Sunday Update - 2026 Week 12

Hello.  I'm up obscenely early for a Sunday, but that's on the cats.  They didn't like last night's food, so they're being turds.

I thought about writing and editing this week.  That may be a sign that I'm jones'n for it.  Shhh, don't frighten the gumption away.  Marketing went crickets on me.  I only moved 15 copies of UNEQUAL.  :shrug:  Tomorrow starts a 'series bonanza' - something different I'm trying - wherein all the books in the A Model Curse series will be free for 5 days.  I've already set up tomorrow's post on that.  

I started reading a book.  Woot.  I'm about a quarter of the way through Leadership by Rudy Giuliani.  

No baking.  I did make a really tasty sweet & sour chicken dish, even if the breading on the chicken did go pear-shaped* on me.

On the activity front, I was a little active this week.  It was mostly garden work - removing detritus from the outside beds and working on the potted plants on the deck.  We did walk once, though.  Go us.  I haven't weighed myself.  Weight: Fat

The potted plants seem to be doing okay.  I'm not sure if I mentioned that 3 out of my 4 pots worth of tiny carrot plants died, but the 4th pot is doing good.  I will be thinning that this week and replanting the other pots with new carrot seeds.  I have 1 tiny potato plant coming up, which thrills me no end.  The repotted green peppers are all doing well.  All six of my redbud trees have leaves.  The redbud I thought was dead is trying, so yay.  Both of my remaining dogwood trees have tiny leaves.  The three mystery trees are all doing really well.  I'm no longer sure that one is a black cherry, but I'm getting more sure that one is a buckthorn.  We'll see.

I did try to do some carving this week.  I was really getting into it when the gouge slipped and I perforated my thumb knuckle.  That'll teach me.  Of course, I wasn't wearing the safety gloves.  I hate gloves when I have to actually do anything with my hands.  Of course, I'll be wearing them the next time I carve, because while I am sometimes foolhardy, I'm not stupid.  Live and learn.  Thankfully, it wasn't a large perforation and I'm a good clotter.  I'm just waiting to be 100% sure it won't open back up before I go back to strenuous hand activities.  

Other than that?  :shrug:  I hope you had a good week last week and that this coming week is amazing for you.

*a British phrase that I appreciate, so I'm gonna use.  What's English if not an opportunistic language that rummages through the pockets of other languages looking for spare phrases and shiny euphemisms?

Wandering the Countryside, Eating Nature's Bounty

When I was a kid, I spent countless hours roaming the surrounding countryside.  One of my favorite pastimes was searching for edible stuff.  I knew where the one currant bush was and the patch of wild asparagus.  I cultivated the back hill's plethora of wild strawberries.  I tended the roadside bramble of boysenberries.  I snatched grapes from the wild vines and was brave enough to actually eat them.  (Wild grapes are SOUR, btw.)  

Some of my fondest childhood memories, of which I have woefully few, are of those summer days wandering with my dog, eating what I found.  Or searching for things that were rumored to be out there somewhere.  

One summer, my brother heard there was a gooseberry bush in the fallow cow field across the road, so off we went in search of it.  We never found it, but the hunt sticks in my memory.  Another time, the same brother was sure there was a butternut tree in the woods on the other side of the landfill.  (Yes, I grew up near a garbage dump.  Don't knock it.  It was a magical, if stinky, place for a kid.)  Off we tromped for that tree.  I don't remember if we ever found that one.  Part of me thinks we did and another part suspects it was another wild goose chase.  

I was heartbroken the day I got home from school to find they'd bulldozed the back hill.  I guess they were trying to make it smoother or something, but in one day, they eradicated my strawberry patch.  I'd spent hours and hours on that hill, pulling weeds and tending plants.  Every spring/summer for several years beforehand.  I'm pretty sure I cried.  I know I called Mom at work to rat them out, only to find out she okayed it.  I'm sure I never felt so betrayed.  (I was a kid, though, so I'm sure much worse betrayals came about since.)  I talked to Mom about it the other day and she doesn't remember it.  She said I never told her I was tending those strawberries, which is probably true.  They were my secret garden and my summer feast that I never had to share.

Recently, on a walk, I discovered a patch of blackberries, growing along the barbed wire fence beside the road.  I picked the ripe ones and brought them home.  There's another patch farther along that isn't ripe yet, but is loaded with berries.  I just hope the property owner doesn't come along and cut them down, or mow, or spray for weeds to kill everything on the fence - all of which they've done over the course of the past 12 years.  There's also a stand of elderberries that came back after the last cutting and they look like they might fruit this year.  Right now they're covered in flowers, so yay.

