Harvest what you plant

Some of what our garden has gifted us

There's a common expression 'you reap what you sow'. While technically, it's the same as the title of this post - Harvest what you plant - it's connotation is much darker. Almost threateningly so. 

I've had enough of cautionary tales. 

What I'm looking for now is something to reach for, not something to run away from. 

I want more possibilities, not fewer. 

We have a large garden here at StarField Farm. Multiple gardens, actually. We have the large plot at the bottom of the driveway, the recently established miniature orchard, a side garden, a terraced garden, and the kitchen garden. We grow all kinds of fruit and vegetables - I like to say from asparagus to zucchini (though we didn't plant any summer squash this year. We get enough from neighbors. And yes, folks here do leave bags of zucchini on front porches). Yesterday, I harvested about half of the 60+ potatoes we planted in early spring. 

pinto potatoes from a freshly pulled vine

Yes, that's a lot of potatoes. And tomatoes. And beans. And kale. And peppers. And...

We planted all of this food during still chilly days last spring. You could say gardening is an act of faith and you wouldn't be wrong. So many things need to go exactly right to harvest a crop. The correct amount of sunshine, rain, warmth, nutrient rich soil. And even then, there are pests and animals who can decimate a garden before you get a single floret of broccoli. 

This year, squirrels ate every last peach from three carefully tended trees. Hundreds and hundreds of peaches gone. 

Here's the thing: when you plant something - a seed, a sapling, an idea - you don't know what will come of it. You hope that there will be juicy peaches in late August, but it's a long time between February pruning and peach pies. So much can happen, mostly out of our control. 

But every year, we tend the garden. Feed the soil. Nurture the seedlings. Prune the trees.

Writing stories isn't all that different. It starts underground in the fertile subconscious. The words need to be tended, weeded, protected. Sometimes the garden of ideas is orderly, other times it grows wild like a pumpkin patch. Not every story makes it to harvest and some offer amazing bounty. If gardening is an act of faith, so is creativity. 

My garden feeds and sustains my body.

My writing feeds and sustains my soul.

And that is a harvest worth working toward.

---

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It's been a minute

The view from my office window

 

It's honestly been a lot longer than a minute. There was a time this blog served as my virtual journal, where I wrote without thought to who might be reading it. Then somewhere along the way, I got suckered into the clicks, the metrics, the shares and spent my time boosting posts into my social media timelines. It suddenly became more important to be noticed than to be creating. 

Which wasn't good for my mental health or my writing. 

Creativity is a tiny flame in the darkness, vulnerable to wind and weather. I had forgotten how carefully it needs to be tended. 

It doesn't not slip my notice that my endless scrolling on social media and craving for the external validation it sometimes provided coincided with the long slow slog of my current manuscript. I've said this before and I'll repeat it here - if only to hammer it home in my mind - to write means being able to sit with the discomfort when it gets difficult. Having social media as a crutch meant I had a ready exit from the work. 

Not only that, but the rapid fire nature of a social media feed seemed to obliterate my ability to focus my attention on long form work - both reading and writing. 

If anything is the death knell for a writer it's the inability to read and think deeply. 

It's also been a year full of radical changes in my personal life. In 2023, my spouse left a toxic job and is now semi-retired. We sold a house and moved fully to our homestead farm in Central Massachusetts. (We still have a storage unit full of unpacked boxes to prove it.) I won't even mention the cataclysmic changes in the world at large.

Everything culminated in my decision to step away from most of my social media streams. I haven't checked my personal Facebook feed in 2 weeks.* And in just those weeks, feel like my mind and thoughts have room to grow. I've engaged with my writing more fully and more deeply than I have in a long time. 

I'm letting myself be bored instead of reaching for my phone. 

I'm emailing long letters to friends. I have a bunch of cards I'm planning to mail as well. 

And most remarkably, the days feel longer. Story is swirling around my mind again. I spent several intense days doing a final read through and light edit to LITANY FOR A BROKEN WORLD ahead of sending it to my editor. After all the time struggling to write it, rewrite it, multiple revisions and changes, it finally says what I wanted and needed it to say. 

Whether or not it finds its readership isn't up to me. I can't make that happen through social media or promotion. I will be releasing it just after the new year. What happens after, happens. There will be a book 2 (Working title EVERY SKY A STRANGER). There are other stories tickling my back brain. 

There will be plums to harvest in a week or so. And blackberries. The kale and chard are taking over the garden. Everything grows and matures in its own time. The garden, the orchard, stories. Our lives are a process. Not a destination. 

