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Catherine Castle

~ Romance for the Ages

Catherine Castle

Tag Archives: vegetable garden

A Writer’s Garden–Hoping for a Harvest by Amy R. Anguish

07 Thursday Oct 2021

Posted by Catherine Castle in A Writer's Garden, Blog, books, Christian fiction, Christmas Reads, clean romance, garden blog series, Guest Authors, Holiday Reads, Romance, romance author, Sweet romance

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

A Writer's Garden, Amy R Anguish, Candy Cane Wishes and Saltwater Dreams, Christmas Anthology, Garden blog, Mistletoe Make-believe, vegetable garden

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 Amy R. Anguish talking about the uncertainty of gardening. Welcome, Amy!

You Never Know

Every year, when we plant the seeds in our garden, we have no idea what the outcome will be. Obviously, we have our hopes and dreams of what will happen to those plants throughout the summer. But every year brings different weather, bugs, diseases, and sometimes just bad seeds.

Still, we poke the tiny seeds into the earth, give it lots of water and as much sunshine as God will send, and then wait.

Waiting is the hard part.

As the tiny green shoots poke their heads up, branching out and expanding, blossoming and growing, our hope grows right along with it. How can it not? The excitement of seeing those first little green tomatoes or tiny green beans comes every time.

This year, we picked around 40 pints of green beans, canning most, sharing some. We ate and ate tomatoes, as well as making several batches of salsa and spaghetti sauce. And we picked squash until we were all sick of it.

But as we watched and waited for the cucumbers, which last year came in abundance, nothing but disappointment grew. In fact, something destroyed the first two plants we had come up, and we had to replant. Twice.

Same with our pumpkins. And sunflowers.

Just about the time I was ready to give up on the watermelon, it stretched out and actually gave us a nice basketball-sized one.

And just when I had decided we would just settle for the cucumbers we’d gotten from friends, we got a nice big one, with more coming on. In late summer, no less. Only weeks from autumn.

My five-year-old was thrilled, to say the least.

You never know what you’re going to get when planting seeds, but isn’t it exciting when you do get something? Just like in everything in life, it’s always worth it to try. Even if you only get a few carrots from a whole pack of seeds. Those few carrots are always worth it to my children.

And most of the time, anything we’re willing to put a little effort into, will bring us at least a small harvest.

What have you tried that may not have turned out exactly as planned, but was still rather sweet?

About the Writer/Gardener:

Amy R Anguish

Amy R Anguish

Author of An Unexpected Legacy, Faith and Hope, and Saving Grace

Amy R Anguish grew up a preacher’s kid, and in spite of having lived in seven different states that are all south of the Mason Dixon line, she is not a football fan. Currently, she resides in Tennessee with her husband, daughter, and son, and usually a bossy cat or two. Amy has an English degree from Freed-Hardeman University that she intends to use to glorify God, and she wants her stories to show that while Christians face real struggles, it can still work out for good.

Follow her at  her website Facebook  Or Twitter

Learn more about her books at https://www.pinterest.com/msguish/my-books/

And check out the YouTube channel she does with two other authors, Once Upon a Page (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEiu-jq-KE-VMIjbtmGLbJA)

Mistletoe Make-believe by Amy Anguish

(From the Christmas Anthology Candy Cane Wishes and Saltwater Dreams-a selection of five sweet beach read Christmas novellas)

Charlie Hill’s family thinks his daughter Hailey needs a mom—to the point they won’t get off his back until he finds her one. Desperate to be free from their nagging, he asks a stranger to pretend she’s his girlfriend during the holidays.

When romance author Samantha Arwine takes a working vacation to St. Simons Island over Christmas, she never dreamed she’d be involved in a real-life romance. Are the sparks between her and Charlie real? Or is it just her imagination?

Buy Link

A Writer’s Garden with Ana Morgan

21 Thursday Sep 2017

Posted by Catherine Castle in A Writer's Garden

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

A Writer's Garden, Ana Morgan, Author Catherine Castle's garden blog, historical romance, vegetable garden, western romance

Today Ana Morgan is on A Writer’s Garden talking about the fruits of her labor. If I remember my emails correctly, Ana is an organic gardener. I’m soooo lusting after her vegetable gardens. Welcome, Ana.

 

Fruits of my Gardening Labor

Twin Cucumbers

I haven’t found the words to describe all the shades of green in a growing veggie garden. Or the satisfaction of turning on the light in my pantry on a snowy Sunday and seeing rows of multicolored quart jars on the shelves. For a writer, this is frustrating. Words are my tools, my stock in trade. I’m supposed to have them in abundance.

Brussel Sprouts

I have veggies in abundance, and in northern Minnesota, September is harvest game-on time. The stacks of pint packets of green beans, spinach, raspberries, and sweet corn in my freezer are swelling. The number of empty canning jars on my pantry shelves is going down.

Potatoes and onions

This weekend, I need to process a bushel of tomatoes into sauce. I like to separate the yellow tomatoes from the reds and simmer them separately. I arrange the sealed, cooled jars on the pantry shelves in rows of color. Red tomatoes, yellow sauce, green dill pickles with white garlic cloves at the top, orange peach jam, ivory pear wedges in clear light-sugar syrup, purple plum jam, rosy strawberry jam. Eye-candy.

Sweet corn and pea fence

Onions and garlic sleep in boxes off in a corner. Potatoes will hibernate in the root cellar along with the biggest carrots. I still need to dry and crush basil and parsley, and then pack into jars that fit in a kitchen drawer, safely away from heat and light that saps their essence. The eggplant didn’t do so well this season, but I have frozen ratatouille left over from last year.

We’ll make it through the winter just fine. I’ll keep searching for the word that describes the color of the first true leaves of an eggplant seedling.

 

About the Gardener/Writer:

Ana Morgan loves gardening so much, she raised vegetables for one hundred families.

Retired now, she’s still has trouble thinking ‘small’ –when ordering seed packets in the fall and starting seeds indoors in late winter.

Contact Ana at https://anamorgan.net

Stormy Hawkins

by Ana Morgan

Blade Masters has finally spotted his ideal Dakota Territory ranch, where he can live alone, forget his cheating ex-fiancée, and bury the shards of his shattered heart. All he needs to do is sweet-talk the ailing owner, and his spitfire daughter, into retiring.

If she weren’t desperate, Stormy would never hire a cowhand. She’s learned the hard way that she’s happier working her family’s ranch alone. But, the greedy banker who holds their mortgage just demanded payment in full—or her hand in marriage.

Will this handsome drifter protect her? Or does he have designs of his own?

Buy link http://amzn.to/2wXgykQ

Warning to readers of sweet romance: this book is a sensual romance

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Recent Posts

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