After we moved here, I was so happy to see what I thought were wild strawberries all over the southwest part of the yard.  Except the flowers were yellow.  (Strawberries have white blooms.)  They're not strawberries.  They're mock strawberries.  Same leaves, similar but yellow flowers, similar looking fruit - except the fruit isn't tasty.  It's pithy and watery.  They're so flavorless, even the critters don't eat them.  Bleh.  (I tried it, trust me.)  It was a disappointment, let me tell you.  

We also have black cherry trees.  Edible, but SOUR and very medicinal tasting - not surprising since they're used to make cough medicine.  The critters love those.  

I really do wish I had the cornucopia of edible things around this house that I had access to as a kid, even if it's just for the nostalgia of it.  Wandering the countryside eating nature's bounty... :happy sigh:

Monday Update - Week 16

 Since yesterday was a holiday, here's a Monday Update...

No writing or editing.  Yes, I have been thinking about writing, but that's usually only when I'm trying to get some sleep.  I did some marketing for SLEEPING UGLY, which was free last week, but I didn't move as many as I would've liked.  :shrug:  I forgot to set anything up for this week.  We'll see if that changes.

I did some reading, but I forgot to post my Saturday Reading Wrap-up.  I'll do a two-weeker this Saturday.

No baking this week.  Yeah, I meant to make a cake for Easter, but that didn't get done.  I did make some awesome stuffed chicken breasts for dinner yesterday, which went into the oven, I maybe that counts. Or maybe that just counts for next Sunday's update.  Derp.

On the activity front, I started the week gangbusters, but then dropped to nada.  So, yeah, 4 days of activity - mostly weeding gardens and stuff like that.  I did one hard target walk, which brings my total mileage for the year to 6.55 miles.  That's kinda pathetic, but I'm not whipping myself over it.  I'm doing other active things.  And my gardens are starting to look good, so yay.

Speaking of gardens, I got the shade bed and the cedar bed weeded.  (Okay, Hubs did most of the cedar bed, but it's weed-free now.)  Then I planted the seeds I had intended for the cedar bed.  I also bought some more seeds to go in there, which I'll try and get to today.  If the rain is actually finished.  

Speaking of plants, I have 4 viable dogwood trees in pots.  They're only about 3 inches tall, but they've each got two leaves beyond the seed leaves and one of them is working on a second set of leaves.  Also the two cedar trees - Cecile and Clyde - are doing well, with plenty of new growth.  

And the rain... Oh holy crap did it rain.  Sploosherama big time.  The dogwoods and the cedars are currently hanging out in the sunroom.  I didn't want them to drown, poor things.  

Okay, I think that's it for the news of last week.  I need to get motivated this morning, but my gumption won't turn over.  It sputters and dies every time I try it.  ;o)

Have a great day and if you're motivated, feel free to drop a comment.  

Thursday This n That

I played the lottery.  Won a dollar.  Spent three.  I don't think this a sound path to financial freedom.  Of course, neither is writing, but here I am.

I don't know about where you live, but our tiny weekly newspaper is filled with Help Wanted ads.  No, I'm not looking for a job.  But I always look at the want ads.  Maybe someday, if I see the perfect job, I'll do something.  Right now, though, I have a friend who's kinda looking, so I'm looking for her.  Yeah, that's the ticket.

Just off our newly cleared yard space, we have two trees that are unlike all the others.  One at the southwest corner and the other at the southeast corner.  Yesterday, I took some pictures and got out my tree identification book to see if I could figure out what they are.  I got close with the book and then I went online to narrow it down.  Near as I can figure it, they're 'pumpkin ash' trees.  Of course, that species really isn't supposed to be this far west in MO, but hey, stuff happens.  Birds eat seeds.  Birds fly.  Bingo bango bongo, you've got trees where you weren't expecting them.  Anyway, here's a pic.  

The leaves all start in a funny pod thing at different points on each branch.  Then the pod opens and the leaves unfurl.  I wish I'd thought to take a pic of that.  Maybe next year.  (If you're better at tree identification and think I got the species wrong, let me know.  Seriously.)

I love trees, btw.  This place is a gold mine for my tree lovin'.  So many cool species live right here on my property.  I'm working on identifying them all.  Woohoo.  My other two nerdy loves are birds and rocks.  I'm in geeking out all over the place here.  I couldn't have designed a better spot for me to live.

