welcome to June!

And associated panic as I try to fill gaps and mend inconsistencies in this draft of Cost of Silver before the end of the month when Self-Imposed Deadline looms.
I'm having the usual issue that what I'm writing now feels so much flatter and duller than what I wrote previously. It's some help to know that this always happens and that I haven't actually forgotten how to write evocative prose in the last month or so. Some help, but not a remedy.

And yes, still wrestling with (though it feels more like being pushed around by) body-image issues. A positive change though as I found a pair of trousers I'd put aside to the rag-bag several years ago (because they'd worn thin on the inner thigh where the bike seat rubs) and they fit perfectly, which they wouldn't have, say, two years back.
It suggested that this body isn't a shape-shifting alien or some kind of reverse-possession, but a body similar to one I had before and had forgotten about. An old friend who's been away that I can get re-acquainted with, rather than a potentially threatening stranger who needs to be propitiated with gifts of clothing and protein bars.

Odd to think that at this time last year I was stuck in an immobilizer and posting pics of my x-rays. I have full extension back, but not full compression in the right leg. I can't sit back on my heels or fully kneel, and very occasionally I get a sort of wobble to the right as if the knee wants to bend sideways. But thanks to my keeping up the calf raises and squats, my legs are otherwise much stronger than before my fall.

May was a busy month, including a trip out to Sidney Island to help build a permanent, non-portable cob oven. I'll try to do a post with pictures to liven things up a bit. The garden is threatening Nature's goddamn bounty to come, with rhubarb flourishing, raspberry canes shooting up and the apple trees getting through caterpillar season relatively unscathed. Despite our three little cherry trees, I'll be pleasantly surprised if we get any cherries this year, but I have some hope for plums and pears. In this lull before fruit starts to fall on me, I'm trying to make the most of time for writing. Wish me luck.

May was also a month of being tired and sleepy. Exercise and weight loss continue to not live up to the promises made about them, as I conked out by 9pm, slept fairly well and could barely drag myself out at 5:30 am, not to mention nodding off at 2pm for that impressive face-on-keyboard moment.
The remedy is allegedly to eat more (wait, what?) protein, like peanut butter and cheese, and to eat several small meals through the day, rather than 3 regular meals.
It seems to be working, but I don't think I'll ever accept how effing contradictory this healthy-diet business is. Eat less fat--eat more protein (but they're the same foods!). Don't snack--eat several times during the day (how is that not snacking?). It's like a series of koans you have to act out, but with no promise of enlightenment at the end.
The fatigue is my excuse for not posting. My mornings went to struggling with revision, and when I sat down at the computer in the evenings I most often found myself typing with one eye closing. This I took as a sign that I needed to go to bed. But, knock on wood, I seem to have a little more energy this week, so you may see more of me.
And how are all of you?

pruning again

The pear tree is in blossom outside my window. The blossoms come before the leaves. Last weekend I was two steps up on the small stepladder, trying to clip the watershoots on the Transparent tree before they bloomed. I put some of the clippings in vases (well, in pitchers, we have no vases) for the contrast between the smooth cupped petals and the rough twisted twigs. Finally hacked back the lilac beside the house, and took some cuttings to watch the tight green leaves open on narrow elegant stems.
If only revising were as clean to do. I trim out characters and scenes in the modern-day storyline, with a vague hope that I may use them elsewhere--drop them into other storylines and see them open up--but then must continue through that scene and the next, making sure no trace remains to jar the reader. More like uprooting blackberries or holly, that send shoots underground to pop up annoyingly in a space you thought was clear. Or, I suppose, more like weeding than pruning, done on your knees, laboriously with eyes to the ground.
What I need to learn is how to keep background characters in the background. I want more than the principal characters to be visible, because I dislike stories where no one seems to be in the room or the building than the two main characters (I keep wondering what passersby or the cleaners or the busboy think of their conversation or their goings-on.) I want passersby or cleaners or busboys, or the guy in the next cubicle, so the story feels more real, or more thoroughly imagined.
But when I write background characters, they move into the middle ground, where they draw too much attention. I don't know whether it's the dread 'hey, I'd rather read about this guy than your boring protagonist', but it's something I need to work on, as I engage in the selective erasing of characters.

centipedes with crutches

Yesterday was my appointment at the orthopedic clinic. The receptionist remembered me, and commented on how quickly the five weeks had gone past. She's very cheerful, so it wasn't hard being cheerful back.

First I was sent over to Imaging with a yellow chit for an x-ray. There was only one person in that waiting room when I arrived, and his number (#12) was called before I'd manoeuvred myself into a chair. I read a couple of previews on my e-reader before I was called (#13). The x-rays were done pretty quickly - one from the front, one from the side - and as I left I saw that the waiting room had filled up with half-a-dozen patients and their family members.

