Nancy Bartholomew

On Friday I'm leaving to spend 9 whole days at the cabin.  This probably means God will strike me dead- or worse.

How has it come to this?  How have I arrived at the point where taking time to do the thing I love (and hate), the thing I do to earn a living (which explains my abject poverty) is now such a guilty pleasure I'm sure I'll rot in Hell for it?

Worse- I feel guilty when I'm not writing and now, apparently, guilty when I do.

Great.  

I have a feeling Joshilyn Jackson would "get" this.  I've just finished her book, "Between, Georgia," and loved it so much, I immediately downloaded "gods in Alabama."  Somehow I happened upon her blog and began reading about some of her own writer's angst.

We must be distant kin. 

She's really a very wonderful writer and funny as all get-out...but serious, too.

Okay, lest you think I'm a fanatic, it's back to the daily grind.  I've got packing to do.

And praying. 

 The week  of  July  5th  I will be teaching at the Wildacres  Writers  Workshop.    If you write and are serious about your craft, this is  one workshop you really won't want to miss.   It's held in a beautiful retreat  in the Blue Ridge Mountains, about 30 minutes from Asheville.  The faculty is top-notch.   The tuition is really not bad.  And you get to work with one instructor in an intensive, week-long seminar that will absolutely rejuvenate your creative spirit.

 
This year, for the first time, they're offering a scholarship.   That probably means there aren't too many people who know about it yet.   The applicant pool may be smaller than it will be in future years.  So...like, go apply for it!  Tell them I sent you.

Nine rose bushes, one Echinacea, snapdragons, garlic, shallots- They're all in the ground.  Now, will they thrive? Who knows, but I had a long chat with them about it.  I welcomed them to their new home.  I promised to do my best.  And then, turned my back, hopped in the car and drove back to town.

I'm sure as soon as I left, the deer gave the all-clear signal and came running down off the mountain.  "Supper's ready!" Mama deer yelled.

Looks like I'll be heading back up to the cabin tomorrow.  Nine new bareroot roses arrived today and they need to get into the ground asap, so off I go!  Wish the Eldest Young'un was still home. I could use a little diggin' assist. 

It was a very productive weekend at the cabin.  We plowed, we hoed, we fenced, we dug- We worked hard.

And once again- We had help.  This time neighbor Joe brought over his tractor and helped level out the new garden area. 

Then we installed the deer fence.

Poor Lovey got so tuckered out, she fell asleep on the job!  Of course, she said she wasn't sleeping, just resting her eyes! But as hard as we worked the Eldest and his Lovey, I wouldn't blame her if she had been sleeping.

As usual, we played hard, too.

At one point, on our way up the mountain to view a possible home site,  we heard noise coming from the old, as yet un-renovated, cabin.  So Lovey and the Eldest went on Security Alert.

Intruders may not know this, but our Lovey is a Force to be Reckoned With and the Eldest is no slouch either...

  [url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/33435297@N00/2358779225/][img]http://static.flickr.com/2398/2358779225_de9fffc0b8_d.jpg[/img][/url]

(That is NOT a cigarette in his hand, it's a shell casing.)

 By the time the posse was assembled, our mysterious intruder had come and gone- leaving behind an apparently unopened 10 gallon can of paint.

Strange, eh?