Tidbits

I'm back on my feet--or I guess I should say, my seat--and writing again.  Still not as one with my desk chair, though.  It has a hard spot right where it meets my tailbone (ouch!) so I'm wandering around the house, trying to find a good spot with a view of the back yard. 

The porch was great until I let a mosquito in from the yard and in a matter of seconds I had several painful bites on my right leg.  Based on the amount of Hot Shot I sprayed around out there, that sucker should be dead by now.

While I was on the porch this morning I started thinking about cutting down the Magnolia that hosts the bird water station and the Hummingbird feeder.  Right at that second a Ruby Throated Hummingbird flew up and fed.  It's been back two more times.  I haven't seen a Hummer for almost two months (okay, I was flat on my back for part of that time, but I did manage to keep the feeder clean and filled) so I have to admit to being completely confused by Hummer behavior.

I got the new squirrels I was expecting--two babies.  Saw one of them taking a sand bath the other day.  It was cute but still annoying.  I'm not sure where the tipping point will be.  The squirrels are messy and eat so much more than the birds it's hard to keep seeds in the feeder.  I've asked the squirrels nicely to go away and they just ignore me.  It's illegal to shoot them.  It's a puzzler, alright.

I missed a month of CFRW's 250 words-a-day challenge, so I've got some catching up to do.  I spent my off-time reading and enjoyed some books on homesteading, small-scale farming and eating locally.    Barbara Kingsolver (another Kentucky writer) wrote an amazing story of her family's year of eating locally in Animal Vegetable Miracle.  Kristen Kimball's A Dirty Life was fun, but neither book made me long  for the farmer's life.  I wouldn't last a day once the bugs started biting.

So, I'm still not sure if A Trick of the Light's young Julia will learn how to cook on her pot-bellied stove or not.  She will definitely be gardening, though, and growing flowers (because I adore flowers...).  I'm not Julia, and she isn't me, but if you're going to write a book you should be able to sneak in a personal passion every once in a while, if you want.

Happy writing.

Everything is Research

So, you may be wondering…doesn’t she do anything but sit on the porch and count birds? Well, yes, she does. It’s called research.

In my work in progress, A Trick of the Light, the protagonist (not the heroine; this one’s straight fiction and not a romance) Julia, has left her childhood home and moved into an abandoned barn. Julia is thirteen years old. It’s fall in Kentucky. The landscape is pretty pitiful, as is her life, and there’s not a lot of beauty to describe. Her fall and winter will be, stylistically, pretty bland. She’s learning the lessons of survival (with a little help from her friends) and doing a lot of growing up. 

What I’m doing now is soaking up spring for the time when I start to write about it. Spring in Kentucky is glorious. Spring in Kentucky in the woods is breath-taking. Spring for Julia (all four of the springs she spends in the barn) will be life affirming. Summer will be hot. Her second fall and winter will mimic the first, but she’ll have the lessons of the year before to fall back on, and then, once again, it will be glorious spring.

For now, my “research” includes these activities and sightings:

I planted some Creeping Phlox seeds on the 15th and had seedlings on the 21st. I took this photo last night.

Tiny, huh?  Imagine what they'll look like in a month.

One of the many squirrels populating my woods is sprawled across the peaked roof of a feeder, sunning. I guess they have to occasionally take a break to digest. I think one of them is pregnant. Yippee, more squirrels.

There’s been a large yellow butterfly, a Cloudless Sulphur, flying around the yard for the past week. Nothing is blooming around here so I don’t know what they’re eating. I put the Hummingbird feeder out on Sunday. Last weekend (Friday through Monday, actually) was the Hummingbird count in Florida. My count was zero, but my hopes were high. Sometimes you have to have a feeder out for a long time before the hummers notice you. On my next trip to the home store I’ll be looking for firecracker plants and hibiscus. Red. Hummers love red.

And here come the Titmice, loud and raucous. The squirrels are wising up and vacate the feeders before the onslaught. The Cardinals are also catching on to the ability of the Titmice to temporarily clear the room. They fly in with the Titmice and snatch a seed or two while the squirrels are cringing up in the branches. There is a fledgling titmouse who can land on the feeder but hasn’t yet figured out how to navigate its way onto the ant-trap above the hummer feeder, now filled with water and serving as a water station. Did you know a nesting Titmouse will hiss like a snake when disturbed? Ah, well, I digress.

Here's a Cardinal who's stopped by for a drink:

Did you know that Cardinals generally stay up about half an hour later than squirrels?  And that they are often the first birds active at dawn?  When seed is low at the end of the day I wait until the squirrels have gone to bed, then fill for the late diners and early risers.  Julia will discover this in A Trick of the Light as she learns the rhythms of the woods where she lives.

The bottom line? Everything is research.

Happy writing (and researching)!