Scrolling through many entries to find what you are looking for can be frustrating. So I thought I'd provide a "landing" post, with links:

The entire short-short, The Mountain's Fire and The Fireborn Puppetmaker, is here: http://wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com/35367.html

The Ongoing Story, currently with a tentative working title of Fireborn?, is here:

Chapter 1, part 1 (Orchid's story begins): http://wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com/35869.html
Chapter 1, part 2 (more from Orchid's POV): http://wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com/36684.html
Chapter 2, part 1 (Mist's POV begins):  http://wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com/37971.html

General stuff:

So, I woke up early this morning to the sound of the garbage truck, and remembered we had not taken the bin from it's usual spot in the yard to the alley.  Remembering the "wonderful" odor as I walked by it yesterday, I got up, threw a dress on, and took it to the nice trash collectors.  Yay--stinky stuff gone. 

It was a pretty morning, with the sun behind clouds, so I went back into the house, gave the kitties kibble, and grabbed my camera to take pictures.

Here is another purple flower that I'd like to know the name of.  And no, "weed" doesn't count!  You can see the spiky stems pretty well in this picture; the leaves are a lot like dandelion leaves.



These flowers had a small bee on them, with a bright metallic-green back.  The close-up shows the little green bee busy collecting and spreading its pollen.  I find it interesting that I don't see these bees later in the day. This was about 8 in the morning by the time I was taking pictures.  I'm used to the larger, black and yellow bumble bees that I see in the afternoons.  I didn't realize that some bees were "early birds" and others were late sleepers, like me!

There was another purple flower blooming; someone walking by identified it as "indigo" but I don't know if that's accurate:



I suppose that's what I get for planting multiple "wildflower" packets and waiting to see what likes the soil and sun conditions--I don't know what everything is.  One day I'll get fed up and research it; today I've been working on the next installment in Fireborn, so identifying my wildflowers will have to wait.  Unless, of course, someone here identifies some of them for me!

My coneflowers are just starting to bloom; the process is quite different from roses, where you have a fully-formed bud that gets bigger until it unfurls; in coneflowers the center of the flower forms, with little vertical spikes all around it.  Then, as the flower matures, they get bigger, and paler, and stick up more, and suddenly one day they start to look like petals:


We also had another swallowtail butterfly visit, this one with most of it's right lower wing missing.  It was having no time flying around, however, and I chased it all over the yard until it paused long enough for me to get a picture.  Here it is by my thyme.  The last picture is from a few days ago, in the afternoon--the bumblebee on the spirea flowers, so you can compare it to the green-backed bee above.


And then, after taking pictures, I went back to bed to finish my night's sleep!

More of the ongoing story tomorrow, after my "exciting" trip to the dentist for the new crown and a filling.  They are nice people, but I'll be pleased not to see them for a while! 

Look at the time!  I'd better head to bed.  Apologies if there's typos, I'm not going to stay up to proofread. 

Time flies while you're writing!

I am enjoying my cell phone's camera function, really I am. I'm amazed at how much it can pick up inside, with just your standard ceiling lights. In contrast, it works poorly for bright things like flowers in the sun. They glow!

It's not altogether a bad effect, but you lose color and detail.



The mulberry is still producing berries (yum), and the peas are producing enough that I'm getting tired of them, and the spinach bottoms, faced with the knowledge that their seeds didn't have a chance to develop, are sending up new leaves to try again. I have more tiny green tomatoes, and some tiny green peppers (some bell, some hot), and lots of herbs. I was telling Foodie Friend about my cooking plan the other day (start the butter melting on the stove and take the scissors outside to cut some herbs, return to add the cut onions and herbs to the pan), and he drawled, "how French of you!" and I had to laugh. I wasn't trying for any particular style of cooking, just using what was in the garden and fridge -- and fresh-picked stuff tastes really good!

So, one of our visitors today was a dragonfly. We get a few every year, and every year I wonder why they're flying so far from Lake Michigan. I know it's a city, but there have to be other inviting gardens in the blocks between here and there! This guy sat still for two pictures where I can't see him at all; in this one at least he is visible.

This reminds me of one of my frustrations; this computer doesn't seem to have a program loaded onto it for cropping pictures. Don't get me wrong, I'm very glad to have this computer, as it is a LOT faster than anything else in the house. My kid's dad gifted it to us when he got a better one, and I'm trying to make every penny last as long as possible until I'm employed again, so a new one isn't in the cards for quite a while. But can anyone recommend a free program that does a good job at cropping pictures? I don't mind showing off my tomato plants, but the dragonfly would be much more visible if I was showing only him! And there are other pictures I'd like to reshape too, for one reason or another.


