A Contemplative Life

Flags, courage, gardening, and staying the course.... Future Me was hanging around over the weekend, especially on Saturday as I finished my Pride in the Flag flag. She has been conspicuously ABSENT for a good while, since Breathing space . I don't blame her in a way. I've certainly wanted to abscond to distant lands. I do not have the luxury of time travel. She, however, possesses fairy-godlike abilities, usually for which I am grateful. This weekend her presence was minimal, yet soothing, as though she kept the rain from falling until I could photograph Pride on the laundry line. She didn't say much, perhaps our conversations are mostly of an ethereal nature, absorbed like breathing. Sometimes her voice wafts softly, often she snorts sharply. She does a lot of snorting, smirking, eye rolling, as though I'm a truculent child in constant need of being upbraided. Or maybe she's weary of this on-off-on again existence, wishing she could retire to sew or write or garde...

I didn't mean to cut back a dahlia, but sometimes it happens. We might get some rain tonight, so today was spent prepping for it. Leaves were raked, the wood area cleaned, and boy my back is feeling all that exercise! I've lamented not doing more in the garden, but have earned my outdoor stripes over the last few days. Amaryllis have been cut down, blackberry vines among them whacked back. My better half dumped several bins of refuse, bless him! I swept the back patio and am looking forward to how much leftover dust is washed away by the precipitation, perhaps a quarter-inch worth. I can't complain about the impending wet weather, because it's nearly the middle of October and we haven't had much in the way of damp days. In fact, we've enjoyed loads of warm temps for our neck of the North Coast. Yet it's time for a change. Huh, not much about retirement, semi or otherwise, so far in this post. I did feel quite relaxed while raking this morning, the sun shinin...

One quilt top completed, perhaps photographed later today. Many scrunchies sorted, and many more to stitch. (Which led to three different fabrics being used up from my stash, yay!) A bowlful of hair adornments! The Lavender Quilt (EPP) is also starting to coalesce, in a manner that will move my butt from the couch to a better place for design, although not the wall because paper pieces don't stick to batting. Lavender quilt being arranged last night. More room definitely required! A Myrtle EPP block is nearly done; somehow that quilt, started at least three years ago, might end up as a near-finish by the end of the year. (Hopefully I haven't jinxed it by such a claim.) New hand-quilting needles arrived this week so I delved into the Cornflower Quilt, hurray! All the inner squares are stitched, but several outer blocks and the perimeter triangles remain, yet I love the new needles and hopefully those will inspire me to finish the hand-quilting and COMPLETE THAT QUILT! Cornflower...

I grew up with irises so these remind me of my youth. I thought about this last night while sewing basted paper shapes; I stitch a bunch together, then set them aside as blocks pile up, waiting for a good long while as I still need to sew a dozen more blocks, plus baste loads of four-inch squares. then sew all of that together BY HAND, ahem. Writing my current series needs to be considered in a similar labor of long-term love manner. Assessing my fictional WIP in such a way was liberating, because I never berate how much time I put into a paper-pieced quilt; those projects always emerge through a lengthy lens, no way to sew by hand as fast as machine piecing. Each block is akin to a chapter, yet for this series, it's more like sewing a few EPP quilts, lol. I just need to write/revise a little bit most days and know there's a great ending waiting for me. I actually did some writing today; I've come to the the part of this second book where much required alteration, so a half...

A wee sunflower newly placed in the garden! But I need to preface it with the notion that I feel like I'm cheating. Yet I've put a number of plants in the ground and in planters, so that counts, right? And they are live plants, lol, so yeah, I've kind of found my outdoors mojo, even during a mostly cloud-filled week. Boysenberry plant that I started last year from a tiny plug; it's the berry of my childhood and doing well. So why do I feel as though I've skipped many steps? Well, last year I started SO MANY PLANTS FROM SEED. Oh my goodness, I was a seed-starting fool last spring. It was our first full year at this house and with little rain and plentiful if not cold sun, I went nuts for veg and flowers. Not all of it did well, due to hungry deer and other critters and meh soil, as well as our mild summer weather. Did I burn myself out, perhaps. Our very wet and cold winter hampered my efforts this spring, as well as malaise from grief. Yet I'm making up for it n...