Had to wait longer to be seen by the surgeon, what with the x-rays having to be developed and sent over, and the other patients. One nasty moment when my Kobo reader for some reason told me I needed to recharge it right away, even though I'd fully charged it that morning because I knew I'd be waiting. Cursed myself for not bringing an actual book, but then the Kobo went to Update and realised it was fully charged after all.
Read several chapters in sheer relief. 
I apologise for not having taken a photo of my new x-rays, but I didn't want to take up time, and there wasn't much to see. The little chipped bit may not have reattached, it was hard to tell, but the area beneath it, at risk for more cracking, was mending well.
He said again that he didn't think the ligaments were damaged because it's usually either ligament or bone, not both. He examined the knee but didn't do that thing of seeing whether the shin moved forward of the knee (which I'm kind of glad not to have experienced, actually) so I don't have absolute assurance about the ligaments. We did discuss ACL damage, and when surgery might be necessary and when not. He assured me that if my knee doubled under me the way it did right after the injury I could come back.
Otherwise I could put away the immobilizer and the crutches, start physiotherapy to the point of pain but not agony (good to have those distinctions) and work up from a stationary bike to a road bike. And he'd see me again in six weeks (unless my knee folded before then).
Oh, and the numbness and pins-and-needles were (unless they didn't get better) not nerve damage but nerves reacting to the swelling and to the swelling going down.

So I have the go-ahead to put weight on both legs and to walk without crutches. What I don't have is the nerve. That memory of my knee bending sideways when I tried to stand (with Mark supporting me, even) is very present, and keeps me clinging to the crutches.
I'm in a very odd state of simultaneous Woohoo! to have the immobilizer off and be able to stand on both feet, and Yikes! to be unsupported and possibly about to topple over.
Mark is being wonderfully patient with me and reminding me that I don't have to be all recovered right away, that it really is one step at a time, and that it's okay for me to be nervous (but I should stop apologising for it).

 A centipede was happy quite
Until a frog, in fun,
Asked 'Pray, which leg comes after which?"
This raised her mind to such a pitch,
She lay distracted in a ditch
Considering how to run.

Like that centipede, I find myself uncertain how to proceed with this walking business, but also in a state of random cold terror about the part of walking that involves putting my whole weight onto my injured leg.
What I've done so far is to change my crutch gait (which I was getting pretty good at) to a slower but more like walking gait. I found it on youtube, a source for which I am duly grateful, and which also provided an extensive set of post-ACL leg exercises that can be done lying down.
And today I walked around the garden (with crutches) and picked rhubarb for a possible pie. Not raspberry and rhubarb pie because there were only two raspberries and I ate them. Maybe I'll just have stewed rhubarb.

mild excitement

I'm trying out half-days at work, so far going reasonably well. With the aid of a Restricted Area Permit, Mark drops me off at the mailroom door (no long crutch-journey over slippery tile floor, yay!) and I wait for someone to let me into the freight elevator, which takes me to just outside Tech Services. Then I scooch my leg under the desk to rest on a low-as-it-goes wheelie-chair, and I sit on a non-wheelie-chair.
Working only 4 hours, I have not yet had the grand experiment of using the office washroom, and having to decide whether the handicapped or non-handicapped stall is the better choice.

Well, today, only a few minutes after I'd got settled, the fire alarm went.
A brief pause while everyone waits to hear whether it's 'someone went out the wrong door' type of alarm, or 'someone hit the wrong button' alarm. The first kind has a far more annoying noise but is usually shut off faster. This time it was a steady BRRRRINNNG BRRRRINNNG, so we must evacuate for safety's sake.
Evacuation, of course, is done down the fire exit, a wide concrete staircase.
Have I mentioned that I still require a spotter to go up or down the three steps to the garden?
So I opt for the Refuge Area, designated by a blue sign on the wall with a the Handicapped wheelchair logo. Kathy kindly has someone haul up the chair from the landing below so I don't have to prop myself against the wall. Kathy and Sherry promise to inform responsible people of my location and to send me a couple of hunky firemen. I sit down and fire up the Kobo ereader so I can ignore the brrrrinnng brrrrinnng.
Note: If I had believed this to be a real fire, I would have grabbed someone and had them spot me down the two flights of stairs. But I was betting this to be another accidental alarm, which we have rather often.
I am still reading an Agatha Christie short story when, yes, a handsome young fireman pops his head in and asks if I'm okay, and would I rather wait where I am. On being told yes, he goes back out and reports that he has located 'the girl with crutches' (I'm a girl? I feel so young!).
Shortly after that, he and another fireman, both sufficiently hunky for my requirements, let me know that I can be the first one back inside, and we chat briefly about sports injuries and crutches and the concept of 'Stupid Time' (credit: Mark Shier).

The rest of the day was uneventful. I had a nap from about 2 pm to about 5 pm, but I can't blame that on the excitement, since I had a similar nap on Sunday (11 am to 3 pm?) when nothing at all had happened. I was a bit disappointed, since I'd gone most of a week without an afternoon nap and thought I was past that stage.

Social Life:  Besides our regular Thursday night dinners, I've had visits from Peter and Laura, with all the younger kids; from Michael and Susan Walsh; from Kellii; from Stephen and Judy; and dinners with Joan with Rowan and Tess and with MC. So I'm not pining away in solitude, even though I can't really get out to see anyone.

