MARCH - Named for the Roman God of War

Paddy caps (hats) off to the Irish! March is a windy, sometimes chilly, but joyous month when everyone becomes Irish on St. Patrick’s Day. In the northern states, it’s also the month which can come roaring in like a lion with cold blustery weather and go out with warmth and the softness of a lamb or—vice versa.

Everyone looks forward to March 20^th, when spring is supposed to march in and put an end to winter weather. Daffodils, the flower of March, rear their sleepy heads and poke through the cold ground, bringing the color of sunshine back to the drab flowerbeds.

Rain and mud are part of spring. If we’re fortunate, we might well see the return of early migrating birds. Birds that nest in the Northern Hemisphere tend to migrate in spring to take advantage of burgeoning insect populations, budding plants, and an abundance of nesting locations. I love to step outside, search the sky, and listen when I hear the first flocks of geese winging their way toward Canada.

For me, it’s also a bittersweet month. My mother passed away in the month of March. Ironically, her birthday was on St. Patrick’s Day. For someone of Polish ancestry, she was always a good sport and laughed and loved the cakes, iced in green with shamrocks, we made to celebrate her special day.

Most of all, for those of us who like to garden, who like to watch things grow, it’s an exciting month as we start planning the flowers, vegetables, herbs, and other greenery we’d like to plant for the coming spring, summer, and fall ahead. Last year, we had a bucket garden filled with a variety of spices. This year, my husband has found a “vertical squash” plant we want to grow. But that’s a story for another day.

Hats off to all… and to the month of March named for the Roman god of war, Mars.  May it be a prosperous and pleasing one for all.

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HELLO, APRIL!

 I’m the first to admit that I enjoy April.

April is when all the flowers from bulbs beneath the sleepy earth emerge. Daffodils, crocus, wind flowers, and small grape hyacinths bring color, scent, and life back to the flowerbeds.

I think back to my childhood and how my mother loved plants and bushes of all types. We were a  farm family, and  it was not unusual to visit a neighbor’s house and go home with a piece of a bush, or some shoots wrapped in a wet rag, or a bundle of roots tied up in a burlap feed bag. Mother always found a place to plant her treasures and nurse them to maturity. And the favor was returned when friends, relatives, and neighbors came to call and left with a clump of rhubarb or day lilies.

At the front corner of my house, I still have trumpet vines from cuttings my mother gave me decades ago. Every fall we chop them back to stubby trunks, and in the spring they explode in a flourish of leaves and blossoms that entice the hummingbirds.

In the back yard, I have a bed of rag roses from around an old stone foundation of a house built in the early 1800s and situated along a well-used route westward. Everyone always referred to the cleared, often muddy pathway as “The Old Road.”

And, my favorite from our farm is at the side of my house—a large clump of Jack in the Pulpits my mother coddled in one of her flowerbeds.

April brings back lots of good memories. It’s a time of warm days, a time to get ready for spring planting and, for those of us who like to play in the dirt, it’s a month of sheer joy.

I’ll end with a colloquialism that the farmers often used in northeastern Pennsylvania: “So long, March. Hello, April!”

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JUNE has busted out all over!

June has busted out all over. With all the wet stuff falling from the sky, the month has lived up to the phrase, “Rain in June is a silver spoon.”

The landscape centers and greenhouses are stuffed with trays of flowers and potted plants. My neighborhood is a kaleidoscope of flowerbeds, filled with marigolds, petunias, dianthus, and other vibrant blossoms  Even my frosted ferns have sent up fiddle heads that have unfurled into leafy fronds, ’though not as high and lush as in other years.

In the wisteria beside out backdoor deck, the robins have hatched three little ones and are busy feeding them. This year we have a robin's nest in the rhododendrons and bushes on four sides of our house. Here is a little one that fell into one of our buckets and was rescued by my husband. 

And speaking of birds, my feeders with sunflower seeds, mixed songbird seed, and Nyjer seed are emptied each day. The pesky, unruly grackles, perching in the adjacent treetops and singing their creaking, grating songs, have found a way to balance upside down on the suit cake and try their best to devour it before the woodpeckers.

I’m especially proud of my bucket garden which is thriving. It’s a work in progress. I’m learning the ropes and have my fingers crossed. We already have lettuce and parsley.  

What do I miss most about the month of June? The sweet smell of new mown alfalfa or clover drying in the farm fields.  Maybe it’s time to take a ride into the countryside nearby to find a hay field and get the repetitious, famous lyrics of Carousel by Rogers and Hammerstein out of my head:  just because it’s June, June, June!

Before I forget, HUCKLEBERRY HAPPINESS 

                                                             releases on the 24th as well. 

                                                     PREORDER:  https://tinyurl.com/y9q7lr33

 

JUNE - The Month of Roses

Although the rose has always been my favorite flower, it is also the flower of June, my birth month. Growing up on a farm in northeastern Pennsylvania, I cherished the intoxicating fragrance of the antique rose bushes growing around the stonewall foundations of old razed houses on our property where early settlers lived, but later moved westward for reasons unknown. Every June, like a birthday present from the earth and heaven above, it was a delight to see the many bushes, growing wild, bursting into riotous pink blossoms, and spreading over an entire knoll of our pasture.

Old roses, also called “old-fashioned roses,” “heirloom roses,” “antique roses” and “old garden roses” are those plants introduced in America prior to 1867. Although there are hundreds of old rose varieties, they are best known for their hardiness and fragrance.

The oldest rose planted today was in existence some 2,000 years before the birth of Christ. It migrated from Persia (Iran) through Turkey to France and finally into England Later, clippings of these old garden roses were often hand-carried to America by early immigrants from Europe.

In my novel, Four White Roses, I chose to have the heroine try to save the last white Austrian rose that the hero’s great-grandmother brought with her stateside just prior to World War I.

Sometimes writers don’t know where they get ideas for writing a novel. Sometimes thoughts and ideas just pop into our heads. To be honest, only when I started writing Four White Roses did mental sparks erupt—and I was able to draw an eerie connection to my own life. I have actually saved the last old roses bushes planted on my family farm and dating back to the 1800s.

Luckily, I took cuttings after my husband and I were married. With the passing of my parents, the rose bushes eventually died out, probably succumbing to harsh winters, the elements and wildlife, and lack of nourishment and care. Now, more than ever, I find it humbling when I realize I possess the very same roses planted by the hands of our first settlers. And, the lineage is still alive for over a hundred and fifty years.

Ralph Waldo Emerson best reflects my feelings about these beautiful flowers with those prickly thorns:
 “There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence.”

BLURB:
 When widower Rich Redman returns to Pennsylvania with his young daughter to sell his deceased grandmother’s house, he discovers Grandmother Gertie’s final request was for him to find a missing relative and a stash of WWI jewels.
 
Torrie Larson, single mom, is trying to make her landscape center and flower arranging business succeed while attempting to save the lineage of a rare white rose brought from Austria in the 1900s.

 Together, the rich Texas lawyer and poor landscape owner team up to rescue the last rose and fulfill a dead woman’s wishes. But in their search to discover answers to the mysteries plaguing them, will Rich and Torrie also discover love in each other’s arms? Or will a meddling ghost, a pompous banker, and an elusive stray cat get in their way?