I planted nasturtiums in my garden this year. I planted a lot of other things too – but for now, let’s think about nasturtiums.
Nasturtiums have been one of my favorite flowers since childhood. My mother planted nasturtiums. I remember sitting in the flower bed picking the nasturtiums apart to suck the sweetness out of the nectary. At that time I didn’t know the entire plant was edible. If I had, I might have developed a taste early-on for the peppery, spicy nasturtium leaves and bright orange, yellow and red flowers.
This year six of my nasturtium plants are in a long, narrow planter box with more scattered in the tomato garden (good companion plant for tomatoes) and in the flower bed (for color.) The six nasturtiums in the planter box were all planted at the same time in the same soil, in the same way, but there are two on the end of the box that are about twice as big as the four others. Every time I pass that box, I wonder why. Is it because they get ever-so-slightly more shade? Could be, but it seems unlikely. Did I accidentally give them more compost tea? I don’t know.
Writers are like that too. There may be six of us that start at the same time with the same advantages, but only two that grow their craft twice as magnificently as the others. It is hard to say why, though with writers, we might guess that those two practiced writing more often.
This year I finally finished the sixth and hopefully final revision of my first novel, The Scribe of Irohila, which I originally wrote in 2001. For those who don’t know me – I’ve also written quite a few other novels that are in various stages of revision or non-revision.
This marks a turning point in my writing career… because finally I have a novel worth submitting. As you might guess, I’m a revision fanatic… I wanted it to be really, really good before I sent it out for the first time.
This leaves me free to work on other writing projects, and I’m so very grateful for that!
One beautiful flower in a garden is better than a field full of weeds. Lucky me, though – I’ve got both! Actually, I’ve got two fields full of weeds. I fantasize about someday having the time and energy to transform both fields into cultivated works of art. Come to think about it – the effort it would take for me to do that is roughly equivalent to the effort it will take me to revise a couple more novels to perfection. I’d better get busy.
Hey, Linda!
Congrats on finishing Scribe–that is AWESOME news!!!
And, I love Nasturtiums, too! I just bought some seeds–the flowers are supposed to be a deep red. I want to plant them out front to attract the hummingbirds. I planted some at my last house in containers, and I couldn’t get over how quickly they grew from seeds. 🙂