Susan's Meadow Knoll Journal

September 4. While we were on vacation, Bill and I worked on the plot and characters for the new Robin Paige book, which we’re calling Death at Glamis Castle. Now we’re getting serious about it, because our publishing schedule has been revised and it’s due January 1. We’ve been digging into the secrets of the turn-of-the-century Royal Family and its relationship to the German Kaiser William II, (known as Willie to the family--Victoria’s grandson and a monomaniacal character, if there ever was one). If anything, there’s too much good material and we've come up with too many good ideas about how to use it! We’re going to have trouble organizing all this into a coherent plot. But both of us definitely prefer to have too much material to work with, rather than not enough, and between the two of us, we’ve written nearly 6,000 words already. At this rate, the book will be finished before Christmas.

September 7. More work on Glamis, but there’s also been time for other things. Summer rains bring on the weeds, bushels of them, so there’s plenty of weed-pulling. Cooler weather is coming, and there’s transplanting to do—iris to move, and volunteer salvias, day lilies, oxe-eye daisies, and lambs ears. Dividing the other perennials (Mexican mint marigold, leucanthus, verbena) will come later, after the first frost knocks back the heavy foliage. There are two new gardens to plant—the landscaped area around Archie Bunker, our storm shelter, and the sliver of garden outside my office window—but there are plenty of plants elsewhere to fill them with. That’s the beauty of a perennial garden: multiplication and division!

September 9. Bill came in to fetch me this afternoon and took me out to see a garden spider mama wearing her garden spider babies like a bumpy, furry coat—an incredible sight to see. An amazingly prolific mom, she must have given birth to a hundred or more babies, all clinging tightly to her. Bill picked her up on a stick and moved her from his tractor to the woodpile, the babies vibrating wildly. What an unruly mob of youngsters!

September 13. All day yesterday, Peggy (our webmistress) and I worked on a new page on the Story Circle website. We’re calling it "Give Sorrow Words," and it’s designed to be a place where people can post their feelings about the tragedy. For the main page, I wrote an article about writing about grief and loss. I’ve put my journal for the days following the attack there, at http://www.storycircle.org/sorrow/albert.html. You’re welcome to share your thoughts on this website too.

September 17. Like everyone else in the country, Bill and I are trying to get back to work—but it’s difficult, because we are both drawn to the developing news on television. I don’t want to turn it off, because I want to know, but most of the time we mute it, so we won’t be distracted. This morning, I took a photo of my windowsill greenhouses, which I make out of 3-liter soft drink bottles. I slice the bottle in half with a sharp knife, then heat an ice pick in the gas flame on the stove and poke holes in the bottom half for drainage. I fill it with rooting medium (I like vermiculite, but sand and potting soil work just fine), wet it thoroughly, and poke 8-10 holes in it with a chopstick. Then I take cuttings, strip the lower leaves, and dip the stem ends in a rooting powder before I stick them into the medium. Then the hat goes on and the greenhouses, one by one, line up on my kitchen window sill, where I can admire and encourage them.

September 19. Purple is autumn’s signature color at Meadowknoll. Eryngo, a wilding, is probably the most brilliant, and a prairie blooming with eryngo in early September is one of the prettiest sights you can hope to see. This plant looks enough like a thistle to fool the uninitiated, but while it’s tall (about 3 feet), stiff, and thistle-prickly, it belongs to an entirely different family, Eryngium. (Ours is Eryngium leavenworthii). Nicholas Culpeper, the famous 18th century herbalist, listed many medicinal uses for this striking plant: opening obstructions of the spleen and liver, healing jaundice, treating dropsy (what we now know as congestive heart failure), and soothing intestinal pain. Oh, yes, it’s also supposed to "strengthen the procreative spirit." Well, I don’t know about the procreative part, but I do know that a glance at a field of blooming eryngo is enough to lift my spirits and make me want to sing. Eryngo holds its color as a dried plant (hang it upside down in a dark place for a couple of weeks to dry), but it needs to be placed where inquiring fingers don’t poke it—it’ll poke right back!

September 22. Mexican bush sage (Salvia leucantha) is another purple autumn plant, but it blooms in my garden. It’s an extraordinarily hardy plant, and blooms in a wide range of hues, from pale to brilliant purple, often on the same plant. The hummingbirds love its tubular blossoms, and I.love to cut a few sprays and bring the, indoors to brighten my office.

September 24. Our first serious cold front came through last night, a brisk northern breeze is blowing across the prairie, and Bill and I wore sweaters as we walked up to feed the geese. It’s amazing what a 15-degree drop in the temperature will do for the spirit! September is Meadowknoll’s month for grasses, and they’ve never been more abundant than they are this year, billowing green and golden across the fields and hills. With all the rain we’ve had in the past month, even the most over-grazed of our meadows are now coming to new life, with blooming grasses everywhere, some (the King Ranch bluestem) waist-high. Indoors, both Bill and I seem to have a new energy this morning, and we’re both at work on the next Robin Paige mystery. This book is set in Scotland, and we spent yesterday evening going through the pictures and notes that we made on our trip there last year. That’s the joy of being a writer, as Anais Nin once said: you taste life twice, once in the doing and again in the writing—many more times, actually, because you certainly read and reread as you work.

September 26. It’s still cool, not just in the mornings but all day, and the air seems to hold all the mysterious energy of autumn. Bill and I celebrated our wedding anniversary last week, 15 years of living and working together. As we look back and think how much has changed for us in the last 15 years—and not just for us but in the world—we’re amazed. Fifteen years ago, there was no Internet, no dotcoms or email, and we didn’t even have a fax machine. And our big achievement in that year was writing a couple of Nancy Drew mysteries. Launching a full-time writer career was a scary prospect, back then, with no assurances that the writing would actually pay the bills. Both of us feel blessed that we’ve been able to make a success of it.

September 30. Last day of the month, a melancholy day, a melancholy month. The sumac leaves are still mostly green, but there’s an abundance of scarlet berries, which the raccoons dearly love. Last year, I saw one hungry fellow climb an eight-foot tree that was much too slender and supple for him, and before he could reach the berries, the tree had bent all the way to the ground. He held it down with his weight, feasting happily, and when he finished and stepped off, the tree sprang back upright.