Table Legs in the Garden

Sunday April 2012

The sun is attempting an end run around the clouds. Sitting in my garden at 7:30 a.m., I want to believe there will be sun today.

I’m in my garden most Sundays having a coffee and enjoying the view. Today I’m delighted by what has ‘popped’ especially in view of our early spring. Sitting in my garden always turns my thoughts to writing--gives me time to think through problems in a plot or character development. I don’t know why staring at weeds, dried out stalks from last season and new blooms struggling to break the cap of dead leaves, reminds me of writing but it does.

Today, I notice how crooked all the posts and shepherds’ crooks became over the winter. I haven’t yet brought out the wind chimes or the pots that hang from the crooks. I’ll have to boot up and stomp the metal bar at the bottom of the crook deeper into the ground. Now that reminds me of how I have to, in some stories, push down hard to develop a deeper level of engagement for the reader.  If I don’t secure the story with some strong groundwork, I could have to go back and straighten that premise after the story has grown and attached itself to it. Takes more work and you run the risk of breaking a beautiful stem or offshoot.

Last season, on a morning walk, I discovered five turned wooden table legs with balls for feet at someone’s curb. I carried two and drove back with the car for the remaining three legs. Don’t know what had become of the sixth leg. Maybe the table hand only five. More likely an earlier ‘picker’ needed only one.

I set them in the ground upside down with the ball at the top. They’re in all parts of the garden, highlighting a clump of plants, shoring up an old birdhouse post or just standing about.

They remind me of twists and clues. Do I need to firm up a ‘leg’before I can add a piece of business? Can I use a table leg to develop a clue, or theme, or a quirky McGuffin?

This is how my mind works in the garden. I’ve ‘plucked literary table legs’ from my discarded manuscripts and from fabulous stories I’ve absorbed. Sometimes they become an important bit of business and sometimes they’re just table legs in the garden.

Enjoy the garden on the ground and the one in your mind.

They remind me of twists and clues. Do I need to firm up a ‘leg’ before I can add a piece of business? Can I use a table leg to develop a clue, or theme, or a quirky McGuffin?

This is how my mind works in the garden. I’ve ‘plucked literary table legs’ from my discarded manuscripts and from fabulous stories I’ve absorbed. Sometimes they become an important bit of business and sometimes they’re just table legs in the garden.

Welcome to the Mystery Garden

The name might seem odd for a blog. Unless the stories are always about mysteries that take place in a garden-- Herbalists for Hire or Shovel Ready: How to Prepare Undetectable Graves, or Plotting whilst Potting.

Sunday morning is my quiet time, my cup of coffee in my garden time, my journaling time. In most weather I’m in my garden at one or more strategic sitting areas. In the early spring my choices are several but by this time of year, the choice is made by which sitting area isn’t grown over with weeds. 

So what’s the mystery?

1. Why do my weeds mimic real plants and grow amidst them until it’s too late to pull the offensive weed without yanking up my intended plant?  

2. Why doesn’t Preen work for me like it does for the woman down the block with a weed free garden? No mystery there. She tells everyone at the ladies club that she Preens a ton (well, 40 lbs at least) but she hires laborers to come in the night and pull the weeds. It’s called moonlighting!  

 3. Why do I buy white phlox but the next year it comes up pink? I tried to establish a White Garden. It’s pink and yellow now. It’s pretty so I leave it alone.  I’m a laid back gardener who tries to see the intrinsic beauty in the weed not yet appreciated by horticulturists. It helps the guilt of sitting, sipping and thinking on Sunday mornings.

I have thought up plots while contemplating my garden. I found all the poisonous plants in my garden—you would be amazed how many—and researched them.  I used Fool’s Parsley in an attempt to kill a dinner guest in the second book. After that book, no one accepts my dinner invitations.   I’m working on a short story about a turf war between garden fairies and garden gnomes. Mostly, I think about my life and my family. I sketch the gazebo I’d like to have in the garden. I doodle new gardens and dream of free mulch and the people to spread it.

One thing is never a mystery—where you can find me on Sunday mornings. So please, stop by each Sunday, bring your coffee and relax.