July 2025 – Writing Wrongs

Garden this and that

I spent the early hours of the day in the garden, before the heat became unbearable. I ended up soaked in sweat anyway, but it’s the first time I’ve had a chance to do some gardening.

Sadly, my cauliflower and broccoli are no more, thanks to one of the most destructive creatures on earth: tiny baby bunnies. They ate all the leaves and that was that. (And yes, I have the vegetable garden fenced, but baby bunnies are insidious.)

The cucumbers, though, are just fine.

The wall of morning glories I planted for the hummingbirds did not materialize. However, there are plenty of other flowers. Between those and the feeder, the hummingbirds don’t seem to mind the lack of morning glories.

My phlox is blooming despite the fact that deer came through and chomped the tops off a few weeks ago.

My hydrangeas are blooming—I just leave them alone. So far, so good.

It’s pollinator central in the yard—all kinds of bees and other pollinators, and more butterflies this year than I’ve seen in a long time. Despite everything being kind of a mess, I feel like I must be doing something right.

So, my less-than-pristine garden continues to grow. I think there’s a (somewhat obvious) metaphor for writing in all this. It’s messy, unpredictable, doesn’t always turn out the way you expect it to, but it’s always worth it.

The aptly-named bee balm, with mandatory bumble bee

Author Platform Growth Summit

I’ve been attending the virtual Author Platform Growth Summit for the past five days, hosted by the Better-Faster Academy and Becca Syme.

It’s been amazing. But.

My brain is mush.

Still, it was an extraordinary conference. I’m so glad I attended, and now I need to stare at some wildflowers and process all the information.

Returning wildflowers (that we planted last year)

Rainbows, sunsets, and bread machines

So on Monday evening, the sky decided to present us with this:

A rainbow to the east and a sunset to the west!

I’ve been decidedly in bread machine mode with book two (The Marigold Miracle). I’ve been reviewing the draft—slowly—making notes, and then letting everything simmer or churn or do whatever it is my brain does when I’m not paying attention.

It’s nice to really embrace and refine my bread-machine way of writing. I already have some (what I hope are) nifty ideas for draft two. When I wrote the original draft, I knew that the initial scenes would not be the first scenes of the book. But, at the time, I simply needed a way into the story and those scenes worked for that.

It’s not flashy, but I’m pleased with this progress. I’ve also made a dent in all those Photoshop tutorials as well this week. And since the air quality here is awful and I’m stuck inside, that’s what I’m going to do next.

Cottage Garden aspirations

Photo essay incoming.

So last year, I wanted to do something about this:

Once upon a time, this space was filled with hostas and day lilies. It wasn’t inspiring landscaping, but it worked. Over the years, it became a catch-all for a wide range of things. You can see the indent from the free-standing basketball hoop. But this space is where things got tossed—roofing debris, decking, and so on.

Then, of course, weeds and saplings began to take over. Although the hostas are fighting the good fight.

Clearing all that out was as far as I got last year. Mainly because I wasn’t sure what to do with the space.

This year, I had the inspiration of starting a pollinator/cottage garden. Because the weeds and saplings were so aggressive, I opted for the cardboard mulch method:

The hostas seem to be making a comeback. That’s bee balm between the two patches of hostas. We have a nice mix of pollinator-friendly flowers: daisies, asters, poppies, delphinium, echinacea, and lavender. They seemed to have survived the downpours and the heat dome fairly well.

The trick with the cardboard mulch method (or so I’ve read) is that you need to continue to add compost during the growing season. This is what I did yesterday, and honestly, I think the plants are happier already.

And now, since it’s been a week, it isn’t raining, it isn’t too hot outside, I’m heading back into the garden to touch some grass (and other growing things).