Writing:  It's a bit of a relief to be rearranging and revising instead of writing from outline.  I'm mucking about with Storyline One of Cost of Silver, making it less episodic by bringing some of the later story threads in earlier.
The trouble with this, though, is that I've worked hard to show the passage of seasons and to root scenes in the ongoing rural tasks. So you might have the constable trying to recruit soldiers while the harvest is going on and farmers desperately need reapers, for instance.
Which means that when I have to move a scene to another part of the year, I have to change all those clever little seasonal touches. Which is a grand pain. Right now I'm agonising over moving a scene which has to take place in the spring to the year before. Which means rewriting a nice little bit of scene-setting in another sequence which would clearly take place in the summer. Which one to change? Argh.


Garden:  I'm sad that I can't get out and do any weeding or planting or digging or anything. Mark has been wonderful about taking photos (they're up on my Facebook page) of the roses as they come out, but it's still frustrating. We've been trying to figure out where to plant my new Abraham Darby rose so that it will get sun (damn you, city tree!), and it will probably involve moving a big stack of bricks, which I feel rather guilty about foisting on Mark.

Here's one of the flowers, cut and scenting the kitchen table.

Western skychair is up

 The boy and the girl came to the Island last weekend, for Mother's Day. Chris brought maple snap cookies, which as he said are not 'snaps' in the sense of gingersnaps, but round soft cookies, rather like the honey cookie from my tiny Evelyne Johnson Cookie Cookbook, but sweetened with maple syrup instead. Good choice for a Mother's Day present. (pause to get another cookie)
 I made a pan shortbread, using the method (but not the recipe) from Cooks Illustrated. Later I made a pan of chocolate shortbread, since I've finally found a recipe that doesn't involve icing sugar or cornstarch but still keeps its shape nicely. And because my child shouldn't leave my house without baked goods.

Besides baking cookies, Chris was helpfully tall, and hung up my basket chair to take advantage of the warm clear weather we had all weekend. Just gorgeous. And here is the very chair. 

 In the midst of lilac blossoms.

I always forget how brief blossom time is. The plum and pear have lost all their white blooms, and the Spartan tree's white is stained with brown edging. The Transparent was heaped with white froth for a little while, and now it's only green, with some powdery mildew mocking me. Also the horrible invisible caterpillars have done their usual trick of chewing through the bud stems so that the infant incipient apples fall away when you brush a hand over them.
 Chris and Shannon and I wandered about in the backyard and spent a little while finding the green caterpillars curled in folded leaves on the pear and apple trees, allowing one to squish them inside the leaf in a most satisfactory and sanitary way.

On the Sunday we hit the Times Colonist charity booksale, and I managed to restrain myself to two bags of books. Mark found another copy of the big book on stained glass that we have, so I can give it to my apprentice (yay!) and I found a few for Christmas and Twelfth Night presents as well as disposable reading.
Actually, I probably would have bought more books except that I went off with the kids for a late lunch at John's Place, which turned into a Mother's Day brunch (is it still brunch at 2 pm?) because the special omelette looked so enticing. Plus two free slices of cheesecake which worked out just right between three of us. And that took out at least 3 hours that I could have been using to go through the poor neglected hardcover fiction section, not to mention crafts and hobbies.
Just as well I suppose, though.

So it was a good weekend, though not as writing-productive as it could have been. I haven't posted as much this month because I'm trying to get that last burst of wordcount on, to get Storyline Two settled by the end of the month. I'm gearing up for the Kaiju Big Battel with the vampires, and I need to be sure who all will be there for it. Also I wrote a 'fen blow' into an earlier section to liven it up, and that means there needs to be a fen blow at the climax too. Argh. Well, more excitement, anyways.

I leave you with a picture of shortbread, this lot made with demerara sugar. 

garden cat

photo credit: Mark Shier

The leafy things are tomatoes. Lucky this wasn't a soaker hose.

Happy Canada Day weekend to all to whom that is appropriate! I will be writing, so enjoy the fireworks for me.

red rose and the white

One of the backyard gallicas, with bonus ladybug.



One of the backyard albas, half open.


Bonus book link: if you are interested in diversity in YA general fiction (as well as fantasy), have a look at Truth, Beauty, Freedom and Books recent post on the Nerds Heart YA contest. Both books discussed look like ones I'd pick for my occasional forays into non-genre reading.

roses in bloom

The inevitable rose pictures, since it was sunny today.
Here's the Dortmund, blooming like mad despite its chewed-up leaves. It will keep on with this into the fall. But this year I really will prune it before winter. Really.



Below is Bourbon Queen, and despite the horrid wet cold spring she is blooming. Hurrah! I was worried for her. You can see Dortmund intertwined with the Queen - mesalliance?



Sorry the focus is a bit off. I was so excited to see a bloom on the Rosearie de la Haye that I wasn't careful. I wish I could capture its scent for you. mmm.



Sir Clough, not as huge as last year but still impressive to me. This one needs pruning badly, it's getting top-heavy canes.



Just for a change, the front-steps peony, climbing towards the house instead of out to the garden. My other photo is head-on and makes it look vaguely threatening - maybe I should have posted that one?

it's a rosebud in june

It's June, and that means ... it's time for flower pictures!
Here's one of the first blooms on the garage-whelming alba, just opening from fist to spread palm. I'll put up a more recent pic soonish, showing it spotted all over with white. The arched trellis we shoved in between the two bushes is completely hidden now.
The cold damp spring that we've had means not all the roses are going to bloom, but the Dortmund and the albas are showing off, and the Blanche Double that I planted last year has taken full advantage of its nice sunny location and bloomed like heck.

