QUESTION: Do you have hobbies outside of
your writing life? Tell about them. Do they feed your writing life? Do they get
your mind off your current projects and their attendant frustrations? Do they
satisfy a different part of you than is satisfied by your writing?
Hello, my name’s Cathy, and I’m a gardener. I am also alarmingly fallible...so if this post looks a tad familiar it might be because you received it yesterday, tacked onto the end of Frank's lovely piece. That would be because I scheduled it to post on the wrong date. My apologies to Frank. If you saw this post yesterday...off you go to get on with your day - you're excused. However, if you ignored/didn't see it...here it is! Not exactly my finest ta-daa! moment, but...
Ask anyone who says they’re a gardener if they're ever satisfied with their gardening
efforts and their answer will probably be, “No”. There’s always something more
to do, something you want to make better, or different, or there’s a plant you
wish you hadn’t planted where you did…or, you know, weeds.
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| Part of the back garden |
At this time, I’m a gardener who’s also facing a particular
challenge – drought. In our normally damp, and therefore verdant, Pacific
Northwest we’ve experienced a terribly dry spring, followed by a phenomenal
heat bubble during our usually-wet June, and now a completely dry July. I know
we’re incredibly fortunate to not be facing the absolute disaster of wildfires
being so close that we’ve had to evacuate, or – much worse – face the loss of
absolutely everything, but drought is my challenge right now, so my “gardening”
has dwindled to watering, doing my best to rescue plants not able to take 43
degrees of heat in the shade, let alone direct sunlight which isn’t filtered by
our “usual” cloud-cover.
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| Scorched hosta, poor thing |
Of course, our well has run dry (it does every year, but
usually not until July, however, it was dry early in June this year) so we’re
having water trucked in to fill our water tanks aboveground which we then use
to feed our well, from where the water comes to the house in the usual manner
via filters which remove particulates and a UV filter which further purifies
the water, ready for drinking.
 |
| The water truck arriving- YAY!!! |
So, my “hobby” this year is my everyday reality, with – to
be honest – more stress than pleasure involved. We’re also deciding which shrubs
to move in case this weather becomes a more frequent occurrence, as well as
deciding which trees to plant to at least offer more shade in the future for shrubs
which are currently scorched…all of which means that my hobby isn’t merely a
restful distraction from my normal writing routine, but – at the moment – it’s
not allowing me to do as much writing as I would like.
 |
| Some areas are doing not too badly at all |
Normally, I enjoy plotting as I weed or mow; nowadays, I
find there’s still a space in my brain for plotting as I water parched plants
I’ve tended and loved for the past twenty years, but the space isn’t as large
as I’d like, nor is it a particularly happy place.
 |
| The bees are grateful we're keeping the buddleia healthy |
This has had a surprising impact: I was plotting a book set
in Arizona for Cait Morgan’s eleventh outing (to be published in November 2021)
but I’ve found that my continuously sweaty reality has made Arizona a less
appealing location…so I’ve switched things up to send Cait and Bud to London,
UK, next, where they can enjoy a dusting of snow on the Christmas decorations,
and indulge in visits to galleries and museums – as well as tackling a
particularly puzzling murder, of course!
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| The humming birds are grateful we're keeping the crocosmia healthy |
Re-reading this post I can see I have a hobby that,
ultimately, I love but which never allows me to feel total contentment with
what I’ve achieved, as well as a writing career about which I feel exactly the
same. That probably says a great deal about my personality…I’ll let you decide
what that is!
If you'd like to be FIRST to see the cover reveal for the next Cait Morgan Mystery, sign up for my newsletter...on the Homepage of my website: http://www.cathyace.com/
Also, if you'd like to find out more about the area where I really live, you can see how it inspired my writing in THE CORPSE WITH THE IRON WILL, the 10th Cait Morgan Mystery: http://www.cathyace.com/cait-morgan-mysteries
7 comments:
Well, not only am I impressed with your gardening prowess but I am happy to be paired with you, even accidentally.
You have a great garden, Cathy, and you've got me wondering if they also have beer trucks that will make deliveries like that.
My garden is a handkerchief compared to yours and it keeps me as busy as I let it. How you manage for many acres so beautifully while writing and indie publishing amazes me. Wonder Woman. (I love your buddeia.)
Thanks, Frank...LOL! Just back in from a few hours spent underneath shrubs...it's all glamour in the garden, you know ;-)
If they could deliver beer in trucks like that, Dietrich, they'd be rumbling up our little mountain even more frequently. That said, the local liquor store does deliver so, you know, there's that ;-)
Not Wonder Woman, Susan...just grubby gardener (especially at this moment...off to change and dunk in the hot tub now - which I think is at a lower temperature than our current "in the shade" air temps!) Gasp! xx
Ach, I'm sorry that you're having such a struggle with the garden this year, Cathy. That's what it's like for me down in CA - we enjoy gardening all autumn, winter and spring and then spit on our hands and determine to balance "over-summering" the trees and roses with conserving as much water as possible. This is a house of many buckets and hardly a drop of grey water goes down the drain.
Would I swap it for slugs again? I'm close.
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