penandpatience

News:  fiction short story, “Tattered Rose,” has been published in the Fall (July-Aug-Sept) issue of The Storyteller Magazine

Peoples’ Choice Award-The Storyteller Magazine (Apr-May-June 2012) issue: “Edythe with a Y” was voted #1 in the essay category by Storyteller  readers. www.thestorytellermagazine.com

“Side By side”, fiction short story has been accepted for future 2013 publication in Page & Spine.

  THROWING IN THE TROWEL– October 2012 Monthly Musing

Yes, it’s time. The nights have turned cooler in upstate New York; trees with gold, russet and bright crimson leaves are showing off their colors before the inevitable fall—to the ground for raking. Bags of leafy debris will line the streets and avenues awaiting pick up and disposal—colors forgotten.

It’s the time of year when summer’s blooms have died away and preparing grounds for approaching winter begin. Shrubs prepped with a final prune; dying plants cut back and mulched against the coming freeze. It’s time to put garden tools away. However, I find it hard to pack away my garden trowel. We spent the spring and summer months together— we were inseparable.

We dug and mulched the soil planting annual flowers for summer blooms. We divided my deceased mother’s special hybrid iris; the only one I have left. We loosened a few stubborn crabgrass weeds missed by the lawn treatment program and successfully pulled them out. We dug out crowded day lily plants and shared them with neighbors and friends.

I console myself. Although I will miss my garden trowel, I still have my writing pens and pencils to keep my digging left hand from feeling deprived. Instead of digging in the dirt, I’ll be digging up new words to describe unique characteristics for people and places incorporating them in future articles and stories. I’ll begin to pen the outline for that first novel I plan to write over the next year—or two—or three. I’ll write—a lot.

However, although the outdoor tools have been cleaned and stored, I keep the trowel in a separate spot in the garage. Why? Because……in late November, like Mom sometimes did, I may choose a special spot by the back fence and plant one early blooming tulip bulb and look toward its progress come spring.  A good trowel never hibernates—for long.