Another visitor, one of several, a small (half-inch-long or so) very white caterpillar. The head was a tiny black spot, and the underbody yellower than the top, in the slightly-green yellow range. Not sure what it will grow into, so I left it alone.

Another limitation of this camera is that if I get too close, it all blurs. Still, this thing wasn't designed primarily as a camera after all, and does much better close-ups than the cameras I used in my teen years, one of which was much better than it out to have been (enough so that people told me, to my face, that I was lying when I said the photos were not taken on an expensive 35mm with a filter).  I remain both amazed and frustrated by what I can (and can't quite) do with my camera!



I was going to post a picture of another purple flower that I'd love to know exactly what it is (besides a "weed"), but either my cell phone isn't sending it or aol is being its usual tardy self in processing the e-mail, and it's late, so maybe next time. Instead, the first daisies, so you can see how my camera handles the contrast between direct sunshine and shade.

MIST

Mist carefully poured the wine into each small bottle of herbs, tilting the bottle gently to keep the sediment out of the medicines. It wouldn’t hurt the medicine, of course, but it didn’t look good, and she didn’t want patients worrying that the tincture had spoiled. She placed the last of the wine by the stove to use for cooking, then carefully tapped a cork into each of the small medicine bottles.

Then she went to look out the door and windows. Orchid and her friends were nowhere in sight, nor were the neighbors. “Good, I can finish this properly,” she murmured.

( Read more... )
If you're reading this, I'd really like to hear from you!   Questions are welcome.  If you don't have a specific comment or question, even a smiley would be appreciated. Your question may lead to a short story, or enrich the plot of this ongoing story. (If you're not signed in to LiveJournal, please identify yourself, it's pleasant to know who I'm talking with.)

It's actually approaching full moon while the roses are all blooming; they're late this year, like everything else. Usually, the weekend they bloom all together is Duckon, and I mostly miss it; this year I've been able to go out and look and take pictures. The day lilies are finally blooming too.


Today's lunch was spinach and peas and mulberries, direct from the garden, following my theory that I should be eating as much as possible from the yard, not the grocery store. 

You haven't heard much about my job search because there's not a lot to report, and there's no way to make "I looked at a bunch of job listing sites, and in the paper, and sent applications to the few I found that I might have a chance at getting, and didn't get a call this week, and just found out that the place that said they wanted me in for a second interview hired someone else" anything but depressing.  Ditto with "the realtor can't get in touch with the guy who claimed he really really wanted to buy the house."  I also don't think recounting the details of my root canal would be lots of fun, for you or for me.

I am writing, though, both the stuff that's going into this journal and a novel set in the same world.  And learning new things, like how to make a LJ poll work.  (At least I think I figured how to make it work; I haven't seen any responses, so maybe I'm wrong.  Or maybe it's summer and no one cares when I post my fiction because they're out enjoying the sun.)

For ysabetwordsmith , a picture of the Joseph's Coat bush, now that it has more than one flower on it, though later in the season it may be better--I'm in the middle of cutting down an old scraggly bush to get it more sunlight. 


I'm still seeing bees and butterflies, and the occasional disgruntled moth (disturbed by my weeding).  And mosquitoes.

And I pulled up a bunch of the spearmint that's invading the roses (I don't care if it invades the lawn; then lawn mowing smells really good, but roses like sunlight!) and have a batch in the dryer, making the house smell good too.  Oh, and the first morning glories are blooming -- this one was still in shape for pictures when I finally got outside today, since it's well shaded by the echinacea leaves.

So, does anyone know what these purple flowers are called?
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http://wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com/37337.html

So if you go to my journal, the top entry will have links to the fiction inside, in order.  Since I've never been the sort to read the end of a story first, if I have a choice.

This morning, I got a note that the paypal button on my first story wasn't working.  Well, it was kind of old--I'd created it a couple months back, before dropping everything to try to sell the house to the grandson of a previous owner.  As a result, it took me a while to start using the button. (Does anyone know if those things expire?  Of course, it might be as simple as I somehow left off some vital bit of the code when I copied it.)

Anyway, I went and created a new one, and edited the three story installments to include the new button, not the old one, and got my first sponsorship!

Thank You!  (you know who you are)

I knew there'd be a learning curve!

