My day job starts tomorrow, and the long weekday afternoons of editing in the garden are over for another year.
In spite of all the time I spent traveling, this has been a tremendously productive year by my standards. I finished line-edits on A Lovesome Thing, the second Royal Academy novel, and finished the second major revision of Swept and Garnished, the third. In addition, I finished some short stories (which are unfortunately in the ‘not sold’ pile) and another novel, as yet nameless, whose second revision I plan to complete tonight. Big thanks to Nancy for beta-reading, and to Elaine’s critique group for keeping my nose to the grindstone! And of course to the Milwaukee Area Writers’ Guild, who give the best in-depth critiques anybody could ask for and make me fix my endings.
When the weather’s decent, this is where I work. I carved this niche out of the border last year, promising myself that I would only let short plants grow in it; but that resolution fell foul of my passion for foxgloves. A friend had given me seed from her plants, and last year there they were, little felt-leaved beauties; and all of them had come up in my ‘short-plants’ area!
I transplanted most of them around the yard, but I’ve had such bad luck with these finicky plants that I left a few in situ. They thrived, I think you’ll agree — you’ll probably also agree that they aren’t foxgloves, 
and I have been cherishing a common roadside weed. But by the time that became obvious beyond a shadow of doubt, they had become architectural elements in the garden plan, and now they’re even more interesting as finches, chickadees, and downy woodpeckers feed on their seeds.
With all this going on in the garden, plus the fact that my amazing neighbor has tamed the chipmunks to eat out of our hands, it’s a wonder I get anything done!
