Reflection on the First Week of Summer – Garden Ghosts

    Within twelve hours, the Strawberry Full Moon, summer solstice, and garden ghosts came to Wells Wood–time to protect the fruit. Birds, voles, deer, and raccoons eat strawberries, apples, and blueberries before they're ripe enough to pick.

    Spence helped me stretch netting over the raised strawberry bed. Though birds land on the net and can snatch a berry close to the top, they can't reach berries under the leaves. Voles can, but they mostly eat the roots of the everbearing plants. Spence searched the Internet for ways to slow voles down. Folks suggested Juicy Fruit gum. Voles like the taste so eat it then get blocked. Spence placed cut up pieces of Juicy Fruit near the vole holes. The gum disappeared. No constipated voles moan on the raised bed walls–yet. More gum?

    Because we don't net trees, the deer ate all but one apple last year. This year Spence bought Irish Spring deodorant soap which, according to another Internet research, smells unpleasant to deer.

    “Hang a bar from each tree?” I asked.

    “No. Hang a piece beside each apple you can reach.”

    I've made fourteen little bags with pieces of an onion sack, string, and soap in chunks the size of little toes. They look like jade necklaces dangling beside grape-sized apples. Once Spence eats more onions, I can make additional stinky bags. Will they work? Will rain just dissolve the soap? Will the apples smell like Irish Spring?

    I have more confidence in our blueberry protection.

    We built tents for the bushes. After fashioning frames of half inch PVC pipe, Spence wrapped chicken wire around the bottom of the supports to give pollinating insects access. On a windy day, I stretched billowing white garden cloth over the frames by maneuvering so the wind blew the cloth in the right direction. The cloth hung down to the chicken wire. Bugs collected on the white tent, but birds couldn't get at the berries or get stuck trying. The only problem is sometimes raccoons stand on their hind legs and rip the cloth. Bears could destroy the whole tent, but haven't–not even the black bear we imagine makes those rustling sounds in the woods across the road while we work in the garden.

    In the south garden each blueberry bush, except for the one that lost its blossoms in a frost, has its own tent. Spence helped me build a big one around three bushes in the north garden.

    At dusk, a flying saucer appears to hover over the north garden and six ghosts appear to float in the south garden. Neighbors slow their vehicles and gawk. Let them wonder. I'll do whatever works to protect my fruit.

 

Reflections on the Thirteenth Week of Spring – Guest Blog by Emma and Her Ghost Writer 

    After munching the chow I reminded Janet to give me before she went swimming, I stroll down the hall to find a cozy spot. One bedroom is empty except for a fan, work light, and scattered tools. The other is a mess of piled furniture. I head for the green bathmat. But spraying water and the squeaking-rub of feet in the shower mean the mat will be damp. I'll go upstairs.

    Bong, bang.

    What is George thinking . . .

    Bong. BAM

    . . . racing down two flights of metal stairs . . .

    Bong, boom, bong.

    . . . like he's chasing a herd of voles?

    The shower curtain flies open. Spence leaps out, slips on the brown tile, and grabs the sink.

    He could have turned off the water. My mat will be wet all day. I move against the wall.

    With an anxious “Geooorrrge,” Spence dashes down the spiral stairs.

    Moving to the edge, I peer down the stairwell.

    He slips and grabs the railing. His naked butt bangs onto the bottom step.

    “George! Oh . . . why you staring at me from the cold cellar doorway?”

    George is probably thinking Spence looks strange without his glasses and his clothes.

    Bare feet slap across the cement floor. George will get a wet pet. Yuck.

    Spence calls. “Emma. Emma!”

    As if. I hide under the sofa.

    Spence pads back upstairs. “Emma.” He walks into one room after another. “Are you alright, Baby?” Still dripping, he climbs to the second floor. He should be ready for a nap.

    Coming back down to the great room in a panic, he yells, “EMMA.”

    Best to let him know I'm okay so he'll calm down and turn off the water. The mat will be soggy for days. I utter a soft “merrow” to satisfy him.

    That doesn't work.

    He bends over, pulls me out from under the sofa, and hugs me to his wet, soapy chest. Whatever.

    “I was so worried about you, Emmie.” He nuzzles his wet nose against my cheek.

    Sheesh.

    “I heard that horrible crash and thought George or you must be dead.”

    If we were dead, he could have turned off the shower and dried himself before looking for our corpses.

    He squeezes me, sets me on the sofa, and walks back to the bathroom. 

   The shower curtain swishes then the house is silent except for spraying water and the squeaking-rub of feet.

    I lick my fur and settle on the sofa in Spence's spot.

Reflections on the Twelfth Week of Spring - "Walk Like a Turkey"

    Romance Magazine published my contemporary romance short story “Walk Like a Turkey” on Wednesday, four years and ten months after Spence gave me the idea.

On a morning in August 2011, Spence stopped reading news at his porch desk, walked into the log house, and said, “I've got the first line for your next story.” He flashed a toothy grin. “Meet me at Dairy Isle at ten,” he said and walked out.

    Puzzled, I followed him. “What?”

    Spence pointed at his computer. “Joe Hutto did an experiment raising turkeys. He couldn't meet anyone till after dark.”

    “I can't write a story about Joe Hutto.”

    “Write about another guy.” Spence flapped his arms up and down. “It's fiction. Make it up.”

    I researched turkeys, watched Hutto's “My Life as a Turkey,” and imagined character motivations. Creating the plot was the problem.

    “Build from character traits,” my son Spencer Charles advised. “Give the protagonist a business like a restaurant so a flock of turkeys could turn up in the parking lot.”

    Turkeys in a parking lot?

