Ranting gardeners

So I’ve been reading Sign of the Shovel and Garden Rant. I like these women! Yes, yes, yes: “each garden is different” so expert advice is really just a starting place. My brother-in-law is a landscape architect in Seattle. I know he’s very smart and very good at what he does, but his advice just DOES NOT apply to Denver. We’re a mile closer to the sun (which shines 300 days a year here) and it’s dry as a bone. Even so-called “sun-lovers” whither here in July.

And they have a manifesto! What a great word. The Pajama Gardener needs a manifesto. Maybe down with clothes and up with jammies?

The Velveteen Writer

Last week, I clinked glasses and sipped Champagne with my agent, her staff and my new editor (that's her, the fantabulous Melody Guy, on the right) to celebrate the sale of my first novel. It was a sublime moment—a dream come true. I’ve published several nonfiction books, but writing and selling a novel makes me feel like a “real” writer. Which is kind of silly because what truly makes anyone a “real” writer is writing, and I’ve been doing that most of my life. But there’s something strong and deep about pursuing and achieving this dream. Maybe it’s still cause I’m in a brain fog due to this cold, but I can’t really describe it.

This quote from Suzan-Lori Parks (from the Oct. 30th issue of the New Yorker) gets to some of what I’m trying to say: “I wake up every day and say, ‘Yes! I’m a writer!’ When you make that commitment, all sorts of things move toward you.”

Flower power

The November issue of O Mag has a feature about the healing power of flowers--a theory I obviously share. (The writer is Michele Owens-check out her blog: Sign of the Shovel.) I was reading it in a eucalyptus-filled tub trying to get my sinuses to open. I caught a cold in the Big Apple right after Champagne toasts at my agent's (more on that when my brain is working). And today Denver got more snow. So, a little healing.

Passions

This blog is about my passions: reading, writing and gardening. Shari Caudron blogs about people with passions over at Who Are You People (which also happens to be the name of her book). Check it out.

Snow

All the seasons came early this year. In January I had buds on the shrub roses and cornflowers were shooting up. In March, the daffodils fried in 70-degree temps. Yesterday, we got an inch or two of heavy wet snow. This being Denver, we'll be back in the 50s and 60s next week. But still...winter.



This photo is actually from last year, but you get the idea.

We have a winner!

Since Nadine Laman was the first to come over to my blog from The Squeaking Noodle she wins a free copy of Age Ain't Nothing but a Number. Congrats Nadine, and welcome to The Pajama Gardener! Thanks Squeak for spreading the word!

How gardening is like writing

Both are about creating something where before there was nothing. Bare ground, blank page. With both, the best stuff comes when we dig deep. With both, we strive for beauty and for contributing something to the world around us.

My husband and I started out with a plan for our yard, which we mostly followed. We had the rock company put the boulders where we wanted them, and we planted evergreen shrubs and trees where we wanted. We (when I’m referring to hard physical labor and say “we,” I mean “he”) dug up the lawn with a sod cutter. Then we (this one includes me too) laid down long sheets of brown paper to cover the weedy soil, which we topped with a few tons (literally) of recycled wood mulch. We let this sit for a winter and then the next spring we started planting perennials — blue flax, yarrow, California poppies, black-eyed Susans, moonbeam coreopsis, fire witch dianthus (how could a writer resist these names?). And we (well, ok, I) strayed a bit from the plan.

We started with a list of half a dozen or so low-water, low-maintenance plants, but something happened as I started to work in the yard. The plan didn’t go out the window so much as the garden transcended the plan. Friends offered me Shasta daisies, irises, four o’clocks and hens and chicks from their gardens. I fell in love with cosmos, snow-in-summer, wine cups, Elijah blue fescue, sunset hyssop (a late bloomer with purple and orange flowers that smell like root beer barrel candy) and orange carpet hummingbird trumpet (which brings hummingbirds to our city yard). A vacant lot nearby sprouted blue salvia and a virtually indestructible plant that is either feverfew or chamomile, and I dug them up and brought them home. And, of course, I had to plant some orange mint.

What we ended up with isn’t nearly as easy or as orderly as we envisioned, but the combinations of colors, scents and shapes of the blooms, the different views between rocks and over seas of flowers are much better than I could have imagined when we first started. It was good that we had the plan and laid a foundation of the rocks and evergreens to anchor everything. But it was also good to go a little crazy with the flowers.

This is also how gardening is like writing: have a plan, but don’t be afraid to ignore it when your own work leads you to something better.

Susan L. Taylor preaches

I went to the Colorado Black Women for Political Action luncheon yesterday. Susan L. Taylor, editorial director for Essence was the keynote speaker, and boy did she have us going! Women were shouting and waving and clapping like we were in church! The one thing she said that really stuck with me is that "we must be out of our right minds" to allow some of the things we're allowing in this country. Amen.

