Warding off Weeds

This is actually about my writing... and garden

After more than a week of being on sick rest, I’m finally feeling well enough to treat today like a Monday. Which means taking breaks, just as if I were my own boss. Can’t abuse the employees by making them work 24/7, because when I do, then I get sick. I’m much better! Honest! And I am taking breaks, and will be taking my weekends off, because it got really bad last month. Breaking down like that when I’m self-employed is scary. There’s no such thing as medical leave in my situation. I work, or bills don’t get paid. Today, then, I marched my happy derriere into the studio, fired up the writing machine, and sat down at the keyboard. The next Groundskeeper novel is going to happen. I’ve got about a half a chapter up today (and there’s a chapter queued for tomorrow for the paid subscribers, already) and I’ve got momentum. Momentum is a wonderful thing.

Borage, a useful herb and grows thick enough for a cover crop.

As I went out on second gardening-break… I should probably explain. When I get stuck on a bit of writing, I have learned that doing something else, preferably something not in proximity to the computer, helps. Sometimes this is baking (my husband’s preference) or housecleaning, but in the spring and fall when it’s lovely outside, grubbing around in the garden is useful on multiple levels. I kept the ‘break alarms’ I used when I was a day-jobber, and use those to keep me on track during the weekdays. At six in the morning I’m sitting at the computer. At ten, I’m trying to wrap up writing and I’m out in the garden (and there are other breaks in that four hours where I’m up and stretching).

This morning my projects are: moving plants. I have some plants that have put themselves in places where I don’t necessarily want them. This sounds singular, no? Well, just like a story plot, no it is not. Sadly. But then again, that would be boring in a story? Well, in real life it’s more like making more potting soil because I am out, and while that is hydrating enough to be fully mixed, going to the plants where I’m just relocating them, not potting them up before they move either in my garden, or to a friend (or the garden swap in a couple of weeks). Then, I have to weed before I can plant things. It was while weeding that a thought popped into my head.

I’d talked a while back about spraying grass — Bermuda grass is green evil — and an old OG (organic gardener) replied that spraying¹ wouldn’t eliminate the problem forever. See, here’s the thing: I’m not trying for forever. I know I can’t stop the Bermuda and make it never return. What I can do is buy time for other plants to grow up and create enough shade that the Bermuda will look elsewhere. Bermuda grass requires full sun. As I was squatted down yanking on runners as tough as pulling barbed wire, it occurred to me there’s a parallel to what Chloe is doing for a living now.

Chloe can’t stop all the evil in the world. What an overwhelming concept. What she can do is buy time for the good things to flourish, banishing the evils to the shadows where they are weak and can only send out runners looking for a better place to put down roots. Weak grass runners are easy to pull up if you keep an eye out for them and patrol on a regular basis. Chloe, and the Fraternitas Mortis of my Groundskeeper books², are gardeners of souls. Which is hardly an original metaphor, to be sure. They get to go in and yank out the tough weeds to allow for other living things to grow up enough that the dead and undead can’t go there.

Anyway, most of that won’t go into the story. I don’t write message fiction. But it is helpful to me-the-author to have a little hook I can snag story bits onto, giving it structure and purpose for Chloe the character to grow up and along, even if I never explicitly lay it out in the book.

Also, I now have Walking Onions³ under a couple of fruit trees, and the borage is going along nicely for a groundcover. Later today I’ll plant out sweet potato vines for more smothering groundcover, and I’ll spray the heaviest invasion of grass with sethyoxydim to beat it back long enough to allow the groundcovers to take off. Next year, I’ll be able to start other companion plants where the grass is no longer dominant. By then, I’ll be writing something else!

Mulch is also a great way to keep the weeds and grass down, but not nearly so useful as a metaphor in this case.

Walking Onion seedhead. Looks a bit like Medusa, doesn’t it?

1. “Chemicals are wrong!” No, chemicals make up everything. Sheesh. I garden by a combination of ‘conventional’ and ‘organic’ methods, whatever suits the situation, not by a touchy-feeling ‘organic’ meaning. I will rant on this with no provocation.

2. No relationship whatsoever to the real thing by that name in our world.

3. Onions and garlic ward off insect pests, and I plant them under most of my fruit trees. Walking Onions are a perennial, useful as green onions and really neat looking after flowering when they produce bulbils that immediately sprout before the stalk lays down and the babies ‘walk’ off from the mother plant.