The Glamorous Life of the Author

I know y'all probably think that authors live glamorous lives (mostly in full make-up and stiletto heels). So I thought, on this holiday weekend, that I'd give you a glimpse into mine before I go full-bore promotional "THE BOOK IS COMING OUT SOON" for Dangerously Charming. (Which is on sale now at Amazon, by the way. The paperback version is actually cheaper than the Kindle one, if you can believe it.)

So here you are, for your amusement, my glamorous life this weekend:

First, I defrosted the freezer in the mudroom.

 I'm making pesto today, so I needed to make room to put up the extra.

Then I went to the dump. No, I was not wearing full make-up and high heels.

Then I picked up a new office chair. I have to replace them a lot. Apparently my butt kills them.

 Magic the Cat is checking it out. She doesn't look too sure.

My friend Ellen came over to help me harvest things from the garden.

 Eggplants, tomatoes, and onions, OH MY.

The garlic harvest had been drying and it was time to clip it off and put it away.

It looks like a lot, but half will get replanted for next year.

No, you're not seeing double.

 The old cat tower had seen better days, but Angus spends most of his time sitting on the top bit, so when I saw the exact same thing on sale, I bought it. Ellen helped me put the new one together, using the non-instructions that always come with such things, and then we dragged the old one down to the street in hopes that it would find a new home. It was gone before we went back into the house. (Seriously. A nice lady with a station wagon was VERY happy.)

Naturally, Magic had to check this out too, even though she doesn't sit up there.

Yesterday was mostly house cleaning.

Yes, that's a pile of cat fur. Yes, that's all from one room. Yes, that is Magic supervising in the upper left. See? Glamour. Lots and lots of glamour.

Today I'm mostly working on the 365 Days of Everyday Witchcraft book for Llewellyn, although I did finish writing a short short story for Literary Escapism later this month, featuring Mikhail Day and Beka. And I have to go out and harvest a bunch of the seriously-out-of-control basil and make a huge batch of pesto. At least now I have a clean freezer to put it in.

What did you do with your weekend, three-day or not?

Oh, and be sure to come back tomorrow, because GIVEAWAY. Just sayin' :-)
 

Summer Harvest

One of my favorite things about summer is playing in the garden and reaping the benefits later (yes, pun intended). This year, because of the bum knee, the garden has been less like fun and more of a challenge, but thanks to some helpful friends, I do have some lovely veggies and fruits (and a lot more weeds than usual, but we're just ignoring them, right?).

Here are some of the goodies that I harvested this week, and what they look like after...

Red and yellow onions, red and fingerling potatoes, soybeans

Purple potatoes, eggplant, a few tomatoes and one lone cucumber

All the shallots! The last of the dill and some more tomatoes lurking behind

A few strawberries (the bulk of the harvest is over)

I love grilling veggies! Eggplant, tomatoes, onions, califlower

The finished plate, plus an ear of corn not from my garden. And a beer, of course.

Do you like to grow fresh veggies? Or at least eat them? What is your summertime favorite?

Note: 2 1/2 hours out in the garden made my knee very cranky. Sitting down to write now.
Happy summer!

Garden's End

My plans for the weekend had been to do some cleaning, make a dump run on Saturday, go to the last farmer's market, and then spend Sunday writing. The Saturday schedule went about as expected, and I had a lovely time walking around the market, eventually coming home with these goodies:

Purple cauliflower, the last of the corn, fresh local apples, a pot of basil, organic bacon & sausage from local farmers

I came to find a large, fun box on my doorstep. Gods only know what my mail carrier thought when she delivered it. The lovely Robert Skinner, who made a special broom for me earlier in the year The Broom sent me a box full of broom-making supplies, so Blue Moon Circle could make one of our own together. He's even going to make me a "how to" video. We'll probably bless and consecrate the supplies at Samhain, even if we don't have a chance to make the broom itself until later.

Acme Broom Company--Contains 1 Flying Broom Kit

 My plans for Sunday changed when I woke up to this:

Kale with frost. Luckily, kale is hearty, and once the day warmed, it was just fine.

