Day #480 Poppy's House

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.

Day #319 Bees are Easier than Cats or Dogs

I spent Thursday night visiting a friend in north Georgia. On the way back from there I stopped off at Quigley’s Rare Books and Antiques on the square in Dahlonega GA, where I signed some books and talked with folks.

As I left Quigley’s, having stayed an hour longer than I’d originally planned to stay, I was quite aware of how easy beekeeping is. I didn’t have to clean any litter boxes for them before I left. I didn’t have to worry about what would happen if I didn’t get back in time to feed them more sugar water. They’d get by even if I decided to stay an extra night.

And, thank goodness I never have to take my bees for a walk. Can you imagine 60,000 teeny-weeny leashes?

BEEattitude for Day # 319:

       Blessed are those who welcome friends into their lives, for they shall be enriched in so many blessed ways.