Every so often, I take off into the woods of North Georgia and visit my friend Polly Hunt Neal, affectionately known as Poppy to her many friends. As I write this on Friday afternoon, to be posted on Saturday at 12:01 a.m., I'm sitting in a gazebo where I wrote the first few pages of INDIGO AS AN IRIS several years ago.
I'd been in a slump at the time -- some people call it writer's block -- others say it's lack of inspiration. At any rate, I'd been looking at blank pages for so long, I'd begun to wonder if my muse (whatever or whoever that may have been) had left me.
At any rate, Poppy called me somewhere in the middle of that bleary time and invited me up for the weekend. When I arrived that day, she hadn't returned yet from a quick errand that turned into a longer errand than she'd expected. Not knowing where she was I wandered out to the gazebo with my notebook and a pencil. I trusted that Poppy would show up soon, although a whiff of concern passed through my author-mind when I briefly wondered if she'd been kidnapped.
I was moderately hungry, and the cinnamon bun I'd snitched on the trip up had long gone, so I wrote cinnamon buns at the top of the page, and kept going from there, with the beginning of a story about a kidnapping gone horribly awry.
Of course, Poppy eventually drove in, and I shared with her the beginning of INDIGO.
By the time you read this blog post, I'll be home after two uplifting, relaxing days with Poppy. Every time I come here, I get a lot of writing done -- and we eat a lot of honey on biscuits!
Life can't get much better than this.
BEEattitude for Day #480:
Blessed are those who welcome friends, for they shall shine with shared affection.
Showing posts with label indigo as an iris by fran stewart. Show all posts
Showing posts with label indigo as an iris by fran stewart. Show all posts
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Day #422 Bees Don't Lose Things
Bees don’t lose things, the way people do. When the Gwinnett Choral Guild had that fund raiser recently, putting together home shows for Premier Jewelry and reaping the benefits because the Jewelry Lady, Judy Parsons, gave a large percentage of her profits to the GCG, I booked two shows, as you well know because I’ve mentioned them before here in this blog.
The way it works is that Premier ships the items to the show hostess (that’s Frannie in this case), and the show hostess distributes the goodies to the women who were her guests.
Right.
I had great fun piling the bags in stacks and handing them over to my friends.
Today I was headed out to have lunch with my dear friend Darlene Carter when the phone rang. “Bring my jewelry along when you come,” she said.
“Jewelry? Didn’t I already give it to you?”
Oh dear. Bees don’t have this sort of problem. All they carry around is nectar and pollen. Plus, they clean out cells and dump the garbage outside the hive. That’s about it in terms of carrying.
Now, the question is, where did I carry Darlene’s bracelet and such? I don’t have a beautifully-organized hive to search. I’ve looked in every room in my house, the garage, the car. I’ve looked under things and in things and on top of things. I’m pretty sure those silver-colored Premier boxes are … somewhere … I think …
Fortunately, Darlene is quite forgiving. She was nice enough to say, “Maybe you did deliver them, and I just misplaced them.”
Ha!
She may be forgiving, but I still have to find those blinkin’ things. Either that or order another set for her. Wish me luck, will you?
And here’s the picture of Indigo’s cover, as I promised. If you haven't read this one yet, don't read the next one (VIOLET) until after you've finished INDIGO. I leave some loose threads at the end of INDIGO that don't get answered for a while. And, anyway, if you read VIOLET first, you'll find out who gets killed in INDIGO. It would be a shame to spoil the suspense.
BEEattitude for Day # 422:
Blessed are those who know where they're flying, for they shall find their way out and back again. Sunday, June 19, 2011
Day #250 - Missing My Dad
My father was one of those emotionally-absent men who cared very much about his family, but who worked very hard to do his job as he saw it, showing his love through that work. I didn’t appreciate him (or the work ethic that defined his life) enough as I was growing up, and didn’t really get to know him until the last seven years of his life.
I was with him when he died. My sister and I sat on either side of his bed and held his hands as he walked down that long stairway. When he reached the end of it, he took a deep breath and stepped off.
His dying erased any vestige of fear I might have harbored about death. I’m not ready to welcome it—not for a long time—but I know from having seen my dad die, that it doesn’t have to be a scary process.
I wanted to share the experience my sister and I had on that March day in 2002, so when I wrote the 5th book in my mystery series, Indigo as an Iris, I put in the story a death that looked very much like my dad’s. If you read INDIGO, you’ll see the loving gentle way he left this life.
I’ve been thinking about it because, obviously, Father’s Day is here, but also because bees from my hives die on a regular, daily basis. I’ve found their sweet little bodies on the deck, in the planters, and caught in a spider web behind/beside a recirculating fountain. I hope they went as easily as my father.
BEEattitude for Day # 250:
Blessed are those who appreciate their family while they can, for their memories shall be richer.
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The teeny details:
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Day #219 Done! and Settled!
Wednesday was a full day indeed for two big reasons. I’ll start with the second one first.
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| May 18, 2011 - two layers each |
Both hives now have two layers for brood chambers. I opened the brown hive (formerly the white hive) and checked all the frames. Some of the comb they’d built was pretty fat, but it wasn’t large enough to attach to the frame next door, so I left it as is.
I saw plenty of eggs, so the queen appears to be well, although she’s very good at hiding. There was also a lot of capped brood (the brownish wax-topped cells where the baby bees are growing) and a fair amount of honey (white-capped cells) and pollen (yellowish-brown stuff). And the larvae were plentiful and cute.
I checked on the yellow hive just to be sure, and all seemed well. My smoker went out halfway through this whole operation. Thank goodness I have gentle bees.
Now to the second biggie:
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| Honey Creek Woodlands Trail |
My friend Millie went with me Wednesday morning to Honey Creek Woodlands to meet with the director, Joe Whittaker. Honey Creek is a natural cemetery (also known as a green cemetery) situated on the lovely grounds of the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers GA, smack dab in the middle of the monastery's 2,200 acres. The cemetery is open for burials from all faiths. I selected a place where eventually (maybe 40 years from now???) I’d like to be buried. And it’s all paid for.
If you don’t know anything about green funerals or natural cemeteries, you might want to check out the Honey Creek website. Or read my 5th Biscuit McKee mystery, Indigo as an Iris, because I have a couple of green funerals in there. Writing about natural burial was my way of helping to educate people about a lovely way to keep pollutants (like embalming fluid / formaldehyde) out of the earth. One acre of a regular cemetery contains enough wood and concrete to build something like forty houses. In natural burial, everything returns to and nourishes the earth.
So – now my kids and grandkids won’t have to worry about arranging all that. I know right where I’m going to be planted. It’s pretty close to where Millie found a place for herself. You can come visit us both at the same time. But I'm not planning to die any time soon!
BEEattitude for Day # 219:
Blessed are those who plan ahead without freaking out about it, for they shall carry a blessed calmness along with them.
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The teeny details:
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