A Writer’s Garden–Spring has Sprung by Catherine Castle

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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.

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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.

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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.

Photo courtesy Pixabay

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.

A Writer’s Garden 2017—Through the Garden Gates with Catherine Castle

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A Writer's Garden, Catherine Castle, container gardening, garden puns, gardening fever, raised bed gardening, The Nun and the Narc, When does a gardener stop being a gardener.

When Does A Gardener Stop Being a Gardener?

 

columbines from Catherine’s garden

It’s that time of the year again. Spring! And with spring comes the annual A Writer’s Garden blog series.

Soon, when it finally stops raining, we writer/gardeners will be able to get up from our computers, dust off the garden gloves, and hit the weed patches. I’ve already got some writer/gardeners lined up for the April, May and June, and will be filling the rest of the spots soon. So be sure and follow by email so you can get the garden posts, in all their pictorial glory, as they appear each Thursday, beginning April 13.

The mowers and weed whackers are going strong in the neighborhood as I write this post, disturbing a sunshiny and otherwise peaceful Sunday afternoon—one of the few non-rainy days we’ve had recently in my neck of Southern Ohio.

As I sit at the computer listening to the motorized racket, I’m pondering a particular question: When does a gardener stop being a gardener? I ask this because as my body ages (my back in particular) gardening gets harder and harder, especially the clean-up. I’ve hired a local landscaping company to come in and do my clean-up this year, and a monthly weeding, because I’m just not physically able to put in the hours needed to clean up last year’s dead flowers and dig out the ground-level weeds.

I’m also considering graveling a number of ground-level beds alongside the house and installing raised potting systems in the gravel beds. Of course that will mean I have to water more often, so some sort of self-watering or drip line will have to be installed. I need a planting surface that is high enough that I can pull my garden stool alongside, sit, and plant and harvest in the raised pot.

Years ago, when I was younger, I wrote a piece for the local newspaper about a raised bed system in a retirement/nursing home. The wooden beds were fairly shallow and the bottom high enough that wheelchair-bound residents could roll their seats under the planter and reach the edges of the bed to dig in the dirt. At the time, I thought it was interesting, but not something I wanted to see in my yard. Flowers growing at ground level intrigued me more. I dreamt of cascading waves of blooms sweeping across the lawn and a vegetable garden that rivaled my grandmother’s, complete with picket fence. She canned all of her and Poppy’s food for the winter from her own garden. I never achieved those heights of horticulture, but the dream and desire was there.

Now, I’m perusing garden catalogs and lusting over galvanized tubs and gigantic, self-watering planters big enough to plant corn in. My how one’s perspective changes!

My ability to do the physical side of gardening is becoming more and more limited, but that doesn’t stop my desire to dig in the dirt, watch the plants grow, pick a bouquet of flowers from my yard, or harvest my own tomatoes.

Some people get cabin fever every spring. I get gardening fever. I have it today. My fingers are itching to pull some weeds, reposition some flowers, and stroll through the garden center for veggies and a big tray of marigolds. I love marigolds! Even when my back twinges at the thought of bending, I still have the desire to garden.

So, to answer the burning question of the day—When does a gardener stop being a gardener?—I think NEVER! And now for a really bad gardening pun.

Old gardeners don’t stop being gardeners—they just don’t do it as mulch. ☺

 

 

About the Gardener:

Gardener/writer Catherine Castle has been gardening all her life in pots, plots, and wherever she can find dirt. Her favorite thing about gardening is the satisfaction she gets from a well-weeded flowerbed. When she’s not gardening she’s writing sweet and inspirational romance.

Her debut novel, The Nun and the Narc, is a multi-award-winning inspiration suspense romance.

Captured by the local Mexican drug lord after she interrupts a drug deal, novice Sister Margaret Mary risks losing her life, her vocation, and her heart when she falls for undercover DEA agent Jed Bond who is imprisoned with her. Nuns shouldn’t look, talk, act, or kiss like Sister Margaret Mary. Jed knows she’s off limits, but his heart can’t help wanting this woman who’s been promised to God.

Her next novel, a romantic comedy with a touch of drama, entitled A Groom for Mama, is slated to release in September 2017. Follow Catherine through this blog or on  Twitter: https://twitter.com/AuthorCCastle