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A Groom for Mama., A Writer's Garden, Cathrine Castle author, container gardening, flowers, Garden blog, plants
Welcome to the 2021 A Writer’s Garden Blog series!
Each Thursday until fall, I’ll be bringing you a post from a Writer/Gardener about gardening. Post content will vary, but it will always focus on gardens. In addition, each writer will post a book blurb to entice you to find something new to read underneath your favorite shade tree.
Spring has sprung. I know because my garden bench has come out of storage.
I don’t know how spring is shaping up in your part of the world, but here in southern Ohio we’ve had enough warm weather to coax the day lilies up.
Unfortunately, they are predicting three nights of 20ish temps. So, I’m hoping the day lilies won’t suffer like they did last spring.
My columbines have lovely growth on them, too. My hope is the hardscape around them will gather enough heat during the day to protect the tender leaves. I’d like to see another blooming bed like this come May.
My big project for this spring is to make a container bed garden along the south side of the house. Last year we covered all the ground level beds that ran along the south pathway to the back patio with landscape fabric and my husband leveled all the beds raised them to heights that do no require me to bend at the waist or crouch on my aging knees. Compressed lower back vertebrae are making gardening below my knees impossible. If I can’t sit on a wall or reach a bed without bending, I can’t work in the garden any more.
Here’s what we’ve done, well, I should say HE’S done to keep me gardening. You have to love a man who would haul so much gravel and wall stones just so his wife could play in the dirt.
My goal is to get some pots, troughs, whiskey barrels, or what every containers I think will work best and place them on the gravel beds.
Then I’ll plant a container veggie garden. The only hitch I see in the plans this year are the 17-year cicadas that are supposed to arrive in May and die off sometime in late June.
And no, that is not my hand holding said bug! Ugh! I hate those things. I’m hoping I get a reprieve from the large dive-bombing insects.
When we moved into our house 17 years ago the surrounding area had been scraped clean because of new construction, and we didn’t see cicada one. If they do show up this year, I hope they’ll become lizard dinners. I know lizards eat katydids and grasshoppers because we used to have so many of them in the north hosta beds that they would keep me up on a summer night with their calls.
Until the lizards arrived. Now we sleep like babies in the silent summer nights. We have a bazillion lizards in our hardscaped yard. So many that the landscaper who mulched the hill garden this spring said, “You don’t have a flower garden, you have a lizard garden.”
I don’t mind. They eat the insects. And as long as they stay off me and out of the house, the lizards and I will get along just fine. But if they venture indoors I’ll have a lizard war on my hands.
Now, if they’d only eat the wasps, I’d be really grateful.
Happy Gardening! I hope you’ll come back every Thursday to see all the writer/gardener’s posts and gardens. I guarantee you’ll love them. Enjoy the garden blogs! Catherine
About the Writer/Gardener:
Multi-award winning author Catherine Castle loves writing. Before beginning her career as a romance writer she worked part-time as a freelance writer. She has over 600 articles and photographs to her credit, under her real name, in the Christian and secular market. She also lays claim to over 300 internet articles written on a variety of subjects and several hundred poems. In addition to writing she loves reading, traveling, singing, theatre, quilting and gardening. She’s a passionate gardener whose garden won a “Best Hillside Garden” award from the local gardening club. She writes sweet and inspirational romances. You can find her award-winning Soul Mate books The Nun and the Narc and A Groom for Mama, on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
Follow her on Twitter @AuthorCCastle, FB or her blog.
A Groom for Mama
By Catherine Castle
Beverly Walters is dying, and before she goes she has one wish—to find a groom for her daughter. To get the deed done, Mama enlists the dating service of Jack Somerset, Allison’s former boyfriend.
The last thing corporate-climbing Allison wants is a husband. Furious with Mama’s meddling, and a bit more interested in Jack than she wants to admit, Allison agrees to the scheme as long as Mama promises to search for a cure for her terminal illness.
A cross-country trip from Nevada to Ohio ensues, with a string of disastrous dates along the way, as the trio hunts for treatment and A Groom For Mama.
You can find A Groom for Mama on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
Catherine Castle 