After three months or so of trying to dedicate every weekend to wordcount, and ending up burning myself out after a few hours and going online to look at lolcats or whatever, I decided to accept that Cost of Silver was going to take longer than I hoped, and let myself do other things on weekends.
Last weekend I drove the Malahat twice, once to visit my brother and his family, and once to visit my friend Anna.
The weekend before, Mark and I took the ferry to Vancouver and visited Chris and Shannon (which would be, for those who haven't made notes, our son and his girlfriend).
This weekend a much shorter drive into Saanich to the farmers' markets, with a last visit to Babe's Honey Farm for its last sale. Very sad about this. Babe's was founded in 1945, and went strong until Babe died a few years back. Then it was bought up, and kept going, but the accountant(?) stole about a million dollars, so now it's going under for good, and I don't know what's happening to the bees and so on. Hang on, I'll find some news stories for more accurate information.

While I was at my brother's, I dug up a row of the raspberry plants he's giving away (to replace with blueberries, a decision my husband strongly approves) and got to see his pictures of their bees swarming in the summer. Pretty amazing - a cloud of bees leaving the hive, settling on a tree branch nearby, then Pete and Laura cutting the branch off, and shaking the bees into a cardboard box, then tipping them back into the hive, where they settled again happily.
Sometimes I wonder about setting up a hive in our yard. We've had bees crawling in and out of the front porch roof, last year, and this year into the roof by the back door. I see them bumbling about the sweet rocket and the comfrey in the back yard. But I'm not sure how much attention they need, and I'm worried about pests and disease.
My plum tree, which I've mentioned before, is suffering from caterpillars (I hate caterpillars. Lots. I don't care how fluffy they are, they're evil.) and from what I fear is bacterial canker. I've been up on the stepladder trying to reach the diseased branches and cut them off, which is breaking my heart because some have plums on them. Last year the plum harvest tanked, after a few bounty summers, so every plum lost hurts. Worse, there's only a poor chance that this pruning will save the tree.

In cheerier news, I scored a free rocking chair from UsedVictoria, and passed my 20 yr old jade plant on to someone who'd just lost her 30 yr old jade plant, so that karma should be nicely balanced. I have now a rocking chair on the front porch, and have sat and read there on a few mornings already, and in the back yard I have my hanging chair, ditto. The hanging chair is becoming a lovely Secret Hiding Place as the sweet rocket grows up around it and the grape vines begin to spread over the posts.
This pic was taken at dusk, because I liked the effect, so you will just have to imagine it in full daylight.

Cost of Silver is nudging 130k at present, and I'm not at all sure I'll be able to wrap it up under 150k. I've had some plotty stuff that made me happy, so I'll post about that next time, maybe.

Photo credits this time are mine. The previous cat pic was by Mark Shier, and I should go back and add that info.

Garden in autumn

These are all photos that Mark took, and since I've been slack about posting this month, I'm taking the chance to show off his work.

Here are rosehips, from the rugosa in the front yard, I think. The gallica in the back still has a few blooms, or did until the winds last weekend, but the rosehips are making a fine display.
You can eat rosehips, just don't eat the hairy bit in the middle. Ptah!




Crocus! The kind that produces saffron--see the lovely yellow stamens? The bulbs were planted years ago, and only now do we have more than three showing up in a year.
Mark harvested the saffron and made saffron rice.








A white slug. I've never seen one all white before. I'm much more used to the small brown ones and the big banana slugs (childhood memories of stepping on a banana slug, and the slime making everything stick to one's bare foot afterwards).

It's rather beautiful in a slimy translucent way.

blackberries for breakfast

Not quite enough of a crop yet for a full bowl, so I filled in the gaps with whitecurrants. Eaten while sitting on the front porch watching the sun push up over the roofs across the street. Inside the kitchen, two fruit dehydrators buzzing along, full of apples.
Yes, it must be summer. Time for rose pictures!


A bud of Sir Clough, deep pink at first. They pale somewhat as they open. Nothing from the Blanc Double this year, but a bud on the Rosearie de la Haye, which is nice. I've been watering more in July to make up for the heat, and for overhanging city tree that pretty much covers the front yard, keeping both sun and rain off the front garden.



I think this might be Henry Hudson, but I'll have to look it up to be sure. The three bushes in the corner are so intermingled and overgrown that it takes careful tracing back of the vine or cane to establish the origin of any one flower.
Been cutting out the dead wood, but this year I'll have to do serious pruning. I quail. I hate cutting live wood. It seems so wasteful.



The Quatre Saisons damask in the back yard. I missed this blossom entirely, so it's a good thing Mark was watching.
I was distracted by the Overwhelming Albas overwhelming the garage.
Now that it's had a year of growing upright in a trellis, I suppose I should get down to pruning and training it properly.

Forced-perspective cat

menaces tiny deer. Roger Corman directs.

Nature, red in bloom and berry, is yapping about my heels like a border collie, lately. The rhubarb has sprung up again, after a disappointing first season, and the Transparent tree has already begun to drop apples. I have a huge bowlful that I need to process and turn into crumble or pie soonest.


