garden

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.

What a difference a day makes

/ Tracy Abell

Yesterday was a beautiful autumn day, sunny and in the low 60s. Zippy and I spent the afternoon working in the yard, trying to catch up on our much-neglected gardens that have run amok. The sun shone through the leaves and I paused in my work to capture this vibrant image:

I made a conscious effort to fully experience the colors and balmy temperatures, because there was a huge weather shift on the way. This morning we woke to about 4 inches of snow on the deck railing (currently 8 inches or so).

Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny with a high of 51 degrees. Welcome to Colorado.