Before I forget: Amazon included In the Midnight Rain in an October special, so it’s .99 for the whole month. If you haven’t read it, now is a good time to grab it.
Now…on to the blog….
It’s a slightly overcast morning, and promises to be truly cold and blustery and maybe even snowy tomorrow. I had the house cleaned thoroughly yesterday—it feels so good to have the house all in order, and the floors cleaned and the bathrooms sparkling. I love, love, love that. Once, it would have made me feel guilty. Now I think about how the young woman who cleans my house has a job and I get a clean house. Good trade.
We had our first freeze on Wednesday night, and all the tomato plants fell over, despite my (half-hearted) attempts to save them with tarps. I had to collect them all, about 20-25 pounds of green beefsteak and roma tomatoes of many sizes. I took bags of them to each of my neighbors, and this morning put the rest on the top shelf of the greenhouse window. They looked so beautiful that I had to run and get my camera to shoot them, finding in me that quiet, that peacefulness that comes to me through the lens of a camera for no reason I can pinpoint. Maybe it’s the focus, the wordlessness of letting everything go to be in the moment, here, right now. Maybe it’s the sweetness of beauty, because I do tend to shoot things I think are beautiful. Some photographers collect gritty or grim or ugly things, but I’ve never been that person. I love beauty, and flowers and fruits and vegetables, and looking at things closely.
I love the corn in the background, the way the light spills over the silken curves of the tomatoes, the way their shapes are repeated over and over, and the stems add prickliness.
I also like this one:
Garden/kitchen tip: green tomatoes will keep for a long time this way. Spread a paper towel over a flat window sill and put the tomatoes on top. The last time I did this, I had tomatoes through Christmas.
Now I’ve played long enough and need to turn my focus to writing. Last night, on the way home from a book club meeting in Woodland Park, I was tangling myself up over the story I’m writing, thinking how to do this and how to do that, and the Girls in the Basement said, “Oh, just stop it! Just write. Have some fun, will you?”
So that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to stop burdening this poor book with more and more and more expectations and weighing it down with lead bricks of time pressure and twisting and turning and all that other business- and expectation-crap and just let the story emerge as it wishes. I like these characters! I love them, honestly. Lavender and Ruby and Ginny and Noah and the little barn cat and the lavender fields and the chickens. It’s lovely and sweet and I’m just going to go write now.
What are you up to this weekend? Is it freezing where you are? Do you know any recipes for green tomatoes?