"Two wrongs may not make a right but a thousand wrongs make a writer.”

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Laying in for Winter


My ferns huddle under a blanket and my last crop of lettuce is covered with a double layer of shade cloth. The eggplant and basil are dead and the peppers are on their last wobbly leg. I threw old flannel shirts over a couple of roses that were still covered with buds as we try to survive this spell of unusual cold, holding unto one last bloom, one last crunch of green, holding out for one more sunny day when I can hang my ferns back up on the porch and watch their fronds sway gently in the breeze. Come Indian Summer.

But this winter we will have a heated greenhouse. My father is getting an outdoor wood stove that will take big logs, tapping into his existing furnace and running a connecting pipe into my greenhouse which will sit beside it. The wood is ready to burn and I have spinach seeds left from summer for my first experiment! Maybe I can set up a little corner for myself to write, a corner where no one can find me, a corner of my own. And about my short story The Echo, while it is fiction, the problem with frogs is very real. Often this summer my husband commented how he never heard them anymore in the creek that runs behind our house. It is very worrisome. One more thing to worry about.

But look! I now have fifteen followers! Thank you all very much for reading.

6 comments:

The villager: said...

I like the sound of the wood stove and logs.

Yvonne Osborne said...

Yes we are very excited about the entire set up. We're putting up the greenhouse today. And I'm very excited to have a comment from across the pond! Thank you for visiting.

Tricia J. O'Brien said...

I'm terribly sorry about the frogs. Reminds me of the honey bees dying, and of the summer we lost all the crows to West Nile virus. I didn't know I would miss those strutting, bully crows so much, but it was disturbing when there were none to be seen in the sky, in the trees, on the ground. They have come back, though, so I hope your frogs do, too.
A green house will be a wondrous thing.

Andrea Cremer said...

I love fall, in Minnesota winter just bulldozed right over it.

Unknown said...

Sounds divine.

Horrible about the frogs. I worry about bees.

Yvonne Osborne said...

Andrea, I saw the pictures on your blog of all that snow. Yikes.

Tricia and Suzy, Yes, I worry about the bees too. Frogs are especially sensitive to the environmental changes overtaking us, the true "carnaries in the coal mines" of the natural world. Their sudden silence is disturbing.