Catching Up

It's been several months since I've posted on my blog, but that doesn't really doesn't matter as I have no followers. That's cool. In a way it's sort of liberating, as my thoughts and words will be out there in the cosmos. I've read that when writing a piece, imagine that no one will ever read your work. Only then can you trully feel free to write your deepest thoughts and feelings. In short, if you can shut out the world during the writing process, you should be able to produce your best writing. I've found the technique liberating when writing about personal issues like my husband's illness or subsequent death.

If anyone is interesting in a good online writing site try www.scribophile.com. You can get your work critiqued by several writers in a contructive, helpful manner. You have to write a few critiques to earn enough karma points to do your first post. Being an English Literature major, I've discovered I actually enjoy doing the critiques. The one thing is that you have to be selective of the pieces you choose to read and crit. At first, I got overwhelmed with reading material that really didn't interest me. If you are a writer interested improving your craft and receiving constructive critism on your work, check the site out.

Well, Fall is here. Our garden has come and gone. Todd cleaned it off yesterday. I still have a couple of foxglove blooming and a hollyhock that should bloom any day, if they frost doesn't kill it first. I planted that row of plants from seeds. The ones I bought from QVC last year were monstrous. Two of the set of four died the first year, so they refunded my money. After the three feet of snow melted off the garden in early spring, their leaves where still green and looked like wilted lettuce. After about a week of sunshine, the leaves started to perk up. Before long, the plants were perky and starting to grow, and grow.

The pink one had about thirteen or fourteen stalks and topped out at about six and a half feet. The deep scarlet black one had seven stalks and was about seven and a half feet tall. Needless to say, these were your run of the mill hollyhocks. They are from the Biltmore Collection from Roberta's (I think) on QVC. They had bloom on them for almost two months. I saved all the seeds I could to share with my family and neighbors next spring. I have pictures that I will post at a later date of the hollyhocks and several other items in our garden this summer; however, I have to upload them again from my camera. My PC got a virus, so I lost the ones I had on the PC. Luckily, I don't trust technology, so I still have them on the memory cards.