June is a greedy month. She acts as if she has hurriedly gulped, at the very least, two to three double lattes with extra sugar. Seriously. The garden is on a caffeine high. Forget the cold wet winter; the earth has turned on its axis facing the sun and those jolts of energy zap everything with exuberant, rampant growth.
Iris, tulips, rosemary, azaleas, and wisteria are blooming. The lime green hop vines are scrambling up and over the barn with the clematis vines closing in on them. A handful of bright yellow wild canaries sit on the wet fountain rim like noisy customers at the local sports bar, and a Coopers hawk methodically sweeps across the meadow searching for field mice.
I look on the garden as a fabulous dessert tempting me away from my writing, and I try to maintain a balanced diet so I don’t overindulge too much with one or the other. A taste here, a taste there, and when I have a plot dilemma I pick up my Felco shears and head out to do some pruning. Somewhere in the snipping and cutting my mind solves not only the gardening problem, but the writing problem as well.
But it is not all about dessert. Finding characters for a new story is like visiting my favorite garden/art store in Seattle. Lucca Statuary is an adventure into the world of human creativity and imagination. Their fountains are spectacular and their statuary and carved reliefs to hang on garden walls are wonderful. I have a bias relief of a beautiful Renaissance lady I painted. She is a favorite of mine, and I believe it is of Saint Cecelia.
And on my most recent trip I brought home an 18” high statue of a crow. I had the perfect spot to put it, but since it was rendered in plain grey cement it needed painting. This crow needed a stand out “character attribute.” I painted it red.
Mind you, there is a family of crows who live in the tall pines across the road and they are regular visitors to the garden. They use the fountain like it was a large a-jus dish to dip their morsels of freshly killed baby sparrows or finches in. And you thought hawks were the villains of the bird world – ha!
I feel like a hazmat cleaning service when I put on my long water gloves and high top water boots, to clean up the debris of feathers, and shredded tidbits of bloody bird parts…..Hey, get over it. Gardening is not for the faint of heart. Little crows in their nest have to eat too.
Which comes to villains. As a writer your antagonist must have some redeeming quality, must have one humane quality. You don’t have to like what he does, but he/she can’t be totally evil. I think you understand why I painted my crow bright red . . . Hmmm, I wonder if the red crow will find its way into one of my scenes.
Connections - it’s about reaching out and taking action – using energy to create, and transform an idea into something personal. How I love June!