Just past the large boulders is where the sand drops off about ten feet to the shore. We bought some plants today, then went to the beach, hence the title. Cloud cover should lift tomorrow and we'll put the various flowers, fruit, and veg into the ground then. I've been considering starting some pumpkins from seed, but hesitated because last year's were such a bust. Finding nicely sprouted plants at the store pushed me over the edge and I'm toppling into minor gardening with my fingers crossed. In addition to squash, I chose a cantaloupe plant and a dozen petunias split into two six-packs. And a coleus for our planter that dwells in the shade, into which I'll put one yellow and one pinkish-purple petunia merely because that leaves ten, which is plenty to scatter where the deer and other critters won't eat them. My husband chose a watermelon plant, he LOVES watermelon. No idea how the fruit will do with our mild temps, but experimentation is good. And the petunia...

A binding being applied. First off, for the next five and three-quarter months, Gracious Mysteries is free on Smashwords! The second in my That Which Can Be Remembered series, it was originally released as a pre-order, hence the need for a price. However, I'm not really about charging for my novels, so I've set it as a freebie, but only through the Smashwords store. You can check out my entire catalogue on Smashwords, or find my books at other various online retail sites. Next, my goodness it's nice to 1) have finished my recent WIP. 2) Enjoy some warm temps! 3) Send off the Rainbow quilt and a mug rug to their new home. 4) Faff around with other coasters, binding strips, and myriad quilting hoo haa littering my big table. I did that today amid sunny skies, then went outside and planted six nasturtiums, about the extent of my gardening fever this spring. I truly have nothing in the tank in regard to seedlings, plants, etc. Instead I'm all-in for noveling and sewing. ...

From left clockwise: a fun diagonal quilt, my granddaugther's EPP classic, seedlings and an EPP hexie. Wow, it's nearly the end of the year, how did that occur? Days tick past, weeks turning into months and suddenly it's time for new calendars, new quilts, new books.... I've been reading through The Earthen Chronicles Book 1 for a few days, starting to feel the sequel forming in my head, a great sensation. You can enjoy the first chapter of that tale at the end of my latest release, That Which Can Be Remembered , now available at major online retailers. Just a little plug for that novel, as well as reminding anyone wishing to get a copy for free of its predecessor Gracious Mysteries to head over to Smashwords , where GM is on sale for two more days during Smashwords' End of Year Sale. However, I am strongly considering making a box set of that series, and all three books would be priced for free. I need a new cover for that publication, we'll see how that co...

Wildflowers and sunflowers I grew from seed, unbothered by our coolish weather.... Well kind of moving aside, this post notwithstanding. Yesterday I uploaded the second novel so it can be sampled by prospective readers while The Possibility of What If hit other online retailers, that was exciting! So this morning instead of plopping down in front of a computer, I parked my behind on the sofa and picked up a big English paper piecing project that is sort of near completion. A Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt for my youngest granddaughter only needs the rows sewn together, but that's a lot of hand-stitching, kind of like finishing a first draft then saying, "All I have left are the revisions!" Ah revising; there's no beast quite like picking apart a paragraph and putting it back together. I've sat with two or three of those in the last few weeks, trying to figure out the best way of saying this or that, or wondering what I was on about originally. Yet there is...

Baby coleus I started from seed and over which I am greatly pleased! I'm watching the French Open final between Rafael Nadal and Caspar Ruud. A tennis fan since Boris Becker won his first Wimbledon, I have a fondness for Grand Slam events, especially when one of the finalists is newly thirty-six years old and coming back from injury. Nadal took initial set, has just broken Ruud's serve to bring this second set back to even. A long morning sits in front of me as I savor amazingly played points, typing here and there, muting commercials then peering back at the TV as history is made. Yet within the enormity of worldwide sport, there is the intimacy of right now. It rained much of yesterday, but all my potted plants are in the ground along with five hills of various pumpkins. Three woeful spider plants and a pot of four nasturtiums got me outside before the storm hit, and I didn't even water them after getting them planted, aware the rain would take that task for me. Right now...

A happy tomato plant; I can't wait to partake of its fruits! So around ten-thirty this morning I started a new book. The opening hit me while I took a shower and while I had other things in mind for the day, instead I sat at my computer and ninety minutes later I had accumulated a little over seventeen hundred words and quite the appetite, it was after twelve noon by then. A rainy start to the day precipitated the noveling, then a break in the rain got me outside to put seven tomato plants in the ground. While that was immensely satisfying, even better was slipping back into my office to add another thousand words to Chapter One. Ah, a new book, what a thrill! Not that a plethora of tomato plants isn't cool; I put in cherry toms and bigger fruits, several of them from my eldest daughter who loves potting up seeds, then watching for the ensuing tiny plants. Which is a lot like fleshing out a story in one's head, then tap-tap-tapping away all those thoughts, dreams, schemes, ...