That's the kale, which is one of the few things left in the garden, covered with frost. It was the second serious frost of the season (and the second morning when the temps hit below 29 degrees), but it got really nice in the afternoon, so that made it Time to Put the Garden to Sleep for the Winter. I called my stalwart pal Ellen, and we spend a sunny afternoon clearing the remaining beds of debris, planting next year's garlic, and harvesting the herbs. (Plus the less appealing chores like rolling up and putting away hoses and such.) The lovely weather and good company made the work go quickly, and there is always something satisfying about having the garden all neat and tidy. The end of the season is bittersweet, but this too is part of the Wheel of the Year.

You can't see it now, but this is where the garlic will come up next year. And there's the kale, looking fine.

The fish pond, with the filter & fountain removed. A heater will keep it from freezing over later.

Lemon balm, chocolate mint, thyme, and rosemary for drying.

Miraculously, I even managed to get 2,100 words written later in the day, but boy, was I tired.

Still, it was a very satisfying weekend, for the most part. What did you do with yours? Did you put anything away for winter? Harvest anything good?

How the Harvest is Like Life: A Weedy Wednesday Confession

Gardening is one of those things you do because you love it, not because you expect a perfect result. It is sort of like life that way. You plant things, tend to them, and then you harvest the results. Some years the harvest is fabulous; abundant and lush, with glorious colors and aromas that lift the soul and overflow the plate. Sometimes, things go wrong--stuff you could have fixed if you'd done something differently, stuff that was completely out of your control.

We're in the middle of the harvest season now--both in mundane life and the pagan "Wheel of the Year," where harvests are so important, we have three holidays or Sabbats dedicated to them: Lammas (Aug 1st), Mabon/Autumn Equinox (coming up on the 22nd of this month) and Samhain, also known to many as Halloween. I often use this time of year to assess how I'm doing on my goals (both mundane and spiritual). This year, even more than most, my garden reminds me of the imperfections in my own life, which is generally going quite well, but has some places where I could have wished for a different result.

The thing is, I tend to try and accent the positive--other than the occasional falling tree or lightning-killed router--so I suspect there are people out there who think my life is perfect, just like my harvest. Because most of the time, I only show you the pictures of the pretty stuff.

So today, I'm fessing up. This year's garden harvest has been...well...not so great. Yes, I have had some successes. But in general, at least in my area, the rollercoaster weather has conspired to make for a lousy harvest.
The storms over the weekend knocked down much of the corn. Sadly, it doesn't much matter, since it didn't seem to be doing much of anything anyway.

 My tomatoes have the blight. You can see that there are very few leaves left on the plants, and the ones that are there are shriveled and brown. The tomatoes are also suffering from cracking, due to the weather changes, and simply rotting on the vine. I have plenty to eat fresh right now--one of the great pleasures of the summer--but not enough to put away for the winter.

 And unlike the other things, which I didn't have any control over (or at least, which would have taken fairly Herculean efforts to prevent), the bed below shows where I just plain ran out of the energy and time to fight the weeds. There are still carrots and eggplants struggling along gallantly, but the harvest won't be nearly as good as it would have been if I'd been able to keep up.

 For every plate of gorgeous tomatoes

 There are just as many that look like this

Because, you know, that's gardening. And life.
Still, success comes in all sizes and shapes--

And like gardening, whether we consider our harvest a good one or not depends at least partly on attitude.

Yes, this has been a frustrating year (both in the garden and in a few areas of my life). But really, I am quite blessed. Not only am I getting some wonderful food out of my garden, but unlike my ancestors--or people who farm for a living--neither my life nor my livelihood depend on my having a good harvest every single year. And for every blight or storm, there are plenty of things that have come up in abundance, and my plate is still full of wonderful gifts.

Hopefully, I will have learned a few things from this year's disasters, and will be able to prevent a few of them next year. But mostly, I'm just happy for the good tomatoes, both actual and metaphorical. My life isn't perfect, any more than my garden is (can you say GIANT RAVENOUS MOSQUITOES?), but it is still darned good. And I'll probably go on showing you  mostly the pretty side, because I like it when y'all have delusions about my perfection :-)

So--how was this year's harvest for you?