I'm still here. I hope you are, too. Wherever you are in your process, I hope you find the breath and time to simply be. 

With fondness,

LJ

*You may still see me posting on IG, because there's never a bad time to add beauty to the world. Most of what I post there are photos of StarField Farm, knitting, pottery, food, and of course, my dogs.

---

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When every day is blursday

Winter finally arrives at StarField Farm

 

 

The past few months have gone by in a blur of family stress and change. And even when change is ultimately positive, it is still difficult. 

My spouse left the hospital he had worked at for the entirety of his 30+ year career. At my urging, he has taken January and February off to decompress from the traumatic years of covid, among other stresses, before he decides what's next. Which means neither of us have the external markers of time passing. Hence the title of this blogpost. 

 

Despite everything, I have managed to complete the (as yet unnamed) multiverse novel and am deep into its second revision. In the process, I have unlocked the conflicts at the heart of the sequel. Now I'm eager to complete book 1 and move on to drafting book 2. 

 

Book 1 takes place over a few day span in a Boston winter, so in a way, I've been living in those brief moments in time for several years. Blursday, indeed. When I look out the window today, the landscape finally matches my internal sense of place. 

 

Living in the Northeast US, the other way I have always kept track of where I am in time is the march of the seasons. And that, too, has been changing in ways that I find quite disorienting. 

 

In my lifetime (I'll be 60 this year) I have watched the seasons skew, more extreme "100 year" storms, & overall less predictable seasonal weather patterns.

There's already word that there will be no stone fruit in New England this season because of the weather extremes we had earlier in the month - from 50 degrees F to -13 within days.

I am a scifi geek, so I often reflect on the ST:TNG episode The Inner Light where Picard's consciousness is snagged by a memory beacon & he lives a lifetime with a civilization coming to grips with its own extreme climate change as its sun ends up as a supernova. Ah, Science Fiction shining a light on the present since forever.

This is heavy thinking for a beautiful snowy morning in Central Massachusetts, so I will leave you with a haiku:

 

round bellied birds perch
trees snug in coats of fresh snow
how still the world waits

 

---

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Seven weeks: A status report

Seven weeks.
I've been at StarField Farm in essential isolation for seven weeks now.

Someone yesterday called me and asked me how I was doing. It was hard to answer that question. I told my friend *what* I was doing and that's a window into the how.

For the past week or so, I've found a rhythm to my days centered around discrete tasks. On the nice days, I walk the dogs in the woods and clean up in the garden. Our fruit trees have never looked so well pruned.

I spend a lot of time working with sourdough starter and baking different kinds of breads. Because it still gets cold at night, I regularly need to replenish wood, which means getting on the tractor, loading a bucket, and ferrying wood into the kitchen.

I'm not doing well at keeping to a normal sleep cycle, staying up too late and waking up late. Nor am I keeping to normal meal times. Despite baking, I'm not hungry most of the time. My friends and neighbors have been the lucky recipients of my sourdough obsession.

So, how am I?

I feel myself slowing down, letting the time stretch out without trying to exert much control over it. Do I feel depressed? Not really. I'm far too familiar with anxiety and depression and this just feels like I'm in a powered-down state. Like the sleep/energy saver setting on the computer.

Leaving the house to go to the post office (we don't get delivery at the house) or my occasional replenishment trips to the market no longer feel frightening. I have a routine with my masks, hand sanitizer, and clorox wipes. This is just what needs to be done.

I've moved from panic to caution in my day to day life. The extreme fatigue that flattened me for several weeks has eased. There seems to be a limit to how long a body can function in a heightened alarm state. I do realize that whatever balance I've found is likely tenuous at best.

My husband is still in the thick of treating covid-19 patients. When we spoke last night, he told me he felt sad. I think he, too, is shifting from the initial emergency response to a more reflective one. In a lot of ways, it's simpler to be in emergency-mode. All the painful emotions are put on hold and there's an outlet for adrenaline and fear. Afterwards, there comes a reckoning. And I worry for my husband, his colleagues, and my friends who are first responders. The risk to their mental health is likely higher now than the risk to their physical health.

Hearing the news of the NY ER physician who died from suicide this week felt like a personal blow.

How am I?

Physically? Safe. Emotionally? Weary. Overall? Heartsick for all who are suffering and will continue to suffer. Powerless in the face of knowing that what comes next (and I believe there will be a next) will not be easy.

