What do writers do when they aren’t writing?

What do writers do when they aren’t writing? Pull weeds. Seriously. Like tons and tons and tons of weeds.

All right. Maybe most authors don’t pull as many as I do. But seriously, the planty little jerks need to lay off my garden!

Oh wait. Were you not expecting that? You probably imagined me lounging in my erudite home library, with row upon row of dusty leatherbound books, wearing an ascot and smoking a pipe while looking suitably smug and intellectual. That’s what authors do, right?

Yeah, Okay maybe. I could probably really rock an ascot. And I could definitely rock a Hugh Hefner style satin smoking jacket, which would be red, while I lounged around on a red velvet fainting couch eating bon bons while wearing maribou-trimmed high-heeled shoes. Oh my god. Why aren’t I doing that? I’m so gonna do that. Christmas is coming, right?

But alas, that is not what I’m doing today. I’m pulling weeds. I’m not wearing maribou, I’m wearing rubber boots. No smoking jacket or ascot, just ugly green garden gloves and a scowl as I shout expletives at the spiky rude Canada Thistle taking over my yard. Jerks.

A casual stroll through any of my bio pages will alert you to the fun fact that I am a hobby urban farmer. That means that I’m basically running a mini-farm on my lot in the suburbs. It’s an addiction. I’ve tried to break the habit, but I can’t. Geesh. I’m such a garden geek that I even completed a year-long urban farm mentoring program, with the goal of one day becoming a real farmer, selling at local markets.

I blame the tomatoes. Tomatoes are the gateway drug. You’ve never eaten a real tomato until you’ve eaten a homegrown backyard tomato, particularly an heirloom variety, that’s still warm from the sun because it’s just been picked. And the beets. It’s definitely the beets’ fault. And the lettuce, because darn it, having a garden in the backyard is so so so great when you’re lazy like me and don’t know what you’re eating for dinner until it’s already 6 p.m. and everybody’s hangry and clamoring by the stove.

What vegetable are we eating tonight? I don’t know. Let’s go see what’s ripe.

Writers? Yeah. We’re geeks. We like to read and we spend way way waaaay too much time indoors typing. And I’m a garden geek on top of it, which means I spend a lot of time hanging out with old ladies in silly hats, talking about plants and fungus and seeds and bees and well… you get the idea.

And, every August, I transform from modern free-wheeling woman to 18th century pioneer wife (almost like a reverse Clark Kent-Superman transformation), because that’s the month when I have to turn all of our tomatoes and apples into sauces and can them. Aw great. Now you know my deep dark secret. Don’t tell, okay? Especially don’t tell 20-year-old me because she’d be horrified.

“Garden? Canning? That doesn’t sound like a party!” she’d scream, then slap some liquid eyeliner on me and take me by the ear to the nearest rock show.

Now that the secret is out, this is the part where I go squee while I bore you with a photo tour of this year’s garden.

See? I wasn’t lying when I said you can’t beat my beets! Look at this puppy! It’s a Lutz Winter Keeper, for all you other geeks, and yes my nail polish matches!

 

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