garden

Today I have a new appreciation for landfills

/ Tracy Abell / 4 Comments

On Saturday afternoon I dug up lots of perennials and at one point went inside to put a FREE ad on Craigslist. I didn’t hear from anyone and so put the plants in my garage to keep them out of the freezing temps. Someone responded to the ad at midnight saying he wanted the plants. I responded Sunday morning to confirm and ask when he’d pick them up. Hours passed without a response. Then another person wrote to say she wanted the plants, using many exclamation points to convey her enthusiasm!!! She said she’d get them today.

That’s the last I heard from that woman despite the numerous emails I sent asking for confirmation. I just sent a text to the original responder who’d finally responded last night to say he wanted them, asking if he can pick them up today. No answer yet. Meanwhile, the plants are in my driveway and the temperature is dropping again.

Selling stuff on Craigslist results in way fewer problems than giving things away for free. I’m thinking I should’ve charged a few bucks for the plants so that people would’ve been more courteous throughout the process.

Tomorrow is trash day. Maybe I should admit defeat and embrace the landfill, like a good U.S. consumer-citizen.

Today’s special guest

/ Tracy Abell / 6 Comments

Our guest next to Zippy’s hand for scale.

I spent the afternoon working in the yard in preparation for the winter storm and below-freezing temperatures on the way. I cut back perennials and chopped up greens to add to our two compost tumblers and standing bin. Zippy joined me after his bike ride and made the plants from his vegetable garden compost-ready. As he stood over the bin and chopped up tomato plants, he discovered a guest he’d been dreading all summer: a tomato hornworm.

He showed me and said his friend had told him that hornworms turned into swallowtail butterflies. That didn’t sound right so I checked. In fact, tomato hornworms turn into the five-spotted hawkmoth. Either way, that’s quite the transformation. (I do think it’s kinda too bad the horn gets lost along the way.)

Please excuse my jungle hyperbole

/ Tracy Abell / 1 Comment

I spent much of today in my backyard culling plants from my severely crowded flower beds so that I could give them away. (I got in touch with a woman who back in May responded to my “Free Perennials” ad on Craigslist and who happily came this afternoon to retrieve more of the green bounty).

I dug up so many plants. Daylilies. Yarrow. Iris. Valerian. Lamb’s Ear. Plus other plants that got caught in the cull-crossfire (asters, vinca, mallow, etc.).

I admit my beds didn’t look quite as dense as this Pixabay photo, but the claustrophobic feel is definitely spot-on. Fortunately, there’s now a bit more breathing room in my backyard. And unfortunately,  there’s still a long way to go . . .

Perfection isn’t perfect

/ Tracy Abell / 2 Comments

I’m working on my revisions and mostly succeeding in ignoring the nasty voice in my head that says “this is crap” and “why even bother?”

What’s the key to my (mostly) success?

Remembering there’s no such thing as a perfect manuscript. Perfection is an unattainable ideal that just so happens to also be highly subjective.

From my perspective this purple coneflower is perfection. Flawed petals and all. I love it and have spent quite a bit of time gazing at its loveliness. However, your mileage may vary. And that’s okay.

Poppy and Potential Poppy

/ Tracy Abell / 2 Comments

I’ve spent the last couple hours working on my revisions that are moving along, but are also causing me a bit of angst as I struggle to achieve the vision I have for this middle-grade project. I just decided to take a break to put up a blog post and went to my photo files for an image. I chose a picture from a couple days ago of a poppy in bloom along with a lovely not-yet-bloomed bud. As I cropped the image, I considered blog post titles and immediately landed on Poppy and Potential Poppy. I’m embarrassed to confess that it took a few moments for this extremely relevant factoid to hit me:

The protagonist in the manuscript I’m revising is named Poppy.

Oy. Here’s hoping we both achieve our potential today.

A tame version of yesterday’s wild

/ Tracy Abell

Yesterday as I ran on the open space trails and flax tickled my legs, I wished Zippy was with me. Blue flax flowers are his favorite and they’re at the peak of their bloom right now. Good news for him, our flax is also blooming at home in one of our beds.

Here’s a domesticated memento of yesterday’s trail run.

363 days ago today

/ Tracy Abell / 5 Comments

This is what was happening in my front yard nearly a year ago today.

There needs to be some serious growth taking place in the next two days if the tulip wants to debut on the same day this year.

Spoiler alert: I don’t think it’s gonna happen.

 

Welcome, beauty

/ Tracy Abell / 2 Comments

Beauty is everywhere a welcome guest.
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

My iris haven’t begun blooming yet, so I’m posting this photo from last April in anticipation of the splendor that’s in store for us.

I’m forever grateful to my former neighbor, Tina, for sharing her iris-love with me. She had many different iris in her vast gardens and when I first began digging in the soil, creating my own little patch of beauty, she’d toss iris tubers over the fence. I’m pretty sure this photographed iris is one of those long-ago gifts.