But today is sunny, warm, and dry. My dogs will revel in the smells of the rich earth as they snuffle in the underbrush. The kitchen will be filled with the scent of baking bread. For today, that will be enough. 

---

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We are all in this apart

some of last year's peach harvest

Yesterday it was finally dry and warm enough to prune the fruit trees. It's important not to prune just before rain, as the newly cut branch ends are susceptible to mold and rot and disease. And fruit trees need to be pruned in order to yield a harvest. (This is not a metaphor.)

So I spent a good chunk of yesterday afternoon with my pruning sheers and my loppers working on 3 peach and 2 plum trees. I left my phone inside and for those precious hours, my world was clipping all the upright suckers, branches that crossed other branches, and anything that either grew into the center of the trees or would block sun coming into the canopy.

It was calming and soothing to do this work and the fatigue I felt afterward was a normal tired, not the emotional exhaustion of watching the covid-19 projections or hearing the news about new hot spots and deaths.

I have at least a half dozen friends who personally know people who have died from covid-19. I know it is only a matter of time until I do. 

*

I spoke (by telephone) a few weeks ago with the gentleman who heads our small community's emergency response team. He talked about the painful irony in that all of their emergency/contingency planning assumed we'd be using community buildings as shelters and that we would be gathering together. 

Now we are isolated, apart. 

*

This is a fragmented reality. We are forced apart from the communities that help give structure to our lives - schools, houses of worship, jobs, entertainment. And while we are all experiencing some kind of shared trauma, we are also experiencing completely different, individual traumas. 

This virus will take a toll on all of us, but its effects are not distributed equally. I don't know what to do with that understanding, but I think it's important to acknowledge. 

My children are grown and living on their own, so I don't need to face the pressures of managing young people's fears and the stress of being responsible for their learning. 

I am physically well, so I can complete my activities of daily living without assistance. 

I am coping emotionally as well as can be expected and have access to mental health supports.

I am living in a house on a small farmstead, so it's easy to practice physical distancing as well as have access to being physically active outdoors, weather permitting. I'm also in an area with a ton of farms that are either delivering food, or have it available for contactless pick up, so I'm well fed. 

My relationships are sound and healthy, so I don't feel unsafe.

My spouse is still employed, so I don't have to panic about paying a rent or mortgage, or having health insurance. 

I have friends, family, and acquaintances for whom some or all of these (and more) stresses come into play and so added to the shared trauma, their individual traumas make everything that much harder. 

*

Never in my experience have I understood more clearly the need to protect the public good and to ensure that those who are vulnerable are safe. 

*

 

Never in my experience have I been as dismayed by our leadership's utter failure to respond to the urgent needs of all its citizens. 

*

We are all in this together. We are all in this apart. Both of these are true. 

*

I still have 3 young pear trees to prune. They are probably still not mature enough to bear fruit this year, but with time and care, they will. This is both my task for today and a metaphor.

Be well. Be safe.

---

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Staying grounded

Planting a promise

This weekend, my husband joined me at StarField Farm for a desperately needed respite. He has been working non-stop for the past 3 weeks, both tending to patient needs at the hospital and readying his department to respond to the covid-19 pandemic.

The information coming at all of us is overwhelming, changing moment by moment, requiring us to adapt even as we are reeling from what we already have learned.

It has been even more so for the medical staff, who are literally on the front lines of an invisible war.

When he arrived Friday night, his face was haggard and pale. His eyes were dull. I have never seen him so exhausted. When we hugged, I could feel him clinging to me and we spent a long several moments just feeling our hearts synchronize. It was all I could do not to cry. 

For the past two days, we have kept the news off, choosing to listen to music instead of NPR. While neither of us could entirely keep away from social media or our phones, we tried to do what we always do at the farm: measure time by the ticking of the wood stove and the passage of the sun across the sky.

Today, we cleared one of the garden beds from the remains of last year's vegetables and covered the soil with a dark weed block material. The idea is to heat the earth and keep the weeds from sprouting before we've had the chance to plant the garden.

After that, Neil planted some flowers near the house.

It was a beautiful day - cold, but clear and bright. The work was simple and physically engaging. For the most part, we were side by side, but silent. Content. Comfortable.

After dinner, he packed his bag and drove back to Boston. Back to the responsibilities of a physician and department chair. Back to the concerns of life and health and worrying if his staff has sufficient protective gear to do their work as safely as possible.