I've been trying to thin out the apples, but it doesn't seem to have much effect. The deer is helping, so to speak, but concentrates his efforts on the same areas I can already reach. That and he's eaten the tops off the broccoli and the tomatoes, yet we aren't allowed to shoot him within city limits.
The alba roses are pretty much done, the gallica are still blooming away, and the front yard roses are small but steady--the Dortmund continues as usual, promiscuously.


Last month we drove out to Le Coteau and other farms & nurseries on the south island, and came back with more blueberry bushes, a josta and another currant bush. The last two have been planted behind the workshop, where a stand of volunteer poppies is flourishing away already.
We also stopped at a couple of wineries, a ginnery (I'm sure that's not the word) with an amazing steampunkish distilling apparatus, Babe's Honey and Sun Wing Tomatoes.
The spearmint honey doesn't taste at all like spearmint. It's like a double buckwheat honey. Mmm.

This month I've been to the Stranded Mermaid Tourney, near Lund, and to July Coronation, sort of near Yakima. Clear hot weather for both, with a side of mosquitoes. I'm hoping that will be it for the next while, so that I can get back into the routine of writing.
Still, had a great drive back from Mermaid, the ferry from Powell River to Comox, then taking the Seaside scenic route whenever possible. Stopped in Qualicum, and Kellii and I went wading in the shallows, which were bathwater warm and clear enough to see all the tiny tiny crabs skittering across the sand. Near the Malahat, the wind picked up, and swirled clattering arbutus leaves and barks in a russet barrage against the van. Three times this happened, as if we were driving into a pocket of autumn. I hope it doesn't mean some sort of arbutus die-off.

Coronation was at Fulbright Park, near Yakima. It's big and flat, with a stream/river running along one side. It had been mown a few days before, but not baled, and I spent part of the first night making mental plans for what to do if the field caught fire. Given that most SCA members are unacquainted with camping except within the SCA, and seem to think of open flame as a sort of special effect or CGI, I think it must be entirely due to that god that looks after imbeciles that there's been no serious fire in the last dozen years. One encampment had low tiki torches to mark their entry, and had cleared the hay away to a big pile right next to the torches and almost exactly as tall.
I figured I could, with the right incentive, scramble through the wild rose and thistles on the bank of the river closest to us, and land in the water. Fortunately it didn't come to that.

However, while investigating the river bank, I discovered that the edge of the field was full of great big teazle plants, and cut about a dozen teazle heads for Elisa to make a teazle comb, for next year's Fort Rodd Hill. And, y'know, they're cool, as noxious weeds go.
Alicia and I set up under a big willow tree (YES!) with shade from afternoon on. We laid a thick layer of straw in the tent, and laid tarps and mats over that, then our beds. I wished like heck that I'd brought one of the tick bags from home, so that I could have stuffed a tick with unthreshed hay, and maybe snuck a bagfull home to try making a bee-skep with it, and see if it worked better than threshed & baled hay, which is annoyingly short.

Because I didn't have many commitments, I was able to reduce my TBR pile, just a little. Finished The Last Apprentice, by Joseph Delaney, The Forest of Hands and Teeth, by Carrie Ryan, Darkborn, by Alison Sinclair, Monstrous Regiment, by Terry Pratchett, The Silver Ship and the Sea, by Brenda Cooper, and Precious Dragon, by Liz Williams.
Didn't get as much napping in as I'd hoped, even though I should have been tired enough. But I did sleep most of the way back from Yakima, shirking my duties as shotgun to keep the driver entertained.

I still haven't seen the actual deer, by the way. The photographic evidence is all Mark's work.

peonies in the rain

Last year, no peonies. Something ate all the buds. This year, some were eaten, one scalloped away to show the layers of petals inside like tree-rings, but over half survived. I nearly gave up on them, all the same, because the volunteer peonies across the street flowered weeks before and had already begun to lapse when I cut one of the buds and brought it inside to flower and die. Too soon! Because the rest have bloomed.


What amazes me about peonies is how they keep on expanding, not just spreading but pushing out from the centre like some sort of Giger alien flower. This one is only about halfway done.

In the front yard the Dortmund and Sir Clough are blooming happily, though the Dortmund's companion rose doesn't like the wet weather we've been having.
In the backyard the albas are washing over the garage again, and the gallicas are putting out buds. Bees forage among the comfrey and rocket, and today I saw the blackberries white with blossoms, and a fat black and lemon-yellow bee bobbling among them. Maybe it will be summer for a while, instead of a blustery spring.