When everything else is so freakin' weird, it's nice to be able to focus on something that's not crazypants.  Plants seem to be my outlet right now.  

I met the wife and kids of the guy who's building a house next door.  Turns out she's from Michigan, too.  In fact, she grew up about thirty minutes south of where I grew up and where my mom lives right now.  Her mom's still there, too.  Small world.   I wonder if she knows the one family I knew in that town.  Hmm.

They were cute kids, btw.  Most of the people around here are my age or older.  We only have kids around here when grandkids visit.  Soon, we'll have a little girl and a little boy right next door.  I'm not looking forward to the bus stopping out front at 6am, but I'll get over it.

Your turn.  What's on the this-n-that radar for you today?

Garden Plans

I know I said I would post this yesterday, but I kind of got wrapped up in my new release.  (Rumor Has It... for sale now - $2.99.)

Okay... so... gardening.  If you've been following along, I've talked about doing some vegetable gardening here at Sanderson Acres.  (Hey, it's more than an acre here, so it counts as plural.)   You know, to help make us more self-reliant and junk. 

The main reason I haven't ventured into growing my own food is... DEER.  Those buggers will eat anything with leaves.  Sure, I have 'deer resistant' flowers and junk, but resistant isn't a guarantee.  Just because a deer doesn't usually eat something doesn't mean it won't in a pinch.  (Or play with it when they're bored.)  And I have yet to find 'deer resistant' food plants.  

So, how does a gal who invites the pesky critters to her yard grow her own food?  

Well, first I looked into fencing.  What a pain in the buns.  All the work of building the fencing turned this lazy gal right the hell off of the whole gardening idea.  And then there was the need for terracing because we live on a hill.  Umm... no.  Not only no, but hell no.

Then I stumbled across the idea of container gardening.  Everything in pots?  Pots we can put on our deck, safely out of the reach of the deer (if not the squirrels and the birds)?  Okay, there's an idea I can get behind.  And we have a huge deck off the south side of our house.  So, I printed off a bunch of stuff on various container ideas.  

At first, I was totally jazzed about this grow-box thing I found that I could make and then put casters on it so we could roll it around the deck to capture the best sun.  Hubs talked me out of that.  We have tons of regular containers... why re-invent the wheel?  

So, over the weekend, I bought a bag of dirt and three seed packets - beefsteak tomatoes, carrots, and lettuce.  Kind of home grown salad.  Yay.  This week, I will use some old egg cartons and start the germination process.  

We have a perfect spot in the garage.  There's a shelf in front of one of the windows - south facing with loads of sunlight.  Hubs will build me a shelf for the other window.  Put some dirt in the egg cups and a seed in each, set them by the window, and wait for them to grow.  Once I get some growth, I'll transplant them into larger containers.  Once all danger of frost is over, put the containers out on the deck.  Voila.

Note: From what I understand, you can't transplant carrots, so those will have to wait a bit to be planted directly into larger containers for outside growth.  Unless I have room on the shelves for a few larger pots.  Hmm.

I also got the wild idea to plant zucchinis in the front rose bed.  Here's the idea...  I have all this space in there.  Two plants could easily grow and stretch themselves under the two rose plants I have.  Between the roses and the fact that the bed is next to the house and the driveway, the deer should leave them alone.  :fingers crossed:  We'll see whether I do that.  I have to do some more research.  For all I know, zucchini and roses are incompatible growers.  If I can't do zucchini there, I'll figure something else out for them.  I've read that you can train zucchini up a trellis.  And then, I'll plant herbs in the rose bed.  Basil, probably.  Maybe dill.  Maybe I'll just transplant some wild chives.  I already have those growing in my iris bed (and all over the yard... LOL)

I'm also playing with the idea of a container full of strawberry plants.  Time will tell.  Those I can't protect from the birds, so it may be a waste of time.  But I would love me some fresh strawberries.  Or blueberries...  :drool:

Anyway, now that my book is done, I have some time to focus on gardening, so that's the plan.  I'll let you know how it goes.

Do you grow any of your own food?  Have you ever tried growing it in a container?  

Thursday This n That

I've been quiet this week.  It's not that I don't have anything to say.  It's that I'm afraid if I say anything, the gates I'm keeping everything behind will shatter and it will all come pouring out, causing death and destruction to anything below the dam.  And no good will come of it.  Shakespeare said it best through Hamlet: Whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by there opposing, end them.  I'm going with the former.  For now.

Anyway...

