Susan's Hill Country Journal

March 3. The brave yellow daffodils are gone, and the pink-and-white choke cherry blossoms, zapped by a hard freeze. Our water system froze, too—not the pipes, but the pump. Bill is working on it and says that he’ll have it fixed in a couple of hours. Meanwhile, no water. This is one of the hazards of living in the country: the infrastructure which is usually invisible in the cities is always at the top of our minds, Roads, water system, electrical, septic—in one way or another, we’re responsible for most of it, and interruptions are always a challenge. Bill is talented at diagnosing and fixing the problems; if he weren’t, we couldn’t live here.

March 13. With the recent cold weather, I’m feeding huge flocks of birds. The cardinals and Inca doves are regular diners, and the redwing blackbirds, whose song I love, and seven (count them) species of sparrows. The cowbirds are out there too, unfortunately, both the brown-headed cowbird and the bronzed cowbird. Here’s a picture of the bronzed, which is prettier, but not much: http://www.birdphotography.com/species/broc.html. They are brood parasites--that is, the females lay their eggs in the nests of other birds. The cowbird chicks hatch first and compete against the other chicks for food and parental attention. To make doubly sure the cowbird chick survives, the brown-headed cowbird also pierces the other eggs in the nest. Talk about villains! In our area, they probably do most of their dirty work in the nests of the red-winged blackbirds, which are about their size (they can’t squeeze comfortably into a cardinal’s or bluebird’s nest). I hate the idea of the parasitism--but I love their song. I read somewhere that the female cowbird has to teach the male to sing his courting song. Wonder who teaches the female?

March 16. We’ve added a new member to our family—or rather, she added herself. She’s a small black cat who appeared at the back door last week, announced that she liked our house and intended to move in and make herself at home, and if there’s any extra liver available, she would prefer that to dry kitty food, please and thank you. She’s not afraid of the dogs, she knows how to use a litter box, and likes to sleep on the shelf in my office. We’ve been without cats for a couple of years now, and this one—Bill has named her Shadow—feels just about perfect. Lady and Zach aren’t as sure about the arrangement as we are, though. It may be a while before everybody sorts out where they belong and makes it clear just how much inter-species interference they’re going to tolerate. In the meanwhile, it’s fun to watch—and very nice to have a cat curled up on the papers on my desk.

March 17. The first hummingbird of the season showed up right on schedule last night, and for once, I was ready for him, the feeder full of hummingbird hootch and hanging in its proper place. He made a beeline for it, to the consternation of a flycatcher who has built her nest under the porch eaves. I’m sure they’ll get used to each other, though. If cats and dogs can coexist peaceably (more or less), a nesting flycatcher and a hungry hummer ought to do very well.

March 20. Whew! The short stories are finished now and are on their way to New York. I didn’t approach them with the enthusiasm I feel for the novels, but they were an interesting challenge, especially with all the "extra" stuff: recipes, craft instructions, herb lore. It was sometimes hard to find the right balance between the story and the add-ons. I’ll have a better feel for it when the page proofs get here (in 10 months or so) and I see how the book’s designer has laid out the pages. I’ve told them that it should look like a magazine lay-out, but I’m not sure whether the message got through. They’re used to producing books, not magazines. The pub date is still set for August 2003. I’m glad to have this project finished, so I can turn to the next one: the first chapter of the China Bayles book I’ll be working on this spring: A Dilly of a Death. In my current plan, the book has quite a lot to do with pickles, and I’ve scheduled a visit to a pickle factory in north Texas and a trip to an Arkansas pickle fest. Writers lead interesting lives, huh?

March 25. We’ve been hearing tom turkey calls for the past several days, and this morning, they showed up under my office window—three hen turkeys and their tom, the hens feeding together on bugs among what’s left of the daffodils, the tom a respectful distance away, keeping a watchful eye on his ladies. He has a stunning red comb and wattles, a blue head, and a feathery beard. Quite a magnificent fellow. The geese are still laying, although we’ve been finding broken eggs in the area of their nests. The culprit is probably the raccoon that has dug a den under the barn.

March 29. Bill is doing more research on the next Robin Paige. We uncovered an old novel (originally published in 1903) called Girl Among the Anarchists. The author (pen name Isabel Meredith) obviously was involved with the London anarchists. I’ve only browsed through it (I can’t really do Robin Paige work when I have my head full of China and dill pickles), but it looks as if there is a great deal of detailed, credible descriptive material that will be useful for the East End book we’ll be doing next. Bill is making plot notes and coming up with the background characters that make these books so much fun to write. I love being able to look ahead to the next writing project—it’s not just the security (although of course that’s good), but the idea that there is another interesting project in the works. And I very much love that time period, so chaotic and full of change, beneath the placid Victorian surface.