There's Writing and Then There's Gardening: Hard to Tell the Difference Sometimes

 
Sometimes it seems as if there is very little difference between the act of writing a novel and the act of building a garden. I love doing both and occasionally it is necessary to do one while ignoring the other. Thus I have been absent from the blog and my desk in general because I have been building a garden -- a big garden with lots of little parts, different plots (sorry...couldn't resist the pun!) and characters -- and it has been glorious. And very necessary as a way of climbing out the fog of last year -- shifting from being a full time caregiver to my mother, to a writer day dreaming up the next novel into words. Gardening provides a bridge from last year into this for the physical acts of gardening are much like the literary ones of creating a story.

 

Each section of the garden has its own colors, its own textures, its own needs -- yet at a glance it must come together as a whole. Each plant has its own character and no amount of my forcing will let it be anything other than itself. There is time to reflect, to create.  I find myself inspired by the dirt under my nails, the sun on my back and the almost constant whirring sound of the hummingbirds that have arrived to inspect the new flowering plants I have added especially for them. The air is redolent with orange blossoms, tombstone roses and compost. And when I focus too long on small part, I look up to see the spears of green in the canopy of the newly trimmed mesquite tree that sprawls over most of the backyard.

 
Front and back of this little house are very different. The front is open to the sun and the Mexican poppies here have taken it over in a fiery blaze. I have a narrow planter on side in which I planted a cactus garden that has begun to bloom and will over the next two months.

 

 
The back of the house is like a secret garden. The mesquite looms over everything, the patio roof is buried beneath a huge coverlet of tombstone roses and I have planted many new sections with different flowers -- some for butterfly, some for hummingbirds. There is a night blooming cereus cactus that drapes itself over the trunk and branches of the tree and when it blooms will attract the bats and the luna moths.

 
So am I working on my novel.  Really. The garden restores, and stories happen.