Gardening

Invinc-ible!

Posted on by Beth Hull

A Friday Free-for-All Entry

“You have not had sex with Russian girl? Come to us and you shall have it!” Usually I barely glance at the messages in my spam folder, but this one caught my eye. I can almost hear someone whispering it in a Russian accent. I picture the speaker as Boris from the James Bond movie GoldenEye–you know the guy: He figures out some password or other geeky problem, then shouts “I am INVIN-CIBLE!”…And then he’s iced in place by a high-tech blasty-thing, fists frozen high in the air from victory.

Some of my recent experiences remind me of Boris. I’m flying high on the positive response from an agent…and then I find slugs binging on my romaine. Or I finally manage to squeeze back into a pair of old pants…and then the agent writes back with a no, thanks. Or I get to Round 2 of the Amazon contest…what’s next? I am full of trepidation. Illness? Injury? Stain on favorite sweater? Will it be major, or minor?

I guess it might come down to whether I believe the universe operates on balance. For every positive, there must be a negative. For every good, a bad. For every James Bond, a Dr. No. I guess that depends on God’s plan–at least that’s what I believe. I just tried to think of a counter-example in the world of rejection letters. There isn’t always a correlating positive for negative in querying for a novel. Usually it’s a whole lot of negative responses with the very rare positive response. BUT that one positive outweighs, and, I hope, nullifies the negatives. You just have to get there, to that positive.

And then, once you get the positive response, and the publisher, there are probably negative reviews. Unless you’ve written The Hunger Games, in which case, maybe there are other negatives going on in your life. But I’m not spiteful enough to wish that on anyone. Well, maybe that person who cut me off in the library parking lot the other day….

This entry has gone in a completely different direction from the intended. Not that I intend much for the Friday Free-for-Alls. But I’m at a good ending point for this entry, since I’m not getting that hour I wrote about on Wednesday. Z spent a few minutes “reading” my Wicked Spanish dictionary and singing along with Anne Murray to “You Are My Sunshine,” but since then she has smashed her finger in the desk drawer, tripped over a Duplo, and had a dirty diaper.

Until Monday, then!

Sequoia Weeds

Posted on by Beth Hull

As promised, a photo of my mini-garden. It is confined to planter boxes for the time being, but we have plans to expand into the back lawn.

Hello salad!

That’s the flattering angle of my “garden.” From the other direction, scary. The arugula is just screaming for attention–it’s in the far planter, crowded, insisting on space, and stealing it from the stunted beets and the three sickly soybean plants.

At dinner last night I asked Husband if he thought it was the coolest thing in the world that I can step into the back yard and “pick” our salad just before we eat it. For him, the novelty wore off after the first night. For me, it never gets old. I look at the bright green things in my salad bowl and just marvel at how these used to be tiny seeds. I have loved them. Like a proud parent, I even made phone calls to friends and family when they sprouted.

I’ve been spending so much of my attention on these two planter boxes (and the failed experiments of container lettuce) that I neglected the front and side yards. Now they are SCARY.

Monster Weed

I don’t think this photo can really get my point across. This is only a small cross-section of one-eighth of the tree-sized weed growing in the side yard. It’s–really–big. Well, it was. And it has friends–many friends. And it had these prickly leaves (hence the heavy work gloves…oh, who am I kidding–I’m freaked out about spiders and all kinds of bugs and always wear gloves when I work in the yard).

The gardening stuff gives me something else to think about. This week had a downer (the agent formerly interested in Savage Autumn sent an impersonal r e j e c t i o n letter), and an upper (SA made it into the second round of the ABNA contest). And I’m starting to really think about the next book, which is so much fun, but my brain needs a break sometimes, and it needs to get outside.

Well, the sequel to The Hunger Games awaits. So glad the weekend starts tomorrow!

Poo To Do

Posted on by Beth Hull

I really don’t see how this would be of interest to anyone except myself, but my to-do list (all forms of it updated, categorized, fretted over, and so on, since high school) is on my mind right now, so I think I’ll work with it.