ORCHID

Orchid’s chin started to itch, so she squirmed to reach one toe-claw upward to scratch. She’d been waiting for far too long. “Be fair,” she muttered. “Cirrus and Frog can’t fly as fast as you can, and though we flew into a headwind to get here, the wind might have shifted.” She looked at the angle of the sun. It had only been about an hour. A long, boring hour, with nothing to do but watch the woman’s cut form a messy scab. And watch the baby, just a few feet away, swimming in its enclosure.

Realistically, her friends were probably just arriving at her house. If she was lucky, they’d be talking with her mother right now. She tried to remember her mother’s plans for the day. Would she be home? Of course, a healer’s plans often got disrupted—

“Nnnn”

( Orchid looked at the woman... )

So, I've put two bits out--a whole short story, and the beginning of another. I very much appreciate the comments people have given me. Thank you for responding, it feels good to know I have readers.

I would like to give you the best reading experience possible. Does it make any difference to you when I put up installments of the story?

Poll #1422673 timing
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Does time of day matter?

Does time of week matter?

Again, thanks for reading, and thanks for commenting.

The garden is suddenly in motion; the pea plants finally have peas, the spinach is not only tall enough to eat, but I'm cutting off the tops to keep it from bolting, tomatoes are blooming, roses are blooming, and the lillies are starting to bloom.




I didn't get a picture of the chive flowers; they are now going to seed. However, the red clover is blooming, and seeding.



I keep seeing the tiger swallowtails; I'm hoping they're putting seeds in my rowan or mulberry trees. They like the direct sunlight, however, so it's hard to catch them with my cell phone camera, which amazes me by not needing its flash indoors, but sometimes sun is too much for it. Today, however, was great for pictures, and I took a number of them. This is a tiny butterfly, pale blue or pale lavender; I couldn't get a picture of it with wings open, unfortunately.



And city or no, we have bees. Tiny sweat bees, big bumblebees, and I've even seen a honeybee in the yard. This is the least blurry picture I got of one of today's bumblebees:



So, what's happening in your yards and gardens?

It's early, for me, so I'll dispense with introductions. Welcome to one of my worlds:
_______________________________________
ORCHID

There was something odd, colorfully shimmery, in the small lake far below them, right at the shoreline. The three children circled, then dove downward toward it. Orchid arrived first, as always, her tiny size and restless drive had already built up her wings to the point where she could nearly keep up with an adult in a long-distance fly. She hovered over the contraption, waiting for Cirrus and Frog to catch up. The thing in the water was a soft, fine-weave net, snagged carefully between some rocks, with more rocks on the bottom edge. It defined an area about the size of a playpen. And swimming happily inside, completely submerged in the water, was—

“What’s that?” Frog landed carefully at the water’s edge.

“A baby.” Orchid’s mother was a healer, and a traveler. So Orchid knew things.

“But it has no wings!” Cirrus landed and stuck her finger into the water, and the baby swam right over and grabbed it. The hand was tiny, with long, webbed fingers. Cirrus touched the webbing with her other hand. “Unless you count between the fingers.”

“And toes,” said Frog. “It won’t fly far with those tiny wings.”

“It’s not a Windborn baby,” Orchid said scornfully. “It’s a Lakeborn baby. Or maybe a Seaborn—my Ma would know.” She hated admitting she wasn’t sure of something, and quickly added something she was certain of. “Those aren’t for flying, they’re for swimming.”

Cirrus reached down and lifted the baby up into her wings, giving them a clear view of his naked body. He let out a shuddery wail that stopped abruptly and didn’t start again.

“Put him down!” Orchid yelled. “He’ll drown out here!”

( Read more... )
Please let me know if you dropped by to read this. I welcome questions, comments, and, of course (the obligatory commercial) sponsorships.

 

Please don't give more than you can afford, and thank you for reading. (If you would like to donate, but prefer not to use paypal, drop me a message.)

A couple days ago, I posted a very short story to introduce this world, a bit. If you want to read it, it's at: http://wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com/35367.html

If you're not familiar with cyberfunded creativity, the LJ community devoted to the same has some information: http://community.livejournal.com/cyberfund_creat/profile

Velvet Village’s most entertaining grandmother sat in her rocking chair, children cluttering her porch. A lakeborn boy had come to visit, and her grandson had brought him to ask a question, for she never turned away questions from visitors, and they usually led to stories. And all the children loved stories.

“Come on, Cowrie, ask her a question!”

The small boy looked down, so she leaned forward and smiled encouragingly. “That’s a nice name. So, Cowrie, what would you like to know?”

“Why…” he trailed off and her grandson nudged him encouragingly. “Why are we all different?”

