Susan's Hill Country Journal

October 1. We were wakened last night by the sound of rain on the porch roof--a sound so lovely that we lie awake and listen for a long time. Outdoors, just before sunrise, I make a tour of the garden, appreciating the deeper colors, the brighter blooms, the greener greens. The air is sweet and scented, and I especially enjoy the perfume of the rose geranium that grows beside the path, where I can brush my fingers over its chartreuse leaves as I walk by. I stop for a minute to enjoy the scent, and to think about the long-ago and far-away beginnings of this plant, whose native habitat was South Africa. It was first brought to Holland, and then to England. It isn’t a geranium at all, of course, but a Pelargonium, from the Greek word for "stork’s beak." These scented geraniums are tender perennials, which means that unless I dig up this massive rose-scented plant and move it into my makeshift greenhouse for the winter, it will be killed by the cold. Before frost, I’ll cut it back and use the leaves in a potpourri, then pot the plant for its winter vacation. But this morning, I’ll just enjoy it, and take a leaf with me when I go indoors, out of the early morning rain.

October 7. Our Writing From Life workshop last weekend. was wonderful. It’s hard to describe how I feel when I see a group of women—there were 24 participants at this workshop—discovering that they can write, and loving it. Most of us are terribly self-conscious about our writing: our work has been corrected and revised and frowned on so often that we don’t have any confidence in our own voices. But when a group of women get together to write about their lives and read what they’ve written out loud, they’re always astonished by how good it sounds and how easy it was to do. I love being with them, and I’m grateful to Story Circle for giving us all the opportunity to share this discovery, over and over again.

October 10. The gayfeather (Liatris spicata) is in full flower now, its 2-3’ purple flower spikes in bloom from bottom to top. This lovely native perennial grows all over the meadows, so thick in some areas that all you can see are masses of purple. I often see it in the supermarket floral departments, for a couple of dollars a stem—amazing to see it all growing here in such abundance. The nomadic Indians who traveled through this area made a decoction from the roots and used it to treat sore throats; the plant has, apparently, some sort of antibiotic properties.

October 14. The cattail meadow near the lake is a sea of gold right now, with the prairie goldenrod (Solidago) in bloom. We have two varieties here—one tall and multi-branched, the other short and single. Both are astonishingly attractive to insects—bees, flies, moths, spiders, beetles—and to their predators, especially wheel bugs and flower crab spiders. Some of the western Indian tribes had an interesting use for this plant: an infusion of the leaves and roots was made into a lotion and used by the tribe’s medicine man in sacred ceremonies.

There is also plenty of gold in the garden. Here’s a picture of one of my favorites, a variety of marigold called Copper Canyon daisy (Tagetes lemonii). The finely-cut foliage is covered with mounds of yellow blossoms and the whole plant smells to me like grapefruit. There’s one blooming just now near our bedroom window, and I can smell it as I drift off to sleep.

October 15. My advance reading copies of Indigo Dying arrived today—always a great moment. The cover of this book is stunning, a sort of embossed blue, exactly the shade of indigo, and a drawing of the plant. Authors usually don’t have anything to say about their covers. In fact, Bill and I have been engaged in a long-running battle over the covers of our Robin Paige mysteries, which don’t seem to have much connection with the book itself. But I usually have a conversation with the artist who does the China Bayles covers, if only to clue him in to the herb’s appearance. He got this one just right, and the cover designer put the whole package together with real artistic flair. I’m so pleased with it! I’ve also heard from the publicist, who says that this year’s book tour will take me west—Arizona, California, Oregon, Washington (maybe) and Colorado.

October 21. One of the things that mystery writers do when they’re not writing mysteries is to attend mystery conferences. The largest annual conference is called Bouchercon (after the mystery critic, Anthony Boucher). It was held last week in Austin, and over two thousand people attended. Bill and I (as Robin Paige) had one panel, on historical mysteries; and I participated in another, to talk about China’s mysteries. It was great fun, and gave us a chance to catch up on all the gossip with our favorite mystery authors, people like Carolyn Hart, Charlaine Harris, Steve Saylor, and Deborah Crombie. But best of all, our editor, Natalee Rosenstein, came out to MeadowKnoll to have dinner with us. We don’t get to see Natalee often enough. It was a wonderful evening.

October 22. But we are writing, so it’s back to work on our next Robin Paige, called Death in Hyde Park. The book is about half-finished, and going very well. But I’m distracted by the monarch butterflies outside my window. They’re migrating now, and this morning, as we walked under the cedar elms along the path to the lake, hundreds of them flew from the branches where they had been resting during the chilly night. They’re feasting on the flowers in the meadow—important fuel for them. They increase their body weight by something like sixty percent during the several weeks it takes them to fly across Texas, on their way to Mexico, where they spend the winter.

October 29. It’s been raining for the past several days, lightly and intermittently, and the garden loves it. The roses are blooming, the gayfeather are like tall purple exclamation points, and the salvias are covered with red and purple flowers, a feast for the few remaining hummingbirds. Along the tree line in the open fields to the east, the leaves and berries on the chinaberry trees (Melia azedarach) have turned bright gold and red. I love these trees, although most people consider them a "trash tree" and cut them down. It’s a short-lived tree (sixty years), and the leaves and occasional broken limbs probably do make a mess on driveways and streets. In Florida, the chinaberry is even considered a "noxious weed" and cannot be sold for landscaping.

But centuries ago, these trees were legendary in Middle and Far East, where they bore such names as the Persian Lilac, the Syrian Bead Tree, the Wealth of China, and were brought to England in the sixteenth century as a desirable shade tree. The tree is covered with scented lilac flowers in the spring and buzzes with bees seeking nectar; in the fall, its leaves turn brilliant golds and reds, and it produces sprays of hard yellow berries, a favorite of birds and raccoons, which hang on the bare tree until they’re all eaten. The berries are said to be poisonous, but the Cherokee Indians used an infusion of the roots and the bark to cure internal parasites and put down crushed leaves as an insect repellant inside their dwellings. They also used the lovely wrinkled dried seeds to make ritual necklaces. Altogether, a gorgeous tree, with more than enough uses to qualify it as an herb.