Back to Daffodils

This weekend I finished another one of the scripts for the reader's theater book I'm working on, so I gave myself permission to do some fun things as a reward.

I finished Irene Latham's fabulous first novel, Leaving Gee's Bend. If you haven't read it yet, go straight to the store and buy a copy. Irene stopped by my blog a few weeks back to talk about the book. You can read the interview here.

After that, I worked in the yard for a few hours. Moved a couple of rose bushes. Yes, I know. I should have done that in January, but I couldn't brave the cold and my shoulder was hurting too much back then. I moved a hydrangea and planted a new variety that my nephew brought a few weeks back. And I planted a couple of basil plants in the same spot the tomato plants refused to grow last year. It looks like good dirt. And I added a little fertilizer, so maybe they will flourish.

Then I wandered around my yard and enjoyed the daffodils. Who knew there could be so many different kinds!








The single spindly ones, the orange-centered ones, the double ones, and the whites.




And there are the lilies-of-the-valley blooming alongside.

It was a good weekend. Now it's time to get back to work. Seven more scripts to finish and a deadline to meet.

Is it Spring Yet?

It's the middle of February, still four full weeks before the official declaration of spring, but I'm counting the days. Counting the flowers--a few pink and white phlox struggling to cover the rocky bed by the mailbox, the green tips of bulb foliage pushing through the cold ground, a yellow daffodil considering whether to seek the sunshine, one fresh fern frond unfurling (say that three times fast) over the dead stubble. It's time for spring! I don't care what the groundhog saw. It's just time.

I'm drooling over my perennial flower catalog, reading old gardening magazines, and wishing I could plant something. I'm not very good at indoor gardening, so I'm waiting impatiently for the temperatures to rise and the ground to warm up.

If you're interested in gardening books for kids, here are some good ones. They are Robbie Readers from Mitchell Lane Publishing. The set had good reviews by both School Library Journal and Booklist. Various authors. AR levels are from 5.2 to 5.7.


The set includes these titles:

A Backyard Flower Garden for Kids
A Backyard Vegetable Garden for Kids

Design Your Own Butterfly Garden

Design Your Own Pond and Water Garden

A Kid's Guide to Container Gardening

A Kid's Guide to Landscape Design

A Kid's Guide to Making a Terrarium

A Kid's Guide to Perennial Gardens

Organic Gardening for Kids

For the younger crowd, Capstone has just come out with a set by Mari Schuh called Gardens.

Titles include:
All Kinds of Gardens
Animals in the Garden
Growing a Garden
Tools for the Garden

AR levels are unavailable yet, but they are Pebble books, so reading levels will be low.

No More Veggies!

Last month I blogged about my mother-in-law's garden. She gave me three tomato plants. My three tomato plants came out of the same six pack as her tomato plants. I planted my tomatoes the same day she planted her tomatoes.

So why are her tomato plants four feet tall and mine have only grown about two inches?

I don't know either, but I'm going back to flowers!

The Last Day of April

My mother-in-law has planted her garden. According to the almanac, this last day of April is the best day to put seeds into the ground and expect a harvest. She's next door to me for the first time in many years. The last time I lived next door to her, my 28-year-old son was a baby, and I hadn't discovered my own love for the garden. This year, I'll pay more attention to the process, though my own affinity runs more toward flowers than food. You never know, though, maybe I'll absorb something by osmosis, just by being close.

The end of April also means National Poetry Month is coming to a close. I have enjoyed posting poems and reading them on some of my favorite blogs. So, one last poem to end the month. This is from Amy Carmichael, an Irish missionary who spent 53 years in South India. She founded Dohnavur Fellowship, a refuge for children. From Elisabeth Elliot's biography of her: "In a far more secular and self-preoccupied time, Amy Carmichael's vision of the unseen and her ardent effort to dwell in its light, making any sacrifice for its sake, seems hardly believable..." Yet "Amma," loved by hundreds children, was just such a woman.

Dust and Flame

But I have seen a fiery flame
Take to his pure and burning heart
Mere dust of earth, to it impart
His virtue, till that dust became
Transparent loveliness of flame.

O Fire of God, Thou fervent Flame,
Thy dust of earth in Thee would fall,
And so be lost beyond recall,
Transformed by Thee, its very name
Forgotten in Thine own, O Flame.

--Amy Carmichael