Also, I’m sorry yesterday’s entry didn’t show up until late; I hit the “Save Draft” button instead of the “Schedule [to publish]” button. It’s better than today’s entry, so you could just read that instead. Really.

Poo To Do:

1) read and comment on Ana’s manuscript

2) read and comment on writing for the Sacramento Writers Group (it isn’t posted yet, but since I’m the person who posts them, I can get the head start I desperately need in order to procrastinate until the last minute)

3) rough character sketches for The Black City. Can I please, tonight, NOT get bogged down browsing through 100,001 Baby Names while selecting monikers for my invented people?

4) pick up library books on hold. They haven’t arrived yet, but they should soon. One book I’m especially excited about it Catching Fire, the sequel to The Hunger Games. No, I’m not obsessively checking and re-checking my library account. Nope, I haven’t memorized my 14-digit library account number because I’ve been typing it in so often. No, I didn’t actually pack Z up and take her to the library to investigate my holds status in person.

5) stop lying

6) turn Z’s car seat around so she isn’t scrunched up like a jack-in-the-box during our many trips to the library

7) pick some lettuce to make a salad for dinner tonight. LOVING my mini-garden. I’ll post a picture on Friday.

8 ) replace batteries in sound monitor for Z’s room

9) figure out what to write for blog post tomorrow–I need to compose these in my mind early (you think all this witticism shows up on the fly? Oh, no: “…and though I sometimes amuse myself with suggesting and arranging such little elegant compliments…I always wish to give them as unstudied an air as possible.” -Mr. Collins, Pride and Prejudice)

10) talk to Husband about painting bedroom walls

11) clip back the blackened, frost-killed bush in front of the bathroom window–there’s green in there somewhere–it’ll make it!

12) check, re-check, and check again the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards site to see if my novel made the first cut. For the first cut they just read the pitches. You can click here to read mine.

There’s more, of course. But I’ve gotta go, need to check that ABNA site again.

Haiku-oscope

Posted on by Beth Hull

a new week begins

thousand petals pushed to sky

the crocus blossoms

***

I was going to write something really cool here, but frankly, I’m reading The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (finally) and really can’t be bothered by anything. Don’t bother me until I’m done with this book. That goes for you too, Z. I think I’ll have to hire a babysitter when I read the second book in the trilogy. SO GOOD. I can’t even handle it. Suzanne Collins is my new hero.

Slug Love

Posted on by Beth Hull

On Wednesday night I enjoyed my very first salad made with lettuce from my own garden. I felt so in touch with the earth, with nature, that I enjoyed it while watching an episode of “Bones” on hulu. In all seriousness, though, I enjoyed that salad. My hands (and my mother’s) put the seeds into tiny trays and delicately covered them with soil, then I watered them and obsessed over them like my daughter’s first breaths, counting each little seedling as it sprouted. I gloried in the leaves growing bright bright green, reaching for the sun.

I did not glory in the slugs.

Okay, so I’m the girl who cried when my brother salted snails or held a magnifying glass over ants. It just seemed cruel. I didn’t even want to hear him talking about such things. Now I find myself wondering how to take care of these garden pests. Geoff Hamilton, the author of Organic Gardening, recommends dropping these little guys into a bucket of kerosene. While probably an instant death, it also sounds A) cruel, and B) dangerous with a toddler wandering around the backyard, managing to get into everything. For awhile my compromise was to launch them over the back fence and into the yard of the empty, bank-owned house next door. Now that people actually live there, it seems wrong. Especially because those people are nice. If they were mean, I’d probably do it anyway. Okay, okay, I threw a couple of slugs over there yesterday, and I feel really bad about it, okay? I’m not going to do it anymore.

My new compromise is probably worse than the instant kerosene death or the slow torture of the salt, but I bet it makes the little suckers happy in the short run. I stick ’em in the yard waste bin. It’s full of damp, decaying vegetation. Slug’s paradise, right? Yeah, until summer when that thing heats up like a slow-cooker.

If my slug-compassion gets too intense, I can always just plant arugula next winter. Bleh. That stuff is so bitter, even the slugs don’t want to eat it.