Weedy Wednesday: Garlic! Garlic! Garlic!

Yes, I get just that excited about garlic. More about that in a minute.

First, I want to let you know that I am interviewed in a very cool Aussie book blog along with author Nicola Marsh, who used my "Witchcraft for the Paranormal Author" class as research for her book. Check out what we both have to say (and see how cool the book sounds) HERE

There are Things In the Air here... (and I'm not just talking about all the balls I'm juggling). Stay tuned this week to see what happens. If anything.

Today is a Weedy Wednesday post, when I feature some aspect of my garden. This week, I'm all about the garlic. And why wouldn't I be? Garlic is one of nature's wonders--it tastes amazing, has the medicinal properties of an antibiotic [Fun fact: during WWI, when the Russian Army ran out of antibiotics in the field, they used garlic instead. You're welcome.], and is easy to grow. I'm a big fan of easy :-)

If you've never grown garlic, this is what it looks like:

The actual garlic bulb is underneath the ground where you can't see it.
Garlic is an allium, related to onions and chives. It is planted in the fall, and then in the spring it is the first thing up in the garden. It couldn't be easier to grow. Take a head of garlic and break it into individual cloves. Poke a hole in the ground about 2 inches deep and place one clove in it, with the pointy end sticking up. Ta da! You've just planted garlic. You don't need to buy a special garlic from a supplier--just plant the kind you most like to eat. There are many varieties, but they are divided into two basic types: stiff neck and soft neck. The soft neck kind is what you see braided, so if you want to be able to braid your garlic when you've harvested it, get that kind. I like the stiff neck, because it tends to have fewer but larger cloves and is easier to peel.

Garlic is harvested in mid to late summer, when the bottom leaves start turning brown. Before that, you will want to clip the "scapes" or the flowering stalk that comes up from the middle. Not only do you want to remove this bit because then the energy of the plant goes into making larger bulbs instead of useless and not very pretty flowers, but you can also use the scapes in cooking. They have a mild garlic flavor and are good in stir fries.

This week was harvest time. I pulled the garlic out and let it rest for a few days, then cut the bulbs off the stalks and trimmed the roots off the bottoms.

And there you have it--this year's garlic harvest.
The heads will be spread out in a single layer to cure (dry) and then about half of them (the biggest and best ones, since the biggest cloves make the biggest plants) will be replanted in the late fall for next year.

As for the rest, why, I'll eat them of course.

If you really love garlic, you might want to try making garlic aoli, which is a kind of REALLY garlicky mayonnaise. Here's a recipe on Food.com garlic aoili recipe . Otherwise, you can just cook up a big pot of spaghetti sauce, or saute it with onions and mushrooms to serve with your next barbequed steak. Yum.

Harvest at Summer's End

This is a bittersweet time of year for gardeners. The harvest is in full swing, and each time I walk out to the garden, basket over my arm, I come back with loads of things to put up for later or eat right now. That's a mixed blessing, of course--lots of work, and things that can't wait (or you end up throwing away your summer's labor because it rotted on the counter before you could get to it). And much in the garden is dead or dying, the leaves withering and turning brown.

I'm always somewhat relieved at this point--every year I reach exhaustion with that garden chores right about the time they peak :-) There is still much to do, of course, but the nights are turning cold, and soon I'll be watching the weather channel for warnings of frost, running out to rescue the last tomatoes and squash, clipping the delicate basil and making it into pesto before the cold turns it into nothingness.

Here are a few pictures of recent harvest hauls. Do you feel bittersweet about summer turning into fall, or are you relieved to have the heat behind you and the kids back in school?

Today's Harvest OMG CARROTS

Most years I struggle to get my carrots to grow. I'm not sure why. But I tend to throw a LOT of seeds into the ground in the hope of getting a few. For some reason, this year...

They seem to be doing pretty well :-) That's about 2/3rds of what's out there, maybe a bit less. And no, you're not imagining it...some of them are purple. They're a kind called "Purple Haze" and they taste sweeter than a regular carrot and have extra beta carotene. Also, they're pretty. I think that's important in a carrot, don't you?

Of course, not all carrots are pretty. Some are kind of...perverse looking. LOL

So--anyone have any good carrot recipes???

