Laura Langston's Blog, page 25

An Attitude of Gratitude to Kick Off 2018

Last January I started a gratitude jar. Whenever I thought of it – sometimes every day or maybe a few times a week – I’d jot down something I was grateful for and slip the colorful Post-It note into a jar. This practise has been around for a while; I’m sure you’ve heard of it.

I sat down and read through my 2017gratitudes last week. A clear pattern emerged. The largest number of gratitude notes focused on the support of friends: the walks and talks, watching movies together, sharing meals, la...

The Importance of Fallow Ground

Gardeners and farmers know the importance of fallow ground. Allowing a field or a garden bed to rest for a bit – to go fallow – gives the soil’s nutrient balance a chance to naturally restore itself. As the ground rests, fertility can be restored. Letting ground go fallow was a common practice centuries ago, but it’s not as common anymore. As commercial fertilizers became more readily available and the agricultural industry became ever more competitive, it became less and less popular to leav...

Book Buys for 2017

Books make awesome gifts. If you’re looking for the right title for that special someone, here’s a selection of books I’ve enjoyed reading this year. If my suggestions don’t resonate or if you’re still feeling uncertain, wrap up a gift card to an independent book store or on line book seller.

Books make awesome gifts. I know I said that already, but it’s worth repeating.

For fiction Lovers:

General Fiction: The Almost Sisters by Jocelyn Jackson. A timely southern drama featuring quirky charac...

A Lesson in Patience, Persistence and Timing

The garden is one of my best teachers and I was reminded of that last week when we picked kiwifruit from our vines. Seventy-five of the fuzzy, egg-shaped fruits if you want an exact number. I planted the vines myself over a decade ago and this is the first year we’ve had any kind of harvest.

Kiwifruit typically take 3 – 5 years to mature and produce fruit, so we didn’t expect fast results. Being reasonably patient I was good with that; some things are worth waiting for. After the first five o...

Elephant Love

Last week, Donald Trump ended a ban on importing elephant trophies into the United States. A few days later, he announced via twitter that he was temporarily reversing that decision, pending a review (and by the time you read this the ban could be off once again). It would be nice to think Trump bowed to the public outcry but I don’t think that’s likely. Public outcry doesn’t seem to sway him one way or another.

But there was considerable uproar over the plight of the elephants and that’s no...

My November Reads

Every year when we switch back to standard time and fall back an hour, the familiar cry goes out on social media: why do this? Why not stay with daylight saving time all year long? I don’t have an answer, but until this year I’ve always been happy to make the switch. I love getting the extra hour of sleep at the time of the change, and I also love that it’s lighter in the morning and darker earlier at night. I guess it suits my personal biorhythms or something, especially as fall rolls around...

Don’t Be a Plastic Flower

Plastic flowers are popping up around here like fall mushrooms sprouting in my lawn. And when something shows up repeatedly in a fairly short time I think the universe is trying to get my attention. I’m weird that way.

This summer after a friend finished staging her house she gave me the faux flower display she’d used to lock down the sale. It was an attractive, life-like arrangement and the colors were pretty. Despite the fact that I’m not a fan of artificial flowers and had an abundance of...

Endings and Beginnings

Tis the season of Halloween which many people consider a scary or spooky time. In fact, Halloween is based on an ancient festival of the dead called Samhain. At Samhain, it was thought that the veil between the physical and spiritual realms became extremely thin, allowing contact with ancestors and spirits. Given that, I decided it was the perfect time to release a short story about Adam and Eve, original ancestors par excellence. The Original Eve is a Laura Tobias title and it’s a very short...

Paper, Paper, Everywhere Paper

By Friday; Stack of Documents. Working or Studying at messy desk.

I have a thing for paper, specifically notes on paper.

Last week after a hectic stretch finishing up a book proposal, getting another project off to the formatter, and completing several editing jobs, I decided it was time to clean my office.

I’m a less-is-more kind of person so I rarely find myself buried by stuff. I’m also reasonably neat and moderately organized, which means my clutter is usually neat and organized too. If a...

My October Reads

The days are getting shorter, the nights are getting colder and the fields are full of pumpkins (I had my annual pumpkin pie feast about a week ago). Usually by now, the outside chores are done and I have lots more time to relax and read. But this year it hasn’t quite worked out that way. We devoted a few extra weekends to putting the garden to bed: digging, weeding, deadheading, cleaning, and covering most of the beds with black landscape fabric to discourage weeds from sprouting when the we...