I will remain in isolation at the farm.

There is more than enough work for me here preparing for the growing season ahead. It is a distraction, but more than that, it is an act of faith.

---

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"There are weeks where decades happen."

Spring flowers, reaching for the sun

I have been checking in with my family members, sometimes several times a day. We are all scattered and while I know having everyone here with me is neither practical nor even a good idea, I am seized by magical thinking: if my family were together, everything would be okay.

I told my eldest son that it felt like forever since Monday and he quoted this back to me:

“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”
― Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Yes. Absolutely.

I have a public health background; my spouse is a physician at a Boston teaching hospital. We have been a week or so ahead of most of the general public in our degree of concern about COVID-19 and its looming impact.

On the one hand, it's nice not to feel like Cassandra anymore. On the other hand, my anxiety is now shared and amplified by everyone around me.

I had to remind myself that it was Saturday this morning. I have been at StarField Farm - our home in Central Massachusetts - since Thursday. My spouse is in Boston and spending nearly all his waking hours at his hospital, gearing up, preparing, waiting. It was a difficult choice, but he persuaded me to pack up the dogs and leave, knowing his chances of exposure to the virus is high.

We have weathered crises in the past including illness, injuries, deaths of loved ones, a terrible house fire, personal and family emergencies. In every case, we were able to be surrounded by and supported by a community.

Now that community is also alone and struggling with what the next day, week, month will bring.

We are all alone, together.

It has only been 2 full days since I came here to practice social distancing. What a terribly clinical phrase. Two days. I miss the feel of my spouse's arms around me. The warmth of him against my body when we sleep. The choreography of both of us cooking dinner together. Even the silence of the two of us reading in the living room. I am, by nature, an introvert and used to spending large amounts of time alone and this is difficult.

I had to make an activity list for myself today. In all-capital letters across the top, I wrote "SATURDAY". It included bringing up wood from the basement for the stove, doing some clay work, cooking soup, doing laundry, and writing.

While I write to do lists nearly every morning, this one felt different. It felt like a life line and a way to focus away from the endless churn of Twitter, FB, and the news.

I didn't get to everything on that list, but I did some handbuilding with clay, the laundry is in the drier, and the soup is simmering on the stove.

I have no special wisdom or insight to share about how to handle the uncertainty or keep one from being exposed to an invisible threat. I only know that my own coping strategy during stressful times is to write.  

My heart aches for all the medical people and first responders who are already exhausted from planning and preparing, for families with young children who will have to provide assurances and comfort in a chaotic time, for folks--far too many folks--who were already a paycheck away from crisis.

My dear ones, stay safe.

---

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Playing Hooky

For much of the past week, I've been at StarField Farm with my friend Jayne.

She had a week's vacation and needed a major recharge. I was more than happy to have an excuse to spend time in the quiet of my personal "Rivendell" and recharge as well.

For the first time in a long time, I let myself just be. No deadlines. No writing projects. No to-do lists.

I immersed myself in the quiet and the day to day.

Watched the day lilies and was rewarded by seeing the first bloom.

There has been a little swallow's nest tucked in the beam of the back door porch. The babies had finally fledged and were looking mighty cramped in the nest, but were refusing to leave.

It's hard to see with my cellphone photo, but there are three fully fledged swallows crammed into this nest. The parents spent the better part of several days swooping over the nest and yelling at the babies to get off their asses and fly, damnit. Well, that's my translation of bird anyway.

Our most ambitious endeavor of the week entailed making strawberry rhubarb jam. The strawberries were ones I'd picked last June and frozen, when I knew I wouldn't have the time to deal with them. The rhubarb was fresh picked from just outside the kitchen door.

Until this year, I didn't know rhubarb was something to cook with or eat. It looked like weird celery. It's leaves are poisonous. Who looked at this strange plant and decided it was food?

The jam was fabulous. I adore making jam. For those of you interested, I don't use a recipe, per se, but have honed my methods from these sources:

https://nwedible.com/how-to-make-pectin-free-jam/ My favorite resource for playing with making jams.

https://www.southernfoodways.org/southern-summer-in-a-jar-jam-secrets-from-april-mcgreger/  same method as above,but with the basic ratio I've found the most helpful for fruit and sugar.

http://justhungry.com/strawberry-jam-copious-detail

And a few links from this blog, along with photos of past year's jamming: http://ljcbluemuse.blogspot.com/2012/06/strawberries.html
http://ljcbluemuse.blogspot.com/2013/08/we-be-jammin-blueberry-edition.html

Speaking of local food, we also ate tons of local asparagus and strawberries. It's hard to pass up local food in season. So we didn't. :)

I also culled the peach tree. (Full disclosure - this is a photo from last year, but the peaches were about the same size this year when I culled them.) This city-mouse has never had fruit trees before, but I have learned that peaches (and many fruit trees) do best if you cull the fruit when it is small to avoid overloading the tree and having it use all its energy to make fruit. Otherwise, you get decent harvests every other year rather than every year.