Here's today's Frog Prince picture

And the rest of today's harvest

Three kinds of potatoes, a few tomatoes, two scrawny ears of corn (not a good corn year, alas) and also, a huge bunch of edamame (soybeans) that I need to take off the plants and cook.

I'd forgotten I put a copy of the upcoming Everyday Witch Book of Rituals up on a Goodreads giveaway last week, and was amazed to discover that there were almost 300 people entered already! You can enter HERE.

And don't forget that the new online class, Witchcraft on a Shoestring class is going to start on August 27th over on the workshop loop. Registration is open now, and one lucky participant will be gifted with a signed copy of the new ritual book as soon as it comes out!

So, about those carrot recipes...

More Harvest from the Garden

I'm still waiting for the BIG harvest from my labors (you know, that book deal for my novel...coming ANY DAY NOW). In the meanwhile, I'm still working on my more mundane harvest--fruits and veggies from the garden.

I love my garden: it's beautiful, I get amazing (organic) food to eat out of it, and often it acts as a kind of therapy. There is nothing like digging in the dirt to ground and center your spirit in the midst of an often chaotic world. And if you happen to be able to eat a tomato afterwards, that's nice too :-) On the downside, of course, it is a hella lot of work and I never quite feel like I'm keeping up. So on my Wednesdays off from the shop, I can often be found outside, trimming and weeding and harvesting. Here's what came in from the garden yesterday:

 This is what it looked like when I dragged it all in (seriously, the basket was HEAVY). Basil, the last of the yellow and red onions, carrots, potatoes, a few strawberries, and one tiny red pepper. The long green stuff in front is the first few stalks from the soy bean patch. I grow them for edamame (eaten fresh, like peas--just throw them into boiling water, pop them out of the pods, then eat).

 Cleaned up, don't these look great? Three kinds of pototoes: Yukon Gold (they keep well, so I'll be eating them all winter--that's the big white ones), small red (some of which got pretty large), and my favorite, French fingerling. You'll probably think the carrots look funny. I grow a kind called "Purple Haze" that is actually purple and not only has extra antioxidants but tastes sweeter.

 Here's the basil, a bit more neatly put together in water, waiting for me to make it into pesto today. YUM.

This is the final, cleaned garlic harvest. Do you think I have enough? Actually, the largest half of that batch will get replanted in the fall for next year's harvest. The rest...well, I'm going to be eating a lot of garlic!

If you have a garden, what are you harvesting now? If you don't have one, what would you grow if you could pick any three edible plants? (I'd love to have blood oranges and Meyer lemons, but they don't grow here in the Northeast, alas. My parents, on the other hand, have an amazing lemon tree in their back yard in San Diego. Jealous!)

A Day in the Garden: Harvest

I spent much of Wednesday (my day off from the shop) in the garden, trying to catch up with weed-pulling and plant-taming now that we've finally gotten some much needed rain. I may have gotten slightly carried away when I was planting the spaghetti squash this spring, since it is now trying to take over the entire garden.

(This is what the bed looked like AFTER I corralled all the sprawling vines.)

I love this time of year, when I go out with empty baskets, and come in with overflowing ones.

Wednesday's harvest included onions, shallots, three different kinds of potatoes (French fingerling, red, and Yukon Gold, in case you were wondering), cucumbers, carrots, lettuce, kale, one cauliflower head and a single cherry tomato. Which I ate on the spot. Also, as you can see, the garlic is ready to be harvested. I ran out of time and energy, so that is about a fifth of the crop, and the rest will have to wait until the weekend.

I love my garden pond, and had a lovely chat with a couple of friends:

Of course, I am also still hard at work on the Sekret Project, my current WIP. When I was talking to my friend Skye last night about edits, I told her that I saw writing as a kind of gardening, too. You plant the seeds, work hard to make them grow, nurture them with love but also do some harsh pruning and weeding as necessary until you have a beautiful finished product. With my last manuscript out to editors, I am hoping to reap a book deal in the near future (please Goddess!).

What have you worked hard at, and what kind of a harvest do you hope to reap as we enter the harvesting time of year?