“According to legend, there was a time when all humans were the same, all walkers, no flyers or swimmers or delvers”.

Her grandson gaped—he’d not heard this before. “You mean, no windborn or lakeborn?”
( The old woman nodded... )
_________

This is the first time I've used a donate button--if there's any difficulty with it, please let me know. As with all things, there may be a learning curve.  And if you want to donate, but don't have access to paypal, message me and we'll work it out.

Thank you for reading, and please don't donate more money than you can afford.

 

Today is SF&F Writer's Day. I'm hoping it's an auspicious day to start this new venture.

I've been thinking that, since I'm still out of work, I should venture into cyberfunded creativity/crowdfunding, and see what happens. Reading haikujaguar  and shadesong  and ysabetwordsmith , and seeing how they interact with their readers, I realized I have both sat down alone to write a story, and sat around a table telling a story for people who were participating, as characters, in my world. But I really haven't tried writing with kibitzers, so I'm going to try an experiment, and you are all invited to kibitz, to ask questions, make suggestions, make comments, and so on.

I have a story snippet that I think will do for a start, but initially I'm going to post a short-short to introduce you a bit to the world. This is the world that the novel I'm working on is set in, but will be a different story.

And there will be a donate button; if you enjoy, please let me know--and please let your friends know everyone is welcome. Please don't give more than you can afford, and thanks for reading.

We have a bit of our garden that is an equal-armed cross in a circle. one quarter has always been herbs; the sage from two years ago has been propagating there; one of the colored sage plants from last year (purple or white or varigated, it's too young to tell) also survived the winter. The center is the first place I've put chocolate mint where it thrived, and now it is invading the quarters. (Yum).


I'd dug up two of the quarters very early in the spring, and planted old seeds, peas and spinach. The peas mostly sprouted, there and in other spots; the spinach only in a different spot. And more recently I dug up the other quarter not involved in growing sage, and put tomato plants there. So today's first task was, I thought, to dig up the parts of the final quarter, carefully avoiding the now-flowering large sage plant and the chocolate mint.


However, upon closer inspection, I found that the purple basil had seeded most of the quarter, and liberally mixed with dandelions, creeping charley, and other weeds were tiny, 1-2 inch purple basil plants. Hah! So much for a quick turn-over to bury the weeds. (My cell-phone camera gets blurry close enough to get a good picture of the basil.)

So I spent a while very carefully weeding, which is when I found the varigated or purple sage plant that had survived, and transplanting the basil plants that came out of the ground to other parts of the garden. And the ones that had rooted between the bricks bordering the garden. And, in the midst of this--a butterfly.


And to my surprise, one of the varieties of peas I planted has purple flowers!

It's supposed to be summer. Really. It IS June, after all.

School is out, and today went to the Track Banquet to see my kid get a minor letter. Her school won a double-triple-crown at sectionals, meaning they took the trophies in both boys and girls for long distance, short distance, and other events (jumps, shot put, and discus). So, though my daughter didn't qualify to run in the sectionals (nor did she expect to, she enjoys running, but this is her first year doing it), that was still pretty cool.

My dentist tells me I have very deep roots, and he's glad he was doing a root canal instead of extracting my tooth. And I can go back in two weeks so he can be sure the infection cleared up. And I spent two days after feeling lousy, I think from swallowing too much of the ansthetic--but if I've been fighting an infection for quite a while, that could account for why I've been feeling tired and draggy even while off work.

My realtor still can't reach the guy who was initially so excited about buying my house. Which is made doubly frustrating by the fact that I do NOT want to buy more oil for this house if we might sell it, which feeds right back into my frustration about the weather.

The interviewer who promised to call me Friday to set up a second interview didn't, and the fact that she said, just before seeing me off at the elevator, not to panic if she didn't call until Monday still leaves me on tenterhooks.

Pulling old (and often-oxidized) carpet staples from stairs is tedious and awkward and uncomfortable, and more of them than I like break just above the level of the wood, high enough to snag cat hair and other dirt, but too low to grab and pull out, so they have to be pounded in with the nail sink. But the stairs are looking better. I'm about half done.

We had tulips and dandelions and wood violets and lilacs. Now we have roses budding, irises, indigo, and snowball spirea blooming. The seedlings I started inside were killed by a late frost, so I ended up buying seedlings. Those are doing fine, as are the peas and spinach, but peas and spinach are a spring crop. An early spring crop. And it is summer, right?