The deer are fat pregnant.  And they're starting to distance themselves from each other, so they're coming for food in singles or, when there is a larger gathering, it's all young does.  The big doe with the two buck yearlings has kicked her boys out of her general area, which means the boys aren't coming around anymore.  =o(

My roses went a little crazy this year...

The front bush is still cultivated.  The back bush went feral a few years ago (its original cultivar was yellow).  There was a third bush next to the house, but it gave up the ghost last year.  Those two?  They thrive on neglect.  Other than dead-heading them, I ignore them and they're loving it.  Still, I do have them both tied to the porch so they don't take over my parking space.

Mom made it back to the office yesterday.  Poor lady is up to her ass in alligators after being trapped at home since mid-March.  I mean, she did a lot of work from home, but there's only so much you can do without your computer and filing cabinets.  Sis helped her out a lot, but again, there's only so far anyone else can go to do her job. 

I made unsweetened 'sweet tea' the other day.  It's like regular iced tea, except for adding baking soda to the pitcher before you pour in the hot water.  (The baking soda makes it smooooth.)  I sweeten each glass with my yellow packet stuff.  I know, there are southern women all over the land gasping at this perversion, but I gotta do what I gotta do.  I love sweet tea, but I don't need the sugar.

Yesterday, I got the paver project done under the deck.  I need to snap a picture, but I'm lazy.  Anyway, it looks quite nice - manmade paver-type bricks interspersed with natural flat rocks.  Now, I'm itching to go buy some big blocks to shore up the end and finish the under-the-deck.  And a few bags of dirt.  And more gravel.  And some pretty flowers... like the quiet dam, once this one bursts, look out.  ;o)

Okay, I'm tapped out now.  What's up with your 'this n thats' this week?

Thursday This n That

So, I went price shopping for dry cat food.  And I about gagged at the price, so I gave up and just bought it at Wallyworld.  Then I discovered I'm only buying a 7lb bag and what I was looking at online was a 16lb bag.  Umm, yeah, better price online, but I already break the 7lb bag into like one pound baggies for freezing.  And it takes her like 10-14 days to eat through one baggie.  I do not need 16 baggies sitting in my freezer.  Maybe if I had a chest freezer or something.  Right now, though?  No.

I have to freeze the cat food.  If I don't, it gets stale and if it gets stale, it gives Kira urinary problems.  No problems since I started freezing the damn food.  :shrug: Who knew?  Okay, people probably knew.

I am a slave to my geriatric cat.

Cat food should be one word.  Seriously.   Catfood.  Mailbox is one word.  It's a box for your mail.  Therefore, food for your cat (or dog... I'm not species biased here) should be catfood (or dogfood).

Gimpy deer is walking better on his hurt leg now.  He's walking stiff, but not limping.  I saw him stare down a bigger buck yesterday and move him off the feed by just tilting his head.  He's scrappy.  I hope he makes it.  And eats lots of deerfood.  (Think about it.)

Okay, technically, the deer here don't eat 'deer food'.  That stuff is too expensive.  They eat whole corn mixed with pellets made to feed cattle.  (As long as it's dry outside.  Those pellets turn to gruel when they get wet.)  A 50 lb bag of deer feed is like $15.  A bag of cattle feed is like $8.  And it's basically the same stuff. 

We occasionally also give them a goat feed pellet that's supposed to protect against internal parasites like worms.

It's the end of January and I've already got stuff poking up out of the dirt - irises, columbines, etc.  My lilac already has little leaf buds.  Fingers crossed for no more really hard freezes.

I can't wait for Spring. 

And that's it for me today.  What's it in your world?

She's Just a Planting Machine...

Okay, so I went a little crazy this year filling up the garden beds.  I mean, last year I was no slouch, but this year... Well, I blame Hubs.  He said to buy whatever I wanted from the landscaping place.  No more catalog plants, per his directive.  "They take too long to grow," he said.  So I went with it.

Here's the new bed in front of the porch:

Sedum, ice plant, sedum, ice plant, sedum

And new in the bed in front of the house:

Hostas

And jonquils

Plus we have a whole new shade bed:

Pink astilbes in the back, heucheras, red astilbes, white astilbe and bugle weed

And the new snapdragons in the driveway blocks:

Finally, the piece of resistance... Ferdinand the Forsythia:

Here's how the old beds are looking this year:

I didn't get a full shot of the front bed, but the peonies are growing like champions and the mums are starting to show green.  Of last year's daffodils only three bloomed and I have one tulip with a bud.  The rest of the daffodils, the tulips, and the hyacinths have leaves but no buds.  And I lost one bunch of purple tulips entirely.  =o(

Oh well, that's what you get buying cheap plants.  Keep your fingers crossed that these new - nursery born and bred - plants live long and healthy lives.

