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

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Asparagus, Rhubarb, and Trees

Let's talk trees and food and intertwinings.


The Festival of the Trees is a monthly blog carnival devoted to all things arboreal. June's festival is being hosted by Casey Harn, and he is accepting submissions through the end of May. His theme is the relationship between trees and animals and birds. Check out the festival for guidelines on how to participate. Don't just hug a tree. Go write about one or paint a picture or capture a bird on a leaf with your camera and then enter the festival.

I planted an asparagus bed this weekend which entails digging trenches a foot wide and a foot deep in a well-drained, weed-free area of your garden. Once dug to straight and deep perfection, you fill the trench with 4-5 inches of compost or other clean organic material, snuggle in the asparagus crowns with their snaggly roots and then fill in the trench with the loosened soil. My crowns were already starting to sprout (a snafu with the grower) so they needed to get underground asap! Planting an asparagus bed is a labor of hope. Harvest won't begin in earnest for three years but then the bed will produce for years to come. When mature and ferned out, the fronds form a beautiful asparagus forest. It is my gift to the farm.

The rhubarb is at it's prime and thanks to a healthy dressing of compost last fall, it is bursting forth like untrimmed shrubbery, forming a miniture jungle canopy. Rhubarb pie and rhubarb cake. Rhubarb for digestion and limbs and joints and brains. Can you tell I love rhubarb? Rhubarb sauce for breakfast, thanks to my mum, with a nice cup of coffee, thanks to some young girl in a faraway land picking beans all day for pennies a pound. One thing leads to another.

And thanks to Wendy at W.M. Morrell's ....... I also have an awesome sauce award!


Thanks Wendy. You have inspired me on my query trail. I will pass the sauce along shortly.

I've accomplished nothing else lately, no agent on my side, demanding edits to which I would ever-so-politely oblige with a hammer in my heart. I did, however, receive my copy of Steam Ticket, a Third Coast Review, with my little poem tucked inside.
It's a beautiful little magazine compiled by students at the University of Wisconsin, affording them experience as readers and editors. Why not pick one up?

I've digressed a bit from my original intent and I'm sure there's a name for that, an indentified disorder for that. Do you do that? Wander all over the place like a honey bee in search of necter? I'm afraid it spills over into my writing...characters off on mad jaunts and reckless endeavors, defying the genre I was supposed to identify upon typing THE END. And on that happy note... I salute Mr. Bailey at the Literary Lab for putting genre definition in it's place.

Peace out.

18 comments:

Talli Roland said...

Congrats on the award! Hope you're having a great weekend.

Tricia J. O'Brien said...

Ooooo, I just had a wonderful time browsing through some of the Festival of trees blogs. Thanks for the links. And that cover is very cool for Steam Ticket. Congrats!

Liza said...

Congrats on your award...and I envy you your asparagus to come.

Jo Schaffer said...

(= Something very smiley about this blog.

Yvonne Osborne said...

Talli,
Thank you. I didn't have a great weekend,topped off by my bloggy friends!

Tricia,
Thanks. I wanted to showcase the cover because I think it's awesome, and the back even more so, but I couldn't find a picture of that. I'm glad you're checking out the Festival. You're one of the first people I thought about. They've asked me to host an upcoming festival. My plate is already about to topple over but it's such an honor I couldn't refuse.

Liza,
Thanks! It was a lot of work. I could barely drag myself to bed Saturday night!

Jojo,
Hi! Thank you so much. And thanks for joining my blog!! You've made me very smiley this Monday morning!

Yvonne Osborne said...

Talli.....I meant to say I DID have a great weekend! Oops...

Suzanne Casamento said...

I so admire you for planting an asparugus bed! I love asparagus but never planted a bed because I lack patience. Waiting three years for the fruit of labor is tough. Good for you!

Wine and Words said...

You've made me miss my farm. I've been busy two weekends in a row and this one coming up as well. I heard that asparagus grows so fast you can almost see it. I suppose that is after the bed matures! Wishing you a bountiful harvest and much patience :)

Café Lopez said...

I've only had rhubarb in the army - and I don't think that qualified...Thanks for the Festival link. I love using trees in my fiction, whether as an active or passive influence. Anything that lives as long as they do must have something to teach people.

Yvonne Osborne said...

Al,
Hi! And thanks....hmmm. I think!

Suzanne,
We've talked and talked about it, so it was time to dig and stop talking. I like working in the dirt and not talking. Talking gets tiresome. I like the zen of quiet gardening.

W&W,
Wow! I hope that's true. I can't wait to see the first spears emerge. I have to have patience....I'm a writer. Thanks.

Mark,
Hi! I love to see new faces. You had rhubarb in the Army? I don't know why, but that really surprises me. I like what you said about trees. Thanks for commenting here and visiting my blog. Come back again.

LARCHMONT said...

Wow--congratulations on getting your poem published. That is quite a coup! When I was querying, I kept being told how much agents and editors love journal and magazine publication credits.

Congrats on the Awesome Sauce award as well.

Yvonne Osborne said...

Samuel,
Thank you so much. I've heard that too. I guess it can't hurt!

Anonymous said...

Congrats on the poem and the award. Double hugs for the asparagus bed--planted with love and manure!

My prayer for you is that it will be as fruitful as your writing in the years to come.

I'll go hug a tree for you~ cat

Anonymous said...

Hi Yvonne -

Thank you for the link - hopefully a few of your friends will make a submission. I feel that I will have to do some trolling on the tree blogs as the submissions are trickling in very slowly!

Way to go on the asparagus. I've been harvesting my stand for four years now. Oohh, I remember the wait!

Congrats on the published poem, also! And the award! Lots going on here!!!

Peace - Casey

Yvonne Osborne said...

Cat,
Thank you so much. You can get anything to grow with enough love and manure! And if my writing is as fruitful as I hope my asparagus bed will be, I will be a twice-blessed woman. Thank you again.

Casey,
Hello! Thanks for stopping by. So you have an asparagus bed? Isn't it cool how it turns into a miniture ferny forest? I just love it.

Happy trolling. I'm sure the submissions will start pouring in as the deadline approaches.

kanishk said...

Congrats on your award...and I envy you your asparagus to come
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Suzi Smith said...

Hi Yvonne... i'm just getting through the tree festival list... was just musing on what theme i might suggest if i hosted sometime... and you took the words out of my mouth, lol! Good luck with your festival!
Enjoyed my browse around your place too.

Yvonne Osborne said...

Hi Suzi,
Thanks for swinging by and commenting here. I'll be looking for your submission!