Ms. Taylor is one of 40 sane voices in the anthology I compiled, Age Ain't Nothing but a Number. If you're in need for a little sanity (and who isn't?), check it out.

2 more reasons to get up in the morning

Is anybody else digging the fall sunrises? The glorious orange light in the tops of the glorious orange trees is worth waking in the cold darkness.

Writing time is another reason to get up early. Here's some advice from Eisa Nefertari Ulen, television, magazine and journal writer, author of the novel Spirit's Returning Eye taken from the book Free Within Ourselves: Fiction Lessons for Black Authors by Jewell Parker Rhodes:

Rise an hour earlier than usual. Push yourself up and out of the soft warm holding you in sleep. Greet the delicate light of the rising sun.

Move to a space filled with yourself, surround yourself with yourself. Pieces of a life and a way of living that belong to you. These objects should be beautiful, reflecting your own beauty back onto yourself.

Speak to the Creator before you write, in whatever way best communicates the intent of your spirit to the Universe. Tap the rug, light a candle, burn incense, chant, shake what your mama gave ya, remain perfectly still: express yourself as a part of the realm of spirit.

Now you are ready to write. And you must write. You will write.

Thanks, Jan, for this quote!

Nerd girls make good

Ok, so Naomi Novik's deal is a bit better than mine, but I’m pretty happy with my situation.

D'oh!

Why we love good copy editors!

Read this book

Want to learn how to write humor? Create characters that walk off the page and into your living room? Write dialogue that’s so true you can’t believe the author didn’t tape-record the characters? Learn about African American life in the south pre- and during WWII, the Great Migration north and WWII England? Or simply want to slip away into the lives of two phenomenal women and their lifelong friendship? Read This Side of the Sky by Elyse Singleton. Then tell me what you think.

It's hard out there for a book store

Do you buy books? Seems like a simple question, but it's one I've asked myself recently. For a few years I only worked part-time-making only enough to cover my bills-and I didn't buy books (I made great use of my local library). I'm working full-time again, but still when I go into the book store it's hard to feel compelled to plunk down close to $30 on a hardback book. (And I'm a writer!) I got out of the habit, so I'm teaching myself to buy books again. I love Amazon, and I do buy from them. But I'm also trying to support my local book stores. I hope you will too. They need us. From an AP wire story this morning, "Indie Bookstores Fight Chains, Internet:"

Gary Kleiman, who owns BookBeat in the northern California community of Fairfax, decided the way to do it [stay in business] was to get rid of the clutter and make his store a gathering place.

"We had 10,000 or 13,000 books in the store," said Kleiman. "Now we have maybe 1,500."
Last fall, Kleiman gave all but a handful of his used books to charity. Then he tore down shelves and in their place put tables and chairs and a small stage for live performances. He started offering free wireless Internet access. And to help convince people to take advantage of it all he got a beer and wine license.

As for the books, most of the ones left are new and they're confined to the perimeter walls. While he's selling about the same number of books as he used to, new books are selling better. And his store has a lot more customers - eating, drinking and listening to music - than he did before. About 60 percent of the store's profits come from the cafe.

I applaud this guy for knowing how to keep his business alive, but it seems sad when books get pushed to the perimeter of a book store. My husband is a musician and it makes me think about the clubs he plays jazz in. The audience barely listens. They're there to party and be with their friends. The music is part of the ambiance, like candlelight, like wallpaper. Are books headed in the same direction?

There's NaNoWriMo and then there's....

People are impressed when you tell them you wrote a novel. (They're more impressed when they hear you sold one.) Everyone asks me how I did it. As if there's a secret formula I tapped into. I understand because I used to look for that secret formula myself. The closest I got was to shoot for 500 words a day every day. If you want a formula, here's a few:

http://www.lazette.net/vision/Issue34/writingfirst.htm
Write 200 words a day and get a 73,000-word novel in a year

http://squeakingnoodle.blogspot.com/2006/09/writing-book-in-one-hit.html
Write 5,000 words a day and get a 90,000-word novel in 18 days (sounds crazy, but she-I think she-has got a point)

http://justinelarbalestier.com/blog/?p=398
Wacky, but possibly useful advice on how to write a novel quickly

Doesn't matter how many words (or minutes) you write each day. What matters is that you write (and every day really helps).

Soon come spring

Today, I started planting bulbs-little blue flowers called scilla http://www.touchofnature.com/Fall%20Pictures/Scilla_Siberica.jpg and daffodils. In the last couple of years I've planted about 150. This fall I'm adding 100 more daffodils and 200 scilla. In dreary March the yellow and blue will be most welcome.

NaNoWriMo

Sounds like something Mork from Ork used to say. But it means National Novel Writing Month. You write a first draft of a novel in a month-November. I'm going to try it this year. If you're crazy too, go here to learn more:http://www.nanowrimo.org/.