    I wrote multiple drafts of eight different versions and sifted through advice, like “Matt's too perfect” and “Matt's too weird,” from people in my writing workshops. Finally my “cute meet” won second prize in the 2015 Pennwriters Annual Writing Contest. The three judges checked “likely to be published” once I'd completed a list of revisions.

    Would the story ever be ready?

    I resumed my “butt in the chair” position.

    Kathy from Erie Pennwriters suggested publishing in FictionMagizine.com.

    Babs, from the Meadville group, reviewed rewrites and said, “Get this out and sell it!”

    Spencer Charles said, “Just send it out.”

    “I didn't finish the judges' list.”

    “Don't,” he said. “Send it out tomorrow.”

    On May 3, after revising another week without finishing the list, I submitted the story to the romance division of FictionMagizine.com. Within a month, Douglas W. Lance, Editor-in-Chief, emailed saying my story would appear in June 8^th Romance Magazine.

    I went to bed Tuesday, June 7 wondering what time Wednesday I'd get the magazine.

    At 6:59 a.m. the next morning, Douglas emailed the PDF link. Sitting on the edge of my chair and listening to Spence repeat “Just relax,” I clicked the link again and again. Each time I got, “Error in loading this page.”

    I slumped to the back of the chair and clicked the link for the magazine website instead. (https://www.fictionmagazines.com/shop/romance-issues/romance-magazine-vol-04-no-05/) That worked. The cover had a silhouette of a couple walking on a beach and my name listed under four other contributers. I jerked up to yoga sitting posture, took a deep breath, and emailed friends, relatives, and fellow writers with the news. Then I emailed Douglas about the broken PDF link.

    I shut down my computer and rushed off to swim half a mile at the Meadville YMCA.

    When I returned, I opened the computer to tweak my author's website, which Editor Douglas had called “cool,” and met a barrage of emails. One was from Douglas saying, “I fixed it. Sorry!” The others were congratulations.

    Beeping from incoming emails lasted two days. The three dozen messages from folks awed me more than having my story published.

    Giddy, I looked over my computer at Spence looking over his computer at me. “I only wrote one romance, and that's the story that got published. Maybe I can turn my other stories into romances?”

    “No,” he said. “The theme for your next romance is older people. When my grandmother Mimi was our age, she dated Wallace Simpson. Be sure to put in she swore she'd never marry again after living with my grandfather.”

 

Reflections on the Eleventh Week of Spring – Together Whatever

    How could we make our forty-eighth wedding anniversary different after spending so many anniversaries at Presque Isle? We took our own tandem, sit-on-the-top kayak.

    Searching for a new launch area, Spence pulled the truck onto a dirt road to the West Pier Boat Ramp. Half way down the road, a secluded pull off led to the water's edge. Perfect. Maybe.

    “What do you think?” Spence said.

    Geese bobbed up and down half foot water swells. “I'm not sure,” I said. “It might be too choppy.”

    Back on the main road Spence drove further east, crossed the lagoon bridge, then parked on the berm.

    I slathered myself with suntan lotion, sprayed my clothes with insect repellent, and tucked my cell phone into a plastic grocery bag which I put in my shorts pocket.

    We wrestled the kayak out of the truck bed and carried it to the water on the side of the bridge we'd never explored. After attaching the canvas seats that come with a sit-on-the-top kayak, I settled in the bow. Spence pushed my half into the water then sat in the stern. Our combined weight sunk us into the sand, but paddling and pushing got us off the bank. We floated with the current of the twenty foot wide stream.

    The smooth channel quickly emptied into the choppy little bay we had rejected earlier. Rocking, but still afloat, we forged ahead to explore something new. We paddled past two bobbing kayaks hovering by the shore and a row boat filled with fishermen tending lines. Two or three hundred yards later, we reached the geese. I laid my paddle on my lap and unwrapped the phone. Spence steered us toward the geese. They squawked and rolled with the waves. I took multiple pictures then tucked the phone into the bag and into my pocket so I could help Spence paddle back.

    Wind pushed against us. The bow slap, slap, slammed against waves. Spray soaked me from my waist to my toes.    The ride was smoother in the stern, but the cloth straps on Spence's canvas seat loosened. He either had to sit up straight without back support or try to paddle from a reclined position. Neither was efficient.

    Wind increased and blew Spence's dirty tractor cap into the water. We circled around it. When I deftly lifted the hat with my paddle, Spence said, “Don't do that. You'll sink it.”

    I passed the soggy cap over my shoulder to Spence.

    He chuckled. “Water's running down my nose.”

    Dripping, we returned to the landing by the truck. Spence adjusted his seat straps, and we headed for the low bridge crossing the lagoon. Would it be too low? No, but I reached up and touched the bottom of the bridge.

    The Big Pond side of the bridge had more visible life. Red-winged Blackbirds clung to reeds. Brown birds feed on yellow water lily flowers. Gulls soared, crows called, and frogs croaked in thick reed patches. We passed colorful kayaks with laughing folks wearing cowboy hats, sun glasses, neon salmon shirts, and cameras.

    Paddling in the lagoon was easy for me but caused Spence some issues. Because he sat in the back, he had to match my strokes. His natural pace was faster than mine. He'd get in sync, I'd take a break to photograph or rest, then he'd have to get in sync again. He managed.

    The second paddling issue came from the wind. Wind blew spray off my paddles and into his face. He didn't mind until the wind lifted what he called “Lakeweed” and splatted it onto his bare legs.

    After following channels and paddling through masses of dark green glossy lily pads, we headed back to shore. We disembarked with fresh air expanding our chests, wet clothes clinging to our butts, and another adventure to remember.

    Together whatever.