'M' is for Mondays

Good Morning from the letter 'M'.

There are many things I could have written about that start with the letter 'M': menopause and all its joys, maternity and the joys of motherhood. But as the letter falls onto a Monday, how could I write about anything else?

As the Ramones once proclaimed, "I don't like Mondays." Even when I was in school I would prefer to have nothing on Mondays, just to ease back into the week from the excess of weekends. Today is no exception.

I just produced the largest of my spring events and I am pooped. In ten days, my company built a small city, which for eight hours on Saturday contained more than 18,000 people. It was a beautiful day, perfect weather, perfect food, perfect friends.

Sunday I spent most of the day in bed. I did some writing. I did some sleeping. I watched some bad movies but mostly I just worried about what comes next. When you put on an event of that magnitude, there is a letdown afterward of will I be able to top this? Is this all I can do or is there more?

I want more. I just want it to come Tuesday through Friday.

Happy Monday everyone, and may yours be a productive, profitable, pleasurable day.

Spring Planting (Or Replanting?)

Once we decided to do a garden this year, the decision on what to plant was left up to me with hubby's stamp of approval. Corn, beans, peas, tomatoes, watermelons - all standard Georgia garden fare. With the ground prepared and the seeds ready we set out the rows and off to the races we went. All the squashes, beans, peas, melons, in three short hours we had seeded an area more than 1000 square feet. Happy and pleased with a job well done, we headed off for our first week of waiting.

Anxiously I watched the weather report, glad when radar showed rain heading in our general direction. The weekend took forever to come around again. Sunday morning arrived at last and I bounced in the car like a kid on the way to see Santa. Just when I could wait no more, we turned down the street, up the long winding driveway, then past the garden. I could see little green shoots beginning to poke through as we headed to the main house.

Church seemed to drag that morning, and lunch was forever. Just when I thought I would burst from anticipation, we arrived back at the farm. Changing into work clothes I race out to my little slice of heaven to find...

Turnip greens. That's right, turnip greens popping up all over my nicely plotted garden.

Imagine my surprise. Covering the entire garden, in my neat straight rows and in between, anywhere there was a spare inch of fertilized earth, were little turnip green leaves. Apparently the previous fall, for a winter garden, one of the helpers on my father-in-law's farm had planted turnips, harvested the greens but left the turnips themselves in the ground. With the warmer weather and the fertile spring rains, those little suckers just popped right out, heedless to the fact they are winter crops that cannot survive the hot Georgia summers.

So my first full Sunday as a gardener was spent identifying and pulling little turnip greens while trying to not pull up actual seedlings that were wanted. This is when I discovered what a non-outdoors man I married. He couldn't identify weeds from plants, didn't like having to pull so many wrong plants, and within 45 minutes had abandoned me completely to sit on the front porch drinking ice tea while I sweat and pulled and cursed turnips with my every fiber.

I was not amused.

Ah Saturday!

Most people spend their Saturday hours either at full speed or at neutral. My Saturdays are usually a good mixture of both. The hours I spend at the barn can be long hours of full speed work or quiet rest. I love it either way. Still trying to get everything moved in and smoothed out and making the property our own.

They began digging the well today, which was awesome. Now if we can get electricity soon to run the pump and heat water, we will be jumping for joy. Still, the quiet out there in the mornings is pure food for my heart and soul. I enjoy my mornings with the horses. They are my mental health.

Tomorrow is another day, and I need to write and decide which publishers to submit to on the next round. But if the weather is going to be as nice as today, there is no way I will get any writing down. We have had too many rainy weekends and freezing temperatures this winter to not take advantage of a day full of sunshine.

So, if I'm writing in my head but putting nothing on paper or disk, am I not devoted to my craft? With all the stories competing for attention in my head, I could write mentally for years and never get every story down. Some are winners. Some are not winners. But I think each one through to the end they desire. Then I take the ones I think are richest and put them on real paper first.

I like writing outlines and notes on real paper. I think more clearly when I see the words before my eyes. Names become faces become people before my eyes and that gives the stories the cement they need to become books. I write straight to the computer, but always last. The paper comes first.

I love trees. I love all types of trees, and I try to buy recycled paper. Because, if I am going to indulge in my passion of writing, the least I can do is spare Mother Nature's oxygen generators a break.

And I may take a break tomorrow and write in my head while I ride on the back of my hubby's motorcycle. Because I am always writing, just not always on a visual media!