Susan's Meadow Knoll Journal

February 1. Bill won’t be back until Sunday, and I’m still enjoying my solitary quiet. Well, not quite solitary, since Zach (our black Lab, who misses Bill too) is staying very close to me. I think he’s afraid that I’ll vanish too, and then who’ll dish out his puppy dinners? He is such a delight on our long morning walks—a floppy-eared, middle-aged dog, pronging like a teen-aged antelope through the tall, frosty grass. He goes after every scent, chases birds, and runs three miles to my one. Back home, he flops down under my desk when I settle in to the morning’s writing, and snores.What a fine companion. The only bad part of the last few days is the back problem that was probably cause by that long travel day on Monday, returning from South Bend. St. John’s wort has helped, but I think this is a problem that’s too big even for that wonderful herb.

February 3. We’ve had several rains in the last few weeks—no gully-washers, just the sort of quiet, misty rain the bluebonnets love—and the lake is full and running over. Which means that Cypress Branch, our high-falutin’ name for the overflow ditch that carries run-off from the lake into our creek, is running full and fast. We planted three cypress trees there last year, and I was afraid we had lost them to the drought. Maybe now they’ll decide it’s worth living after all. There are frogs and red-winged blackbirds in cattail marsh, and bright green grass around the barn. My daffodils are up, a couple of them (the very early varieties) already displaying plump flower buds, and one iris, one of the white irises that Bill brought from the Co-op where he lived during his college years, is blooming! Wish my back felt better, so I could get out and do a little garden clean-up. I have one of those clever "back benches" in my office, in front of my computer--one of those things where you rest most of your weight on your knees, to keep the load off your spine. I'm using that, of course, and my back brace, but nothing seems to be helping. And I'm supposed to go to Illinois next weekend for the Mount Vernon Herb Show!

February 15. I didn't make it to Mount Vernon last weekend. An hour to the airport, three hours on the plane, two hours in the car, and ditto for the return trip--just impossible. It's the first time I've ever cancelled an appearance and I hated to disappoint everyone, but I just couldn't do it.

February 18. Our agent faxed us copies of the Publishers Weekly and Library Journal reviews of Death at Epsom Downs--both positive, strong reviews. We generally don't worry about book reviews, since we've been writing long enough to know that reviewers are like other readers; they all have personal likes and dislikes. But strong reviews in PW and LJ encourage libraries to order a book, and since this is the first hardcover publication of the Robin Paige series, it would be nice to get the book into the libraries. Many libraries have been shelving the paperbacks, but they don't usually catalog them or reorder when the book falls to pieces from frequent reading. These two reviews make it more likely that libraries will purchase the book.

February 19. The daffodils are putting on a beautiful spring show outside my office window, drifts and banks of them along the woods. They're making up for last year, when the drought kept them down to a few yellow blooms. A couple of years ago, I bought a clutch of bulbs from White Flower Farm, especially chosen (according to the catalog) for southern gardens. I don't know about that part of it, but that group of bulbs, which I planted in an ivy bed around the redbud trees, have outdone themselves this year: clusters of blossoms on a single stalk, a great variety of yellow and orange cups (exactly the color of Cheetos!), and ruffles galore. The violas and pansies in the boxes on the deck are blooming too, and the grass is an improbable green--such a lovely surprise after months and months of drought-burned brown!

February 21. It's the time of year when I hate to stay indoors, but we're on the downhill slope of the book we've been working on since Thanksgiving, and I need to stay with it. But aside from my daily seven-hour stint at the computer, there's been some time to get outdoors. And my back feels better--enough to let me prune roses, anyway, on my lunch-hour breaks and after I quit for the day. I have nearly three dozen now, so it's a job. I had 18 rugosa hedge roses along the fence in the south meadow, but the deer decided to snack on them so Miles moved them closer to the house for me. I've taken a couple of dozen rosemary starts, expecting them to be large enough by next fall so they can replace the roses. Deer do not find rosemary tasty.

February 23. I ordered six more roses (my birthday present, delayed a bit) from Mike Stroup's Antique Rose Emporium in Independence, TX. on Monday, and UPS brought them today! They are healthy and strong-looking and ready to go into the ground: Fortuniana, New Dawn, Seven Sisters, Reve d'Or, and two more Zephirene Droughin. When I see the roses, I think with pleasure of that lovely nursery, and all the hard work it takes to bring those six roses from their gardens to mine. If you'd like to see some pictures and read about Mike's gardens, you can go here: http://gardening.miningco.com/homegarden/gardening/library/weekly/aa070598.htm.

February 24. Bill has been making cedar-picket bluebird houses and coffee-can wren houses (we found the plans for this nifty little house in the magazine Birds 'N' Blooms, February/March 2000) and this week, and Miles took down the martin houses and blocked up the doors so the sparrows can't set up housekeeping. Last year, I carelessly let the sparrows move in and the purple martins (when they finally arrived in May) refused to have anything to do with those noisy neighbors, although there were several vacant apartments. This year, I plan to be a more attentive and discriminating landlady. The sparrows can live somewhere else. I wish there was something I could do to keep the cowbirds from laying their eggs in the bluebird boxes, but that's a fruitless wish. Nature has programmed them to be parasitic, and that's all there is to it.

February 25. A Northern harrier has taken up winter residence at Meadow Knoll for the past couple of months, and yesterday I got a good look at him, perching on the tree limbs Bill has been cutting and has piled to burn. He's a beautiful, large bird with a wingspan of something close to three feet (I'm guessing), a white rump, and yellow legs and feet. He flies much closer to the ground than our other hawks (Cooper's and red-tail) and dives precipitously. I've read that these birds frequent wetlands, a word that perfectly describes Cattail Corner this year, and that they feed on small birds and mice--up to a thousand mice a year. Go for it, guy!

February 26.

The forsythia in the woods is blooming a bright, cheerful yellow. I went out to take its picture, and while I was out, I took a picture of the ivy wrapping itself around Methusaleh, the oldest tree in our woods, and probably the grandfather of the whole woodlot. (We name our trees, because we talk about them and work with them, and it’s easier and more interesting to say "Methusaleh" than to say "That big old oak down by the creek." Methusaleh is bigger than big. It’s an enormous, sprawling live oak, over 300 years old, nearly 50 feet tall, with a canopy that must be well over 70 feet in diameter. About 25 years ago, Bill planted a little patch of ivy at the foot of the tree, which has now crept all through the woods, lovely and green, especially in winter, when everything else is frost-brown. If we don’t keep it cut off the tree, it would probably climb all the way to the top!