Until Then clean romance | Catherine Castle

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A Writer's Garden, flowers, Gail Kittleson, Garden blog, Spring Garden, Until Then clean romance, World WAr II Fiction

Welcome to A Writer’s Garden where writers who are gardeners or just love gardens will be sharing their garden and flower stories, as well as a bit about their writing. Today’s writer/gardener guest is Gail Kittleson, who is sharing her North Iowa spring garden.

Welcome, Gail!

Right now, our North Iowa garden resembles a manuscript that’s underway but certainly not near completion. That’s the way of gardens—nothing is ever truly static. The good thing is, every day offers beauty, even if the plants or the weather take peculiar turns.

In May, the lilacs took precedence. Everything else remained brown most of the month, and looked pretty bleak. But the enticing scent of lilacs in bloom broke in, and their blossoms won our winter-weary hearts as they do every spring.

When we moved here fourteen years ago, the house had sat empty, and the previous occupants paid no attention to making this place pleasant to the eye. One of the first buildings in our town (1873, pretty old for Northern Iowa), the house was more of an eyesore.

An addition, a fence, and some planting created a courtyard. There, honeysuckle flowers’ sweet aroma attracts birds and bees right now.

A long narrow area along the south side has now evolved into a space that makes us smile. For the first few years here, this low area held puddles and weeds.

I honestly never foresaw making a path here, but the growing lilacs and spreading ground cover narrowed the space, and our trips back and forth to the garage created a natural one. Then a friend about an hour away showed me her lovely back yard, with limestone steppingstones. I brought the idea home and a couple of years later, voila!

Still a work in progress, and the secondary story of this manuscript is being written by the birds. They’ve taken over this new habitat and offer raucous cheer at five a.m., plus robins’ nests to watch.

Ever changing, beauty in every corner…that’s our garden in early June.

About the Writer/Gardener:

Gardening “grew” on Gail Kittleson, who writes World War II fiction. She’s always dabbled, but having lived long enough to see the consequences of planting a sprout or seedling, now spends more time thinking through her gardening decisions. Since victory gardens became so vital during the Forties, they play a role in several of Gail’s novels. She awaits the release of her first WWII non-fiction book, “The Food That Held The World Together.”