I love spring. Here in the Seattle area, spring means vivid and abundant color. Cherry and magnolia trees, forsythia, tulips, daffodils, and a host of other flowers—we have them all in our yard. But while I love the beauty, I don’t enjoy pulling weeds and keeping the plants healthy and producing.
I’m what you call an armchair garden lover. I appreciate the beauty and like to sit outside and enjoy it, but I don’t do much of the upkeep. If I lived alone I’d hire a gardener, even if it is expensive. Fortunately, my husband loves to putz around in garden as often as possible. Weather permitting, he’s out there pulling weeds, digging, planting, mulching. All organically. Yep, he’s one of those.
Out of chicken wire he made a compost bin where we dump our non-meat, non-dairy food waste. It’s out back, on the side of the house, and for some reason, doesn’t smell at all. Every so often he turns the decomposing goop with a shovel. When it decomposes enough, he spreads it over the garden to enrich the soil. This year he and a friend drove to a farm and picked up a truckload of manure. Now that smelled. I stayed inside that day! But I’ll reap the rewards when the raspberry and blueberry bushes produce huge crops.
I’m thinking that writing is a lot like tending a garden. We writers have our own brain compost piles, that creative well within. We’re always tossing in tidbits—overheard snippets of conversation, intriguing newspaper stories, or anything that catches our interest. The mixture sits in our head awhile, and now and then we stir it a bit, thinking, I wonder whether… What would happen if? And voilá—a story is born.
As for the manure… Well, I’ll leave you to draw your own analogies.
Happy spring, everyone.
Ann Roth
It Happened One Wedding, April, 2007
Another Life, April, 2007
www.annroth.net
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5 comments:
I love working outside with plants. I even took a college course for horticural technician, then worked in a greenhouse for a year and half. Now family and friends get me to do their gardens and light landscaping. I'm kind of bummed because I live in an apartment but friend have told me my balcony looks like a jungle come summer. Then the only problem is watering them all. If the compost is done right it doesn't smell.
Wow, Christa. I am totally awed by your skills. It'd be fun to see that balcony ...
In recent years I've tried to tone down the plants on my balcony because it's just to much sometimes carting water out there but the plants seem to like to spread.
You must have a wonderful green thumb!
Ann, I'm somewhat like you, I garden when I feel up to it and then I have someone "help me".
However, let the dh do his thing and you keep on writing, PLEASE.
It Happened One Wedding and I'm just starting Another Life, well they are wonderful, getting great reviews......so gardening, for you I don't think so, unless you finished being creative and then go for it!
PS The Spring colors in Seattle are breathtaking along with the mountains and water, aren't they?
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