I'm slowly working on my back yard where we had 50 huge pine trees taken down so I can have a garden. I am preparing lots of unique crafts as I will be both a speaker and a vendor at the State Master Gardener summer conference. I am looking forward to the Cullowhee Native Plant conference where I will play guitar late into the night. then in late summer I go to Chicago for the Garden Writer's Association's annual conference which is the highlight of my life - It is garden writer's heaven. I'll be taking lots of slide film and I'll be practicing my karaoke for the closing night party. I continue to procrastinate on my garden book which is about half done. Maybe I should go back and read Henry Mitchell's books again for inspiration?

Here is a link that might be useful: Bittersweet Gardens.Com

I recently bought a set of tapes at the 75% Off Book Store that are a collection of gardening essays. I LOVE IT. It has inspired me to write something on gardening that is informative and entertaining.

I haven't written anything since college, when I had to write on assigned topics, so I would love to try something original now. I will probably just keep my pieces in a private collection along with my gardening journals and geneology records.

Garden writing will be a welcome respite from the reality of world events outside all our doors. My stories will come from childhood memories and inteaction with my mother and grandmother. They're already in there, waiting to be written. Is that angle overused and trite?

Guess I'm looking for some encouragement here. Cheryl

Cheryl, It seems like a great thing for you to do - write down your gardening memories. Even if they are never published they will add to your genealogy record as a written history on a personal note. When do you intend to start?

Actually I started with a children's story, where the kids are my girls in a (somewhat) fictitious setting and have an educational experience with some cottonwood trees. Their grandmother weaves a story for them about how the stars get into cottonwood branches.

One of my girls actually made this discovery many years ago when we were cleaning up the backyard. She broke a branch to put it in the basket and saw the outline of a five-pointed star in the pith of the wood. I sketched a story about it and added the grandmother telling them that falling stars like to find a cottonwood to live in when they don't want to live away up in the sky anymore, so far from the earth. There are a lot of other details, like a secret garden that the children play in, neighbor boys who come over through a hedge that separates the properties. And a favorite oak tree that the grandmother says may have been growing there when little Native American children played in this yard.

I have never really finished the story, although there is a conclusion: 'Next time you pick up a cottonwood branch, look for a growth node(swelling along the branch) and break it open. You'll find a tiny little five-pointed star there and you'll see what I mean. And this is really true.'

I have lots of other ideas, like: Granny always had the best tasting strawberries in Oklahoma. (They were planted over the septic tank!)

The year the plum tree bloomed and yeilded over 500 lbs of plums. Picking was an experience and took all seven of us all day to pick them. That tree never yeilded more than a few lbs before that and it died that next winter.

The family saga of our ongoing love affair with the Seven Sisters rose, from South Carolina, to Tennessee, to Oklahoma, to Texas, to Colorado and back to Texas. All the women in my mothers side have had one going back all the generations we can trace.

Granny's pickled peach recipe, and all our futile efforts to replicate it. How she grew her peaches. My mother's manic gardening techniques. How I built a rose garden then decided to put a stone patio in the middle of it, while trying not to get thorns in the bootie. The evolution of my garden shed. So whataya think? These topic, I'm sure sound incredibly boring to anyone hearing(reading) them, but are just terribly fascinating to me. (I'm laughing)
Cheryl

Haven't written anything other than forum posts for AGES, except for sporadic entries in various calendars/journals that haven't been touched in months.

It occurred to me as I was reading all the above posts, to pass on something I'm re-learning, re-remembering to do: and that is, DATE YOUR COPY!

My mom died about 2 months ago and as we've gone through 80 years of pictures/souveniers/old "things", it's so fascinating and helpful to find dates on the items. Yesterday I was looking through an old 40's-50's cookbook I got from her, just perusing to see what was in it, and found dozens of recipes either hand written or typed, AND DATED, AND SIGNED, by whichever friend gave her the recipe. Most were from women she knew in the mid-40's from Edmonton Alberta Canada, when she & my dad lived there for a while.

But OUR dates should extend also to grocery lists, whimsy notes about an anything, wish lists for plants, seeds, house plans, and any THING we write down. Then when we or our survivors find the THING, they/we can say, "Oh! That's when I/she was involved with xxxx!" or the survivors/we can say, "WHY on EARTH did I/she write and date THAT thing?"

Just a thought,
Susi, 6-21-03!

This will be a busy summer for me. I illustrate books (mostly scientific stuf, rarely artsy) on the side besides working full time as a graphic artist and part time at a nursery. I'm finishing 24 illustrations for a Floriculture textbook (deadline in 3 weeks and I'm behind schedule), got the galleys for a field guide to butterflies that I did the diagrams and range maps for (everything looks good so that job should be over with), I'm writing a How-chapter on some garden craft techniques I refined last year after a book editor saw my work and contacted me to be included in one of their books coming out next year (totally out of the blue, and they are gonna pay me money!), I get to teach a workshop on garden crafts and I get to work my plot for the annual garden design competition at the state fair this fall. All this and I still had enough time to go home to Oklahoma for a vacation last month! Busy busy busy!

The garden season seems to extend at least 11.5 months these days. I have picked up an additional radio show. I now have a one-hour one man show that zaps out across Oklahoma and into the Texas panhandle. This in addition to the 2-hour 2 man show that is local to the OKC area. There is an entire hour between shows where I sit in the truck and listen to one of the other garden shows on a local radio station.

It is interesting, In Oklahoma we now have a garden radio show in Tulsa, two in Okc (another starting soon), one that goes statewide, and McG is on NPR. There is more information that ever before. It will be interesting to see how everything falls out in the long run.

I have been doing little garden spots on one of the local tv stations. Who knows maybe someday a regular spot might show up.

Weekly article continues...

I have been given the opportunity to do the backpage article for the Oklahoma Gardener Magazine. You know the genre informative and humorous. I'm good on the informative and I am working on the humorous. Eddie - maybe I need lessons

The first article was the sneaky neighbor with more zuchinni than friends ( common theme) but a tied it into Plant A Row for the Hungry. I haven't decided what to write for September.

Cheryl - I like your topics. Doesn't sound boring at all. I think that the cottonwood story sounds like one that should be shared with other people.

Paul