rocket, sweet rocket

The chair has been hung again, and as you can see, Nature has not been unproductive in the intervening year. You can see the first year's setting here. That's sweet rocket that's grown up since. The leaves are edible before flowering, after that they're bitter.
I'm really just posting to show you that picture. Have I any other garden-related news? Well, we had to buy a new lawnmower (first new lawnmower ever?) because the wheel fell off the old one--the plastic inner disc just shattered, in that permanent way plastic does. The table that used to sit in the backyard (visible in the video of the deer) also disintegrated, and I replaced it with a wooden table meant to sit outdoors, or at least on a patio.
The backyard is looking properly welcoming, I think, in this pause before Nature's goddamn bounty starts falling from trees. Bees buzz in the comfrey & borage & sweet rocket. It's been sunny both Saturday and Sunday, instead of devolving into windstorms the way it did last week.
Finally! with (lots of ) help from Paul, Shona, and Mark, I got the arbour up under the alba roses. That incursion and windstorms shifted the tall canes to cover half of the garage door--not an aid to Mark getting into his workshop. So I spent some time yesterday and today seeing how many of the canes I could save from pruning by tilting them in the other direction, to hang over the arbour (it was either that or detach the arbour and shift it to the garage door). To my amazement I got all of them out of the way, hurrah! though I'm hoping to encourage them to climb over the garage roof instead of drooping onto the lawn.
Have been planting peas and beans and climbers under the trellis alongside the driveway, and scattering poppy and canterbury bell seeds in the spot under the bay window. This means a return to regular watering, I fear, trudging about with a watering can early in the morning, since our hoses always seem to come to some premature end.

I am not, I admit, an enthusiastic or skilful gardener. One reason I prefer to toss seeds about rather than buy seedlings is because I feel more guilty killing a seedling than I feel when seeds don't come up. That anything does grow or produce fruit / peas / berries / beans / flowers under my hand is a source of astonishment every time it happens.

photo credit: Mark Shier medievalwares.com

late blooming and general lateness

Flowers
Haha, I was right, the Gruss an Teplitz is not dead! That's it to the left above, and besides the flower, it has put out shoots and leaves. Yay!
The cluster of pink, photographed from below, is Old Blush, which I've dragged up over the gate-arch. Otherwise, the Dortmund is blooming steadily away in red clusters and clumps, and Sir Clough has produced a couple of large blooms in sympathy with the recent heat-wave. The rugosa is dotted with bright red hips, its autumn show.
In the back yard, one of the gallicas is still blooming with manifold redness.

Roots
And this is my half-sister, from my dad's first marriage. Hi Darlene! Who cleverly found me and my brother, even though Barbara and Peter Gordon are not the easiest names to track down, especially when one of those names has been unexpectedly changed. This makes her cleverer than me, because my own haphazard googling for Darlene and Lorene over the last few months had come to nothing.
So on Monday, after she had returned from Mexico and I had returned from Pennsylvania, she visited, and we met for the first time.

It felt surprisingly comfortable, at least to me, as if we'd known each ther for a long time, and were just catching up on recent news. Now I'm looking forward to meeting Lorene, and for Pete-and-family to be moved in to the new place so we can unpack the family photos and see how many we can identify properly.

Shoots
In other news, the 3-Day Novel Contest is this weekend (glyph of writerly excitement), and what with my wonderfully eventful regular life, I've barely thought about it. This year it will come with extra bonus GUILT because I had hoped and planned to have Willow Knot all revised and mailed off before Labour Day weekend, free and clear.
But no. The structural revision is done, but I haven't filled in all the new scenes in the last part of the story, plus as I read over I keep finding little traces of the previous chronology, and have to fix them. Apparently I did a lot of work tying down the sequence of events and marking how many years / summers / antlers / etc. had arrived. A lot, and have had to do it again.
I'm not sure what this is most like, whether unpicking embroidery or like the ravelling that the court ladies do in the story, unlacing goldwork into spools of thread. Or, for a more guy-like metaphor, imagine you've made the Lego(tm) Space Station, but you have to take it all apart so you can build the next thing. How hard is it to turn the little command centre into a pile of blocks? Do you want to keep at least the captain's chair out of the general undoing?
Yes, I know, this is why one saves each draft, to avoid 'really' losing anything. I've been telling myself this a lot. It should be done by the 14th, though I'll have to do a thorough read-through to make sure that I haven't done anything really embarrassing with the chronology.
But this weekend--this weekend is dedicated to squashing a messy first draft down onto the page, and not thinking about it. Wheeee! I even have a really disgusting plot element, though perhaps not as intense as previous winner Skin, by Bonnie Bowman, or Tacones, which I still have a hard time reading.


Fruit
To bookend with garden news, the Transparent is done, thankfully, but the pears and plums have started falling and it's time to fire up the dehydrator.
Blackberries have reacted to the severe cutting back by, of course, fruiting madly. I've frozen and bagged a few quarts and made 6 pies so far, 3 for the freezer and 3 baked. Here's a pic of the second baked pie--look, flaky pastry!

animal planet

Theoretically we live in a city. The provincial capitol, in fact. But when I bike to work I have to swerve around the rabbits and the occasional deer, because the university forest and lawns are attractive to wildlife.
Here's a video Mark took in our backyard. Oh, yeah, we live on an island. What's the name of that rule about islands making big animals smaller?

roses, roses all the way

Or maybe not that poem, which is inauspicious now that I think about it. Oh well. Here's more garden news.

The rosa mundi is blooming properly now, so here's what it looks like when it's fully open. Rather gaudy, isn't it? Like a little circus tent.


And one of the mystery gallicas has bloomed. It's either Rosa Gallica itself, or the Apothecary's Rose. I don't know how to tell, since they look ... they look like this. Both of them, so it could be either.


