How Does Your Garden Grow?

It’s that time of year again! Springtime! And in my house this means the time when I set about daydreaming about my gardens. My kitchen counter top and living room end tables are piled high with all sorts of seed, flower, plant and bulb magazines imaginable. I’ve dog-eared the pages of my monthly magazine’s spring issues, usually focusing on every how-to gardening article I can find.

I plot and plan, sometimes making diagrams of where I want to put all those plants that look so luscious and lovely on those pages. I compare prices and brands, check to make sure what I pick out can be grown in our plant zone. Sometimes I put in large orders.

Last year I ordered hot pepper plant seed packets, fingerling seed potatoes, Butterfly bushes, and Astilbe. The pepper plants took over the vegetable garden, the Butterfly bushes ended up not making the progress I’d hoped for and the poor Astilbe succumbed to the appetites of the deer. But to my utter delight the potatoes took off and produced healthy butter colored fingerling potatoes. Every time I harvested them, turning over the dark soil, well it was like unearthing hidden treasures!

But my pride and joy is the progress I’ve made over the past few years on my pond garden pictured here.  

I’ve also found over the years my writing is sort of like my gardening skills. I usually start with grandiose storyline ideas, putting them on paper, then see how they grow. And like my flower and vegetable gardens some ideas work out and some don’t. Editing the scenes is sort of like weeding all those plants in my gardens. Some days you need to thin out some good stuff to let the really wonderful parts grow. Right now I’m working on the first book in my new inspirational historical romance series. As I write the words on each page I’m envisioning a story that will be as successful as my fingerling potatoes!

So tell me how does your literary or vegetable/flower gardens grow? 

Tracey J Lyons sold her first book on 9/9/99! She is the best selling author of the Women of Surprise Historical romance series, Montlake/Avalon Books and writes the contemporary Wine Country Vixen series as Tracey Sorel. You can learn more about Tracey and her books by visiting her websites.  http://www.traceylyons.com  http://www.traceysorel.com/   Follow on twitter @TraceySorel