I love Spring.

Sunday Update - Week 12

Hi.  This is going to be short because I did a lot of planting over the past two days and my arms hurt from the shoulders down.

Thing 1 - most of last week was a bust writing-wise.  I did get like 5K words rewritten on Fertile Ground.  Last night, though, I had an epiphany so I may end up deleting all that and starting over.

Thing 2 -

That's not quite finished, but it's close.  I'm not sure the tagline 'Murder is never incidental' is blowing my skirt up.  I want something as catchy as 'Revenge is better hot', but the brain's just not coming up with anything.  I did come up with 'Random acts of homicide' yesterday.  What d'ya think?  Hotsy-totsy or Hotsy-notsy?

Thing 3 - You may have noticed a title there you hadn't seen before.  Yeah, well, the title 'Wrongful Termination' - while I lurve it - was bothering me for this book.  It kinda gives the wrong impression of what actually happens.  But I was caught in "you can't change the title now, you already told people the other title and it's at the editor and..."  :shrug:  I gotta do what I gotta do.

Thing 4 - I had a different epiphany while I was trying to take a nap on Friday.  The premise for the sequel to the above newly-titled book hit me like a salmon to the face.  I hadn't even planned a sequel for that.  But there it is.  And Wrongful Termination would be perfect for that new premise.  Huzzah! 

Thing 5 - Planting.  Thursday I went to the landscaping place and bought a bunch of stuff.  I planted some of it on Friday - including the forsythia bush I've named Ferdinand.  He went here:

Right in the middle.  Which is an excellent place for him.  Except the bed is riddled with the roots of those two cedar trees.  Which meant digging a hole approximately 1 foot deep by 18 inches wide was a bear and made for a painful day afterwards.  Eh, I got over it, and Hubs & I bought more plants yesterday.  We got them all in the ground yesterday afternoon.  I'm paying for it today.  Pics will follow once I crawl outside to take them.

Yeah, this wasn't as short as I meant it to be, but those are all the things.

What things happened in your world last week? 

Sunday Update - Week 11

Hello All.  I'm a little cranky-pants this morning.  My back hurts and the butt cheek I fell on last year hurts and it's foggy out and I have to bathe Max today and...

Well, you probably didn't come here to listen to me bitch so let's just get to last week's accomplishments, eh?

I finally got Wrongful Termination read and tweaked all the way through.  And I only missed my self-imposed deadline by one night, so it's all good.  It's in the editor's hands now - we'll see what she has to say sometime around the 29th.  I do know that the last scene choked me up.  :sniffle:

And I think I'm pretty close to having a cover image I can be proud of sending out into the world.  Now I need to figure out how to turn the ecover into a print cover.  It's all a learning curve.  And if I can't do it, I'll pay someone to. 

The other day Hubs and I had an impromptu business meeting / interesting conversation wherein we discussed the future of B.E. Sanderson Publishing (not a real company and not even what I would call it if I was going to make this a LLC, but you get the gist.)  The goal here is to have the published books funding the publication of future books by the end of the year.  If I can do that, it's a win.  If I can't do that, I'll still be publishing books but probably with a limited budget.  And just so ya know, that's me saying that - not Hubs.  He's been super good about all this and would rather I not scrimp on anything.  But I'm a scrimper.  Anyway, I'll talk more about the future on tomorrow's post at B.E.'s Writerly Space.  K?

Since it looks like winter is finally giving up and going away, it's time for gardening news to show back up again in the Sunday Update.  Last week, I took the protective leaf barrier off the rosebed garden so the crocuses could stop growing up warped and retarded.  Now they're happy and they're blooming.  Today we're supposed to clean of the other beds, but like I said at the top of this post, my back's hurtiful so I might push that to tomorrow.

That's about it - at least that I can remember this morning.  How are things in your world? 

My Irises

Since I keep talking about my irises, I thought I'd take some pics to share...

First, here's what the iris bed looked like last August:

And here's what it looks like now:

I didn't move this next bunches of irises, but I tidied their bed up and this year they're blooming... WHITE!

I'll take more pics after they open.  But I'm totally jazzed.  (And if you look close, you can see the azaleas I moved last year in front of and behind the irises.  They still look haggard, but they're working on it.)

Update: The white ones bloomed overnight. I'll post pics once the sun comes around to highlight them.  =o)