I haven't been posting much, but I've been busy.  The city, as usual, wants the yard cleaned up as soon as the snow vanishes, so we've been working on the yard, both clearing up the winter's accumulation of trash and working on making the stuff that we didn't get neat in the fall is tidied up.  We still have work to do on the stone patio and the firepit, which pretty much fell in last year, but we didn't get it rebuilt.  And the firewood is a mess, and the roses are still mulched, but it's time to rake them off and bag up all those autumn leaves to roll into the compost every time we mow the lawn all summer.  And I'm working on doing vegetable gardening this year, big time, so we have to clean the beds that are already more or less designated for that purpose and decide where to put more.  We will try growing green beans (the pole type) on our more robust Japanese roses; slowing down those particular roses would be a blessing; last year we had to dig out some (very thorny) volunteer runners that came up in the lawn.  We set some concrete block between the roses and the lawn when we did that; hopefully that will prevent another incursion.  Some of the smaller roses might get lettuce or broccoli planted behind them.  I've also been tending the indoor seedlings.  A friend was ordering seeds from a catalog that has a lot of heritage varieties, and she offered to order some for me; those came in, and for the full moon, tonight I planted some tomatoes and bell peppers to start indoors, and I plan to plant spinach, peas, and onions outside tomorrow (Thursday). 

Indoors, I've been cooking, trying to make sure I have food ready when my teenager gets back from track, so she eats more than Kraft mac'n'cheese, and other indoor chores, though no big projects quite yet.  And job hunting, which takes a lot more time and energy than the few available jobs would suggest it should, besides that aspect of things being worrysome and depressing if I dwell on it.  So I try to do it and move on to other things.  And there've been ordinary medical errands, and a trip to the dentist, where the tooth that was bothering me was filled nicely, and the tooth I knew needed work, but wasn't bothering me, proved to need either extraction or a root canal and a crown; they're checking the dental insurance (which I still have, for a while, anyway) to see how much it will cover for me, so I can figure out if I can afford the crown. 

The thing I'm happiest about since new moon is the fiction writing.  I've written a piece of flash fiction and, finally, gotten back into writing the Shifter novel.  The murder victim is finally both dead and discovered, and a variety of suspects have been shown to at least one of my three main characters.  I've gotten more than 13000 new words on the Shifter since the new moon, which brings my total to 26341 words as of today's count.  I'm a bit concerned about length; I don't feel like I'm 1/4 into the story.  This is a concern because I've also been reading about the state of the publishing industry today, and apparently publishers are more likely to buy 100K stories than 200K stories these days.  Oh, well, (though I did rewrite the first four chapters after I figured out all the nasty stuff the murder victim has been up to) it IS a first draft.  And I'm enjoying these characters; the romance angle could be stretched out over more than one book, I suppose. I'm also developing the world more, and developing quite a bit of background notes so I can do stuff like keep track of the people, whether they're suspects or not.

I suppose I should get one of those widget thingys so there's a visual of how far along I am on this novel; that would be satisfying for me to look at, though I don't know if any of you care.  Of course, I have no idea where my notes on where to find one might be.  And if I have to choose between an hour spent writing the story, or an hour Googling for a fun widget, the novel wins!

http://garynelsonacousticroots.wordpress.com/2009/01/27/four-hand-guitar/

I needed that after getting to my e-mail and finding that my job interview scheduled for tomorrow has to be rescheduled for next week.

So, I'm still unemployed.  Yesterday, went to meet a different head hunter, who I really liked, and then took my Angel to a doctor's appointment and to the pharmacy.  The brakes had suddenly acquired a quiet grinding sound I didn't like, and I directed her to listen to it.  It was mostly not apparent on the way to the doctor's, but became louder and started doing things like continuing on for a bit even after I lifted my foot from the pedal.  So then we wondered if it might not be the brakes, but rather that ice and/or potholes had caused something on the undercarriage to be dragging.  Angel looked at the brakes when we stopped--no, it was indeed the brakes, and in her words, "this should have been fixed last week at the latest". 

So I got up earlier than I wanted to take the car in to get new brakes that I sure hope I'll get a job soon to pay for.  But job hunting without a car, in the winter with asthma that's activated by cold is not a good idea.  So, I spent the bulk of the day sitting in a waiting room (a nice clean waiting room, at least) painting.  When I returned, and had eaten dinner, I thought I could get online to do things.  About then, the cable connection went out, quite thoroughly--no TV, no phone, no internet.  They came on in time for my girl to get back from dinner with her Dad and to need the computer.  Sigh.



Painting in progress.

I must admit I'm a geek and like geeky toys.