There is a kind of patience you learn living like this. You can't hurry peaches. They ripen in August, no matter how impatient you are for them.

Most of the nights this week were overcast, and while there wasn't a lot of opportunity to stargaze, we did experience a wonderful consolation prize: fireflies. Jayne and I spent most early evenings on the swing out front watching the dusk deepen, waiting as the birds settled for the evening, spotted the dragonflies dancing, and the first swooping bats. And then the fireflies would rise. I know they're just bugs, but there does seem to be something magical and otherworldly about them.

So Jayne and I spent a lot of time watching the world go by. Over the course of the week, we saw birds and hawks. The aforementioned dragonflies, bats, and fireflies. A deer came to visit on two occasions and I lost count of the rabbits. (The dogs, I'm sure, did not.) Jayne thinks she saw a bobcat slink by one morning. There is a deep silence here and it sinks into your bones. 

And then there was one clear night. I had fallen asleep with the dogs in the living room. When I woke up is was well past midnight. I took some time to stand out on the front stoop and watch the stars shine overhead.

It's easy to forget the stars. It's easy to forget to look up. It's easy to forget to breathe. 

---

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2017: A Year in this Writer's Life

I suspect most of you will understand when I say I won't be sorry to see the last of 2017. With a few notable exceptions, it was a difficult year, personally, professionally, and in the world at large.

Still, I have been fortunate. I have good health care and our family has financial stability. Those two things alone make me an outlier.

And, while I haven't written as much in 2017 as I had wanted or planned to,  it was still a full year of writing news and personal news.

Writing Life

Chris Howard knocks it out of the park again with this cover image.

Publications 

2017 saw the publication of PARALLAX, the 4th book of my space opera science fiction series Halcyone Space. 

I also contributed a new original short story to the anthology ORPHANS IN THE BLACK called "In the Clutch", unrelated to the universe of the Halcyone Space books. It's a bit of an homage to Earnest Shackleton and the Endurance mission. With reptilian aliens. 

Writing in Progress

The drafting of book 5 (A STAR IN THE VOID) has been going more slowly than I had anticipated, but I'm still working within my original publication time frame of Summer 2018. 

After several false starts, I finished another short story for an upcoming themed anthology and am awaiting editorial notes. It's a bit more on the literary side than my novels and I'll be interested in seeing what readers make of it.

In other new writing, the Vito Nonce project that I'm co-writing with Rick Wayne has taken a brief hiatus as both of us are working on finishing current series, but will be a focus in the new year. 

So between novels, short stories, blog posts, and poetry, I've probably eked out 50,000 new words in 2017. Considerably less output than I've managed in prior years, but I'll take it as a victory. 

Events and Honors

I addition to attending ARISIA (and garnering an invitation to participate in 2018) and participating in programs at BOSKONE and READERCON, this year marked a convention first: 

One of these days I'll learn to to take goofy photos.
But not this day.

I was invited to be a Guest of Honor at G.A.M.E. in Springfield, MO. They folks at G.A.M.E. were gracious and welcoming and I had a great time meeting old and new fans and talking about SF&F tropes that needed to die. 

This year also found me in Denver to attend MILE HIGH CON. The highlight was getting to meet Nathan Lowell in person for the first time since meeting him virtually 4 years ago.

DERELICT picked up a new honor in 2017: It was chosen as the inaugural title for a new Feminist Book of the Month Club, featuring speculative fiction titles. It also had another run on Amazon as a best seller during a sale in the fall, introducing the series to a new group of readers. (Welcome!)

This fall, I was able to spend a productive and wonderful week in the company of writing community friends from Writer Unboxed when we gathered for a retreat in the wilds of Vermont. 

And finally, in December I was interviewed by my fellow Broad Universe member Rona Gofstein along with Kevin Ross Emory on their show: Dragons & Unicorns & other creative creatures. 

