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During lockdown, we had a go at growing various fruit and veg. Strawberry plants came from our local budget supermarket. Peas, carrots, lettuce, rocket, spinach and courgette seeds were posted to the children from their grