Pressing On

Outdoor Wednesday--hot summer days

Beauty and grace in my life--

An outdoor, indoor shot. A few minutes after bringing in Crinum lilies, the setting sun slanted through the window over the sink and illuminated the blossoms across the room.

Punk, the grey, and M&M, the orange. If you look close on Punk's right, you see the edge of a cast. He broke his leg only hours after Bigstreetrod brought him from Oklahoma. He is amazing. He can jump over a fence with the cast.

And where I like to sit in evening.

Our host for Outdoor Wednesday is Susan at A Southern Daydreamer. Click on the link to join in the fun with a post or to visit the other participants.

Blessings,
CurtissAnn 

In the Meantime...the story of my life

In the Meantime. What an apt phrase. A Mean Time.

My life at the moment is definitely more disjointed than normal. Moving is not easy, folks, especially when the previous house still is not sold. I feel as if I have one foot in Alabama and one foot still Oklahoma. I'm so busy dealing with moving and renovating and settling that I can think a lot about a book I've started writing, but can't seem to write much on it. The story of my life.

In the meantime, guess what! The Michigan City Public Library has me listed as someone you might want to read if you like Jan Karon books. I'm thrilled! Their site is marvelously helpful. Oh, and Michigan City is in Indiana. Isn't it a curious world?

Another thing that has happened in the mean time is that Susan from A Southern Daydreamer Reads passed to me the One Lovely Blog Award. I'm tickled as a dog with two tails to get it, and to also point out her great site for readers. Right now she has just issued a Summer Reading Challenge to encourage us all to read more. I do wish I could take part, but I did not get half my books read for the Spring Challenge. I did get reading done, but not much from my list. What I thought I would do for the Summer Challenge is wait and see what I end up reading, and then make a valiant effort to post those. Right now I'm reading Catherine Cookson's The Silent Lady. It is excellent.

I pass along the One Lovely Blog Award to two blogs that inspire me greatly in writing, gardening, and plain good living in the meantime: to Nola from Alamo North, and Brenda at View From the Pines.

Another blogger who has given me inspiration in this meantime is fellow author Sierra Donovan, who tagged me with a four questions game. I was amazed to find out how much Sierra and I have in common with our answers.

Four Movies that I can see over and over.
1. Harvey
2. Heaven Can Wait, Mr. Jordan (the one with Robert Montgomery)
3. You Can't Take It With You
4. And the same as Sierra-- Galaxy Quest ("Never Give Up! Never Surrender!!!")

Four Places I have lived. (4 out of some 15; I get around.)
1. Elizabeth City, North Carolina
2. Tampa, Florida
3. Ketchikan, Alaska
4. Virginia Beach, VA

Four TV shows that I love to watch. (Or did. I've given up television for the present.)
1. The Andy Griffith Show
2. I Love Lucy
3. NCIS
4. Monk

Four places where I have gone on vacation.
1. South Mobile
2. West Texas
3. Majorica, Spain
4. Philadelphia

Four favorite foods:
1. Roast Turkey
2. Jessica's Oven Barbeque Chicken
3. watermelon
4. gluten-free chocolate brownies!

Four websites I visit daily:
1. Yahoo Mail
2. Twitter
3. Goodreads
4. Google

Four places I would rather be.
   Hmmm...really nowhere else. I love being home. At this moment, I am using as my office:

Four things I would like to do before I die:
1. Have my home here in Alabama renovated and orderly and filled with family
2. Have all the gardens around the house in bloom with crinum lilies, daylilies, gardenias, roses, etc.
3. Write more easily.
4. Find clothes I like that fit well.

Four novels I wish that I was reading for the first time:
   Oh, honey, there are too many to choose just four!

This bit of play has nurtured my strength of spirit and perseverance, two qualities that writers must cultivate at all times. I read this morning of a budding writer who was getting discouraged and thinking of calling it quits. I wrote her, saying basically: "No! You must not quit." I think that injunction applies to all writers, whether seasoned or just beginning. And also to everyone moving to a new home and a new life! 

Blessings,
CurtissAnn

The Best Time to Plan a Book

The best time to plan a book is while you're doing the dishes. ~Agatha Christie, mystery writer.

When doing something manual and repetitive, the brain is free to wander. Good times for me are also when vacuuming, folding laundry, mowing or raking leaves, or, one of the very best times I discovered yesterday, when digging in the dirt.

I have been, little by little because of the heat and my lack of strength, moving caladiums to an area I find more appealing. I was amazed to discover, even in the shady places beneath pecan trees, the soil was dry and hard.

The experts in gardening books all advise digging nice large holes for plants, large enough to work in composted matter. I started out with the shovel and a lot of good intentions, but I quickly decided I'm lucky to get a hole large enough to plop in the caladium and both of us still be alive. Still, I pressed on with the transplanting. If I waited until I could do it perfectly, I would never get it done. I have found that watering the ground a bit, going off to do something else and returning, softens the earth for digging.

As I went about this endeavor, it occurred to me that writing a novel is a lot like digging in hard ground. You start out with high hopes, but very often, sometimes on the first page, maybe the first paragraph, one hits tough going. Questions arise: Now, what does my character want? What is the immediate action?

You can't wait to have all the answers. You can't wait for perfect conditions. You dig in and keep going. Questions will be answered. You trust. You will often strain and sweat, and sometimes you'll hit some lovely soft ground, where the writing just flows. Other time you have to water your idea a bit, go off and do something else and let the ideas soften until they are ready. But little by little, if you just keep on working at the task in your own way and according to your own strength, a story emerges, pages add up, a book is written.

All the experts on caladiums say it best to dig the tubers and bring them inside for the winter, even in my southern area. Apparently no one told these caladiums. There was no one to bring them in, so they sat the winter and this spring began popping out of the ground. Like beautiful ideas. It's okay not to follow rules. Very often the best comes out spontaneously.

I dig, I transplant a caladium, I sit on the porch a few minutes, then do the same again. And in between I run to my notebook and jot down ideas. I do hope the ideas fair as well as the caladiums that barely wilt as I move them. And they do look ever so much better where I'm placing them, at least to me. In gardening and in writing, the first one to be pleased must be the one doing all the work.

Blessings,
CurtissAnn

Outdoor Wednesday--More Prunning Power to the Woman

 It's Outdoor Wednesday time again. I've seen more thoroughly than ever before that I am an outdoor, gardening woman. At least until the heat of the day hits. Then I'm a book and napping type of woman. Click on the logo to visit Susan, our hostess, at A Southern Daydreamer for more Outdoor Wednesday participants.

Today is mine and Bigstreetrod's fortieth anniversary. His present to me--just what I asked for: a cordless reciprocating saw. I needed more manpower, but since Bigstreetrod is not always handy to do my bidding, I went for more tool-power. The long-neglected and overgrown shrubs and trees are trembling around my yard now. I also got a John Deere garden tractor and a leaf blower-vacuum. Each of these power tools obeys my commands with the click of a switch, with no complaints or excuses. I'm set with more power.

Recipe for a long and happy marriage? Get the woman all the power tools she wants.

I keep finding mystery plants around my yard. Anyone know what type of bush this is?

It has these little peanutty-looking things on it. I sure hope the bush does not have a weird disease.

I adore watching the morning light creep across the land, just as I did back in Oklahoma. I ran out and took this photo. There I am in the midst of the first light.

Here patterns of light fall through the trees onto the path.

Light for our lives is the same. It is often shadowed by difficulty, sorrow, expectation, worry. But the light is always there and making its way through to a step or two. That's all we really need, just enough for the moment, the day, wherever we are on the path. 

Thanks for stopping in.

Blessings,
CurtissAnn