Andrew's View of the Week

The most difficult task in writing a post is coming up with a title.  Sometimes that’s all I’ve got – a title and nothing.  Sometimes I start with a title and then write something unrelated to the title.  Sometimes I start writing and then say, “what is this junk?” and delete the whole thing.

This post has little to do with a garden or gardening. Oh, well I guess I could make the metaphorical leap from writing to gardening.  Ideas are seeds, a story grows and publishing is like a harvest.  I’ll let you write that essay.

Speaking of planting: A couple of months ago I sent out a few of my poems to some lit magazines. So far I’ve had two rejections and I’m still waiting to hear from two more.  I do need to send these to more publishers.  I do wonder why they are taking so long to respond.  Perhaps they’re just busy or just maybe I’m moving up the editorial chain and am seriously being considered.

It’s a new year, let’s go with optimism.

Speaking of a new year – it’s the time when I review things I’ve done and think about plans for the year.  I’ve been thinking about what to do with this blog but first I went and checked, turns out this will be my 853rd post since I started this blog in the spring of 2011.  If I keep my current posting rate, I might make 1,000 posts by the end of this year.  I don’t have plans to change how I post here, but I’ve randomly thought that it might be time for a change.

One change that has been going here in our house is actually about gardening.  Recently Heather and I discovered Monty Don, the UK gardening guru.  He’s best known for hosting Garden’s World and has a large following. We’ve also watched his series, Big Dreams, Small Spaces, where he goes around helping people create gardens in very small spaces.  I have to say that I’ve been quite inspired by his approach to gardening.

So inspired that I’ve been researching how to grow tomatoes and I now know more about mulch than I’ve ever known before.  We decided to do more in our garden this year and I’m looking forward to being more active there.  Yesterday I spent most of the day assembling a rotating mulching bin and testing the shredder.  Next week I’ll install the rain barrels and if the weather holds, might start building the new raised beds.

There is one interesting thing about Mr. Don that I’d like to mention: He’s a self-taught gardener.  He has a degree in English from Cambridge and describes himself as an “amateur gardener and a professional writer.”  He has published a number of books.

So maybe gardening is good for writing …

I’ll let you know.