So if you've ever been curious about my creative process, my stories, my ceramics work, or just what to hear my squeaky voice and watch me talk with my hands, have a look. 

 

Personal Life 

Star Field Farm rises

In January of 2017, my husband and I closed on a home in Central Massachusetts on a 54 acre piece of property that is part farmland, part Rivendell. Ultimately, it will be where we retire to. In the meanwhile, it will be a personal and writing retreat space.

In March of 2017, my gallbladder and I decided to part ways. It was less an amicable divorce than a forced separation. I don't know how it is faring, but I'm a lot healthier without it in my life. 

My birth mother, circa 1962

The year ended with an incredible discovery: my birth family. After decades of searching, and after believing that door had closed permanently, I have made contact with aunts, uncles, and cousins related to my (late) birth mother. It has been quite a journey finding new family in my 50s and discovering that, yes, poetry and geek are carried in the genes.

I suspect that I'll be continuing to process what this all means for me over the coming year both in my journaling, my poetry, and my stories. 

In looking forward to 2018, I wish you all a year of creative energy, of personal growth and breakthroughs, and most importantly, of peace and joy.

#SWFApro

---

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So much time, so little to do. . .

Scratch that.
Reverse it.

Despite my best intentions of writing something for the blog consistently every week, I fail spectacularly in August.

I just realized that it's been weeks since I added anything new here. I think this happens every August because of our summer routines. I also think this summer has been particularly difficult with the current political upheaval. But you didn't come here for politics - I talk about that more on Twitter and G+. So I'll simply talk about some of the lovely things that have been keeping me busy.

We live this fiction that things slow down in summer, but for us, life has been quite hectic these past few weeks. 
 
August is the time when we usually take our family vacation to visit my in laws in rural Maryland and this year was no exception.

To be fair, it's hard not to do anything but stay in the moment with a view like this. And such was our view for a full week. There is something healing and centering about the ebb and flow of the water and the endless parade of clouds across a blue sky. The time we spend here is the soul's version of a field lying fallow for a bit. It recharges and reenergizes me.

We came home to an overflowing garden, full of summer's bounty. This is the time of year I can barely keep up with what comes out of the 6 raised beds my husband plants and then we get a weekly farm share as well. Yikes.

I've been chopping and freezing tomatoes and pickling cucumbers and zucchini in an old crock a friend gave me. We're on our 3rd or 4th pickling load and the fridge is full!

And then there are the peaches.

For the first time in my life, I have a property with fruit trees. In January, we bought what will ultimately be our retirement plan, but for now is a weekend/retreat space about 90 minutes from Boston in Central Massachusetts. As the seasons have changed, we've started to learn what lives on the property. And the most delightful discovery has been the 3 peach trees. After last year, where there was no stone fruit at all north of NJ, our trees are laden with sweet peaches.

Today, I prepared a crockpot full of what will be peach bourbon butter, sliced and froze 3 quarts of peaches, and made 4 halfpints of peach syrup. And I still have most of the 3 boxes of peaches I picked this past weekend. There will be at least as many more ripe next week to pick.

We've named the place StarField Farm and on a clear, dark night, the sky overhead is, indeed, full of stars.

Right now, we're in the midst of construction, which is another claim on my time.

When it's finished, this will be a large garage/workspace with a car lift on the ground floor. The upper floor will be a master suite with a living room/office/spare room.

It's been a fascinating process to see something go from concept to drawn plans to hole in the ground to the shell of a building in just a few months.

We're currently only able to spend 1-2 weekends a month there and wonder of wonders - this 'city mouse' has fallen hard in love with small town rural living.

A few days ago, I attended the Hardwick Fair. They had a ceramics category in the arts and crafts judging, so I entered this handbuilt teapot. 

Not only did it win first prize, but it was awarded a premium and I was given a rosette ribbon. Not too shabby for my first fair!

It would be easy for me to mock the earnestness of the fair and its attendees. There's a lot that could be described as small town cliche - the tractor parade, the cow showing, the pit bbq, the canned goods judging, the yarn spinning demonstration, the live music. But I loved being there. Every part of it. It was a town wide block party and it showed off the best of people's hard work and hobbies. Also, I helped judge the Literary Contest. I suspect I've been swept up into the Fair forever.

And yes, I'm writing, too. Work proceeds on Halcyone Space book 5 and I'm in the midst of finishing a short story for a themed anthology.

So I'm still here. I just may be a bit quiet on the blogging front until mid September. It's nearly tomato canning time, after all.

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