In the front yard, Sir Walter Raleigh has bloomed, big waxy blossoms. This photo is a bit blurry because a breeze came up just then, and even when I held the stem it wasn't quite steady.










This is a bud of Sir Walter, and maybe gives you a better idea of the petal texture than the full-blown rose does.





Charles de Mills, looking ever so Gallic (ha ha). Honestly, it looks so much like one of the gallicas in the back. After a few days being this lovely pink, it turns purple-violet.





Jacques Cartier, properly named as an explorer, because it's sprawling out over Alain Blanchard and its other neighbour. Or perhaps Jacques is more of a coloniser than an explorer?

Lots of big pale fluffy blossoms.





And here is one of Sir Clough's blossoms, which are ridiculously large this year. My hand is there for scale, not for steadying. I should get a picture of the whole bush, too.








Bourbon Queen blossoms in a frenzy. Look at this!



In other blooming news, Chimps has undergone rewrites and a title change to "On the Transmontane Run with the Aerial Mail Express", and it has been bought by Beneath Ceaseless Skies.
Woohoo!
So everyone should visit BCS and drop some money in the donation jar, okay?

things done and undone

All kinds of productive this weekend!
The garden shop had a 30% off sale, so I bought a cherry tree (Glacier) for the backyard, and Mark dug the hole and now we have a second cherry tree. I have a new big plant-pot to shift the potted willow into, and a place to put it, beside my hanging chair. I have a tall trellis-y thing that I have used to restrain the Quatresaisons damask against the fence, and hardly got thorn-stabbed at all this time. I watered many plants, and identified a couple of roses
I bought a big oak half-barrel so we can soak hides at Fort Rodd Hill and try making parchment again--if only I can figure out how to do it without rubber gloves (which are non-medieval). I cut out a linen shift that I may get sewn up in time for FRH. I stained and assembled the non-modern-looking standing easel so that I'll have more viewable workspace in the tent, and won't have to stack canvases on the bed.

I finished the Bluebeard's Widow story that came out of chat on the Scribblers thread (just over 4k). Then I became discontented with it, and wrote a second take on the same plot twist, with a different voice and setting, in just over 2k. I have no idea just yet whether either of them is any good, so I'll look again in a couple of days.
What is good, though, is Ferret's take on Rumplestiltskin, (also from the Scribblers thread) which I'm reading over. The ending makes me kind of weepy, but this is a good thing. Now I need to wake up my inner critiquer and be coherent about it.
Also I'm rewriting the ending of Chimps for the fifth or so time, and have it almost right!

In Willow Knot news, I'm muddling about with the index cards as I try to sift Myl's five years in the forest into three years. I don't want it to end up too schematic, with one rescue or encounter or bird/baby image per year, but I also don't want to have events treading on each other's heels.
For those keeping track at home, Mylla will still be 17 when she returns to the city, because I'm making her a little older when they run away, 14, so that she can be under threat of being apprenticed out by Midame, and being parted from Tyl. Tyl stays the same age. He has to be young, because it gives him license to be feckless and reckless and slightly reduces the reader's urge to smack him for it. So he'll be younger at the end of the book this time, closer to Silly's age.
Anyway, a lot more happened in the forest than I'd really considered, especially when the events are split up into 'scenes', which sometimes mean sequences. For instance, an escape would be a scene, and the pursuit that follows it another scene, but if I split them up like theatrical scenes I'll just confuse myself with two index cards that might as well be stapled together, since they make no sense alone. But some other scenes stand by themselves, like the Babes in the Wood discovery, and could be moved fairly seamlessly.
I'm also muddling about figuring out how the palace events mirror the forest events. Not exactly, but there are equivalances, so perhaps a funhouse mirror.
The hard part of this stage is convincing myself to stick with it and not just plunge back into the text. I need to be a picador, circling daintily and plunking lances into the vulnerable spots until I can get close enough for butchery.
I have to remind myself that this part really is work, however much it feels like work avoidance.

Oh, and the domain name willowknot.com is mine. Mine, mine, mine! But there's nothing there yet. Sorry.

roses and revisions

Here's the backyard roses. Every rose here is medieval or earlier, while the frontyard roses are Victorian or David Austin Roses.

These are the garage-devouring albas. You can see that they're recovering nicely from two winters back when the snow peeled them off the garage and flattened them.
Today we put a garden bench in the space between them, and I'm hoping to put an arbour frame over the bench to prevent it disappearing into a mass of vines & blossoms.
The rose on the right (of the pic above) is Alba maxima, also called the Jacobite rose. One of the descriptions calls it rampantly flowering, which sounds about right. A very strong fragrance. I cut some for Thursday night table, and the dining room was nicely perfumed.
I've been picking up the dropped petals and putting them in a bowl as a sort of immediate pot-pourri, though I suppose I should be drying them first.



This is alba semi-plena, and it's pretty rampantly flowering and highly scented as well. It may be the White Rose of York, which is appropriate, because I'm a bit of a Ricardian.
I'm not sure which rose would be the Red Rose of Lancaster. I'm sure it's in one of the rose books or websites.





