A Crucible V

Resolution, of a kind

[post too long for email]

It has been an extraordinary spring. Or rather, here in Minnesota, we went from winter to summer, with about a four day interval of spring-like weather in between. It has been hot (80’s+) and dry the last three weeks. It rained lightly maybe twice in May. There is no rain in the forecast, the weather more typical of late July/early August; while 200 miles west farmers were quite late putting seed in the ground, the ground is so wet. Here farmers (without irrigation) are already concerned they could lose their corn and soybeans to the heat.

My pond dried up, the one I dug to give the orchard a fertile jump-start. So I dropped a sand point well.

Actually, I got a little over-zealous like a kid, hammering on the pipe with the maul like I was splitting logs, damaging the second pipe, the sand point five feet down, which I spent an hour digging out. Starting over, the process went smoothly, I found water at eight feet, dropping the sand point to 12’. The water table is so shallow here, I won’t have to irrigate the trees more than a year or two, they will send roots to the aquifer (and be more able to handle winter.) The strawberries, raspberries, grapes and fruiting shrubs will always have to be irrigated.

Pumping water with a pitcher pump is actually harder and more time consuming than dropping five gallon buckets in a pond. But now I have water on demand, which feels really good, because otherwise I would not have been able to water the orchard.

Using the pond mud, particularly the layer of clay I used as the base layer of the strawberry bed, has proved to be a smart decision with all this sun and heat. The clay holds water very well. The strawberries have not been watered in five days, yet they are standing tall and flowering like they are watered daily.

Inspired, I added a water feature in the garden, in the middle of the hall of melons.

I cut a paper grain bag in three pieces, tightly folding one side to make a cattail bag, put some black dirt with rocks on top to hold the root down. The cardboard box holds a willow. More cattails in seed potato bags; a lily pad I found in a different big box garden center. I added more cattails, some reed grass and another water grass I found, later.

It is a work in progress. Birds and dragonflies will love it, and eat lots of bugs. It is also nice for spot watering, I can dip a watering can in the pond instead of dealing with the hose. Two days in and there are already water striders, and birds bathing in it.

I really enjoy building a pond. Now that the infrastructure work is mostly done I can focus on truly enjoying the garden and orchard.

I said this in my first post about this crucible:

The next two months will be like a crucible, which I fully intend on changing me, forging a new me, something like an alchemical transformation. I turn 50 on the 4th of July, this work is like a kind of capstone to the first fifty years of my life.

Have I changed? I’ve lost nearly 40 lbs since December, the last 14 falling away quickly after I started working 16hr days. I am now a lean 6+ft tall, 192lbs, which I haven’t been since I was 35. That is quite a change.

I am more patient with myself than I have been historically, I was more patient with myself through this process than I normally am, I let myself rely on myself to get done what needed to get done, I did not get hard on myself (most of the time) when I made mistakes, I simply fixed the problem.

I built a large garden and a 3/4 acre orchard, with my own labor mostly without machine help. That has opened up all kinds of possibilities, the things I am interested in that could make a viable business, where the financing would come from, the process and path of it. I have the energy.

I have also questioned myself, do I really want to be a public figure? I have a novel with an editor; it is coming up on a year of this substack and I am thinking about adding a paid subscriber option; it is not unprecedented for me to walk away from a book and blog. Relative anonymity has it’s benefits. I am not such a public figure I cannot take it back. I have the coolest, most intelligent, best-ever subscribers on substack, but there are only 435 of you. To know, to dare, to do and to be silent? But then I’m not doing any of this to be rich and famous, and what I am doing and writing is sure to not make me very much of either :)

Some of the changes happening right now will not be clear until sometime in the future.

The garden is looking well. We have been eating a lot of radishes, as well as baby beets, cabbage and kohlrabi greens.

Potatoes, cabbage, salad greens.

Bush beans, cabbages, salad greens, brussels.

There is a lot of confidence in that. There was no garden here. I have never gardened like this before. This is happening.

This past Sunday, two women, separately from each other, a half hour apart, told me the flowers in the garden center look great, that I am doing a great job. The first woman, who maintains flower plantings for a local golf course, said to me, “the plants here look amazing this year, is that you? In the past this place always looked like the plants weren’t being watered.” The second woman said essentially the same. That was genuine, that was spontaneous, that felt good.

And then…my editor contacted me.

I have gone through your book, and my professional conclusion is that the structural, syntactical, and logical issues within it are not ones that can be addressed without a complete rewrite. As such, I cannot charge you for an edit.

I should stress that the premise and much of the plot is sound; it's not a bad book. But I do not believe it is a finished book either, and as such, I cannot provide a line or a developmental edit.

To his credit, he is paying back the money I sent him. That says a lot about his character, he could have faked it, done the edit though he didn’t believe in it, kept the money. I know he needs the money.

“It’s not a bad book” is a double negative.

Life is like that sometimes, maybe all the time, you think you finally have it figured out, things are going really well…then something happens and I realize I do not have it figured out, it’s like I’m back where I started.

A complete rewrite? That is not what I was anticipating. I was anticipating an edit I could work with, on the way to having a book ready to print by the end of summer. Ten years passed between the beginning and the end of that draft novel. A complete re-write seems…daunting.

Perhaps it is time for me to put the very dream of being a working writer to bed?

Fuck that. I am a writer, I write. I am going to keep writing until I am dead.

What is your opinion, dear reader? What would you like to see from this substack? What would make it more worthy of your time…and money? What would you be willing to pay for? I am thrilled to have 435 subscribers, but I have lost at least as many as I have gained. This substack needs to evolve, a lot of this has been about simply writing, about whatever, to keep writing for practice. More of the same is not much of an option.

What do you want from a novel? Any feedback including “put it all to bed” is welcome.

Thank you, readers.