
caution and pride forfeit,
reason disregarded for
this deliberate seduction.
I never knew the depths 
of my submission
until you stripped my defenses
suspended at the knife’s edge of your control
and euphoric in my possession.
Now I’m fascinated,
hungry and pacing this cage, 
claws still sharp but aching
for your hand on my throat.

Another acrostic:

Seaside susurrations and the
Haunting cries of gulls
Over the sound of waves
Raking at mutable beach and
Eroding the rocky bluff
Leaving oceanic gifts
In heavy sands, half buried
Notes in bottles
Endings to stories never written.

Chased in mirror maze Sinewy clowns with bared teeth Stalking reflections	The journey’s last leg Our last chance at survival Yearning for lost Earth
Underground horrors tearing free from bloody roots emerge with a red hunger	Ghostly flames each night Repeating sins of arson A child’s burned spirit

And a few haiku

Summer and erotica

It’s a beautiful day and I’ve been working in the yard. I cut my first bouquet of the year… daisies and coreopsis. The purple coneflowers will be blooming soon, as well as various others. The baby bunny living in my garden ate all my sunflowers, including the Mexican sunflower which is an entirely different species. Meanwhile, the pain in the ass squirrel keeps digging in my herbal pots. He killed the peas, dug up the basil several times, and half of the summer savory. I need to go put sticks in the pots to make it not so diggable. But I really love seeing wildlife in my yard. I got all excited when I saw a groundhog but I haven’t seen him since so I’m not sure if he was just passing through or what. I kind of thought they were homebodies. I got a ridiculously late start with seeds this year, and my first batch of seedlings died so I had to start over. As a result, my tomatoes are still small and the melons are out. I’ll have tomatoes, but they’ll be late.

Hunter is coming to visit this weekend and I’m looking forward to it. He has something planned for me and the time is crawling by. His surprises tend to be fun, if not risqué ones. With our history, and our chemistry, it’s difficult to keep myself contained. The problem is I don’t want to, but at the same time I need to keep a safety buffer around that. It’s hard to do when I turn to mush every time, and he is very aware of it. However, with the situation being what it is, I need to date someone else. And that’s quite enough about my love life. It’s all over my writing lately, a bit too much so.

You prayed for this stalking devil
whose touch is red fire
starstruck and fascinated, 
the dark in you clamoring 
to be caught in his volcano,
boiling over and left ruined
after the flames.
 
(I am not sure what this is but there you go.) 

Warning: NSFW below.

“Who do you belong to”, you ask
Savage and demanding
and although I stay silent
my body answers,
bound in red shibari knots
and a senseless desire.

You call me sweet brutal names
vixen, whore, pet and slave
tell me this obsession will pass
but you crave hearing me beg,
your sweat and a primal growl
a different kind of love letter.

Books, garden, crow

So, I finished ‘The House’. I usually love Bentley Little but this one was pretty awful. I really had to trudge through the ending.
Next up was ‘The House on Abigail Lane’ by Kealan Patrick Burke. I really liked this one. This one is chronicling strange events at what looks like an ordinary house. People go missing, phenomena is observed such as strange beings and smells, and an invisible door intermittently appears that leads to other worlds.
I’m currently reading ‘Geek Love’ by Katherine Dunne. It’s good so far, albeit disturbing. It’s one that’s mentioned a lot on r/horrorlit so has been on my list for a while.

Spring is here and I have a lot seedlings growing. I need my brother to come haul dirt and mulch for me so I can get this stuff in the ground. It feels good to be outside again. I’ve got a new crow buddy. He started coming around for treats and I’ve been giving him nuts. He flies to the railing in front of my window and yells at me (caws) until I come out. He gets pretty close but still keeps a few feet of distance. he has a girlfriend that tags along but his gf is much shyer and won’t come around until I’m back in the house. I just got a bag of peanuts and have introduced him to them. He loves them but hasn’t figured out that there’s two in a shell. He eats one end and thinks he’s done. He is gorgeous. He’s a really big, hefty bird and he has one crooked feather. I’ve been calling him Zoltan from ‘The Dark Tower’. I guess I need to come up with a name for his lady too.
I miss Merlin. A lot.