Catching up on things--and on the garden, which is what really matters

A few odds and ends, as my time has been rather taken up lately with the inevitable rush of pre-travel tasks.

1. I'm still open for commissions! I'm actually just finishing up a commission, and hope to share the piece shortly. It's been a lot of fun. I like making art for people. Sometimes I forget how much I like it.

2. Preparations for the trip proceed apace. I've been finding any number of excuses to avoid making a packing list, but I'm running out of time. Fortunately Mr. Seal requires relatively little luggage, but I am not so versatile a traveler.

3. On the writing front, I have accepted that I am not going to make serious progress on any one story, so I've set myself two daily assignments: do a little research of ANY kind on BP&P, and write 100 words of ANY fiction. As a result I've been reading about gardens and shamans and death rituals, and working helter-skelter on another Lovelace mystery, a story about a family of witches, and a story about a changeling made of slush.

(Between you, me, and the gatepost, I harbor tentative notions of trying to serialize either the story about the witch family or the changeling story, but I want to get more of each written before I make any decisions.)

4. On the publishing front, I've been submitting short stories various places, and being duly rejected as one does in this game (trust me, you'd be hearing about it in all caps if I had an acceptance). I have had some really nice rejection letters lately, which is pretty encouraging when you're wading through a welter of two-sentence form letters.

5. THINGS ARE SPROUTING. AAAAAAAAA. The daffodils are coming up and a few have buds, the alyssum we sowed indoors a couple of weeks ago is sprouting, and most exciting of all is that the winter sow experiments appear to be succeeding--we've got a couple of plastic tubs full of innumerable tiny yarrows, and a few brave hyssop sproutlings.

My one great regret in life is that I won't be around for the best of the gardening. However, I will definitely be around for the mulch. This was undoubtedly inevitable; mulch, like taxes, death, and having to scrub bathtubs, is one of life's great constants.

Anyway, in conclusion, YARROW BABIES.