Monday, April 30, 2018

WRITING (About) LIFE---The Legacy Garden

Come let me show you the iris patch. It was so cold this past winter, I was afraid they wouldn't bloom:

The first three irises came from my late mother-in-law's iris bed. She loved these flowers, and her backyard was completely turned over to growing them. She had such an array that people used to drive by her house to see them, back when as many people as could fit into the family car went for a ride on Sunday afternoons--parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends and neighbors. And of course the children. I loved doing this as a child even though I was always stuck in the middle and didn't get to see much of anything. It was still an adventure and other people's flower gardens were high on the list of things to go and see.







And this is a patch of volunteer white violets that is bravely coming up through a crack in the patio. The original plants are from my late mother-in-law's garden as well. They will take over everything if you let them. I like them growing pot-less on the patio, though. 






This one, the "black iris," isn't a legacy flower. I bought it at a flea market a few years ago. It doesn't bloom every year, but as you can see, this is the year.



Pretty, aren't they?

Friday, April 27, 2018

WRITING (About) LIFE...

I've been told I need to blog more, and in that light, here's this:





During the past 36 hours, I boldly opened a window so Carl (he's my pre-owned, former military now writer cat) could have a new rampart from which to guard the castle walls and stop pestering, even though I know, in this old house, getting something to open doesn't necessarily mean you can get it to close--owners of old houses and ginger cats will understand this. So I couldn't close it. Carl was thrilled. Jumped into and out of the window all night long, because he was at Defcon 1 by this time. Yes, my sleep was broken, after which he trampled the pieces. 

But I'm getting ahead of myself. BEFORE I went to bed, I was watching BONEKICKERS via the Roku, and I suddenly got a dialogue box on the screen complete with red exclamation point telling me my device was overheating. Which scared the bejeebies out of me. So I dismantled the Roku and went online like it told me to. It said that my streaming stick was too close to something electronic and bade me fill out a form that included the serial number so I could receive a free HDMI extension cable and move it out of harm's way. The SN was a 12-digit number stamped on the back of the device, it said. Enter that on the form, it said. Well, I did, and the form wouldn't take it, no matter how may times I tried. It's hard to mess that up, when there is only one 12-digit number there, AND it was quite readable. Anyway, I eventually gave up because they obviously didn't mean it when they said "free HDMI extension cable."

THEN the washing machine royally died, screaming to the very end. Then there was the duel to the death with a camel cricket when it cornered me in the bathroom. Those things do not run away. They run toward, and I am not yet to the point where I can squash one with my bare feet.

The bottom line, dead or alive, the camel cricket is no longer among us, the window is still open, and the washing machine guy is lying on the floor in the utility room doing surgery on the Maytag. (Did you know "Maytag," as an entity,  is no more? It's now Whirlpool. The things one learns in the middle of chaos.) The Maytag has a new name, BTW. "Macbeth." After all that scene-chewing drama when his pump gave out yesterday, he deserves it.

Friday, April 20, 2018

(The) WRITING LIFE--THE MARINE and I Won...




I've just been notified that THE MARINE has won EPIC's 2018 eBook Award for Contemporary Fiction.