Three gallicas behind the window seat, though you can only see one blooming right now.
The leafy green behind the drainpipe is an acanthus plant. It's the big scallopy leaves that medieval manuscript painters liked to have running down the margins, to unfold into big scalloped platforms for little scenes.
Acanthus grows rather like rhubarb (there's a rhubarb plant next to it) and it's probably time that I separated its crowns and planted some in the front, perhaps under the bay window.

Here's a closer view of the gallica bloom and buds. It will open up much more than this, but I rather like the flower at this stage.

The bush next to it hasn't opened yet, so whatever sort of gallica it is, it's a later-blooming one. I'll know more when I see the flowers. The backyard roses don't have little metal tags to identify them. Or if they do, the tags are buried and lost.


This gallica grows closest to the window where my writing place is, and I can look out the window and see the blossoms. It's Rosa Mundi (gallica versicolor) and seeing it from the corner of my eye I always think of carnations. The rosa mundi has much more fragrance than a carnation, of course.
And yes, I'm terribly spoiled to have roses flowering away while I'm writing.




This last is a damask rose, Quatre Saisons, or Autumn Damask, and it's supposed to flower repeatedly through to autumn, rather like the Dortmund only prettier. Another strongly scented rose.
Both Mark and I have a fondness for the streaky roses. This one was at first trained along the fence, but our neighbour pulled it down a few years ago when he painted both sides of the fence, and it had been sprawling along the ground since. It's a very thorny rose, and its location under the apple tree made for some exciting apple-recoveries.
At present I'm trying to figure out some way to keep it upright that's a bit more secure than loops of twine. Very specialised trellis?

Revising: I've taken the first steps of changing the font and format--a different monospace font, single spacing--and stripping out the chapter divisions and headings so I can look at just the text.
Now I'm listing the scenes / sequences / events /whatever and what each event or set of events does in the plot, what's established or laid in or changed by each one. Pretty much I get to put these on index cards (real or figurative) and play 52-pickup.
Because you see, my book is lumpy. The stuffing has all gone out to the edges, and I need to shake and prod it back into the middle where it will do some good. I need to speed up some parts and slow down others. I need to simplify the politics, and to do that I need to wipe out an entire kingdom (farewell, Valdosa!) as well as focus the guild disputes onto just the one guild.
On the other hand, I get to spend more time on searching for food, on Alard and Myl getting to know each other and on her decision to return to the city. I'm giving serious thought to at least one scene with Myl and Alard encountering each other in the forest unrecognised, before he 'finds' her properly.
The chronology is going to be difficult, because what happens in the forest needs to match up with events in the city, and if I split Rembert's enchantment, say, away from the Lusantian princess's visit, in order to have Tyl's enchantment happen right away, the timing of the triggering events has to fit, even though no one knows the connection at the time.
Index cards are my friends.

But, blessing of blessings, I can banish the Dread of Wordcount for this revision. Spend as much wordage as I need to spackle the gaps, and cut it out on the next go-through. I've been assured that it's okay to go up to 130k in the final draft, even, because I am 'so good at realistic detail and grittiness'.
Woo!

I'm still reading books on writing, both Revision, by Kit Reed, and How Not to Write a Novel, by Newman and Mittelmark, which is utterly hilarious. I've only found one of my own mistakes in it so far, though.
Which reminds me, I need to order Evil Editor's new book!

sky-chair west!

When we first moved in, the narrow space between the house and the fence had been used for a dog-run. An ugly but very secure chain-link fence covered each end. It took a deal of work to remove (and I have a photo of Mark rocking out one of the securely-concreted posts in a manly fashion). After that, though, what to do with a narrow overshaded run?
Build a cable-ride, obviously.
Mark pointed out that however cool a cable-ride is, inherently, eventually it will be grown out of, and what is one to do with the rather large supporting structure afterwards?
Oh, I said, use it for a arbor, or a support for a garden swing.

It took a few years to get around to making the cable-ride, time to research designs, look for an affordable (non-industrial level) setup, etc. The actual building didn't take that long, once we had all the bits.
Like most such innovations, it was used extensively for the first while, then when visitors came, parties & birthdays, and eventually the available children all grew too heavy (I can't remember what weight the grip was tested to - 100 lb?).
The lilac tree that Mark had cut down to a stump decided to take it as a severe but kindly pruning, and sprouted up and around the posts and platform. The various cats found the platform an excellent belvedere.

About 10 (15?) years ago I found a hanging wicker chair at a garage sale. The porch had no place strong enough to support a hanging chair, so I stuck it in the attic. Because hanging chairs are cool, and I'd always wanted one, and someday I'd have a place to put it.

This year, in the process of pruning, I reached the lilac tree and the cable-ride posts. With a prybar, a hammer, and my husband's suggestions, I got the platform off (to the later grief of cats, I'm sure).

I sawed off the two branches that ran across the middle of the space and suddenly it opened up beautifully, while enough leafiness remained above for comfortable shade.
I brought the chair down from the attic. The hook on the chain fit perfectly through the eye that had secured the cable. The length of the chain was just right for gentle foot pressure to steady the chair or set it swinging.

It was meant to be. For perfection I only needed the addition of a cat or a laptop. I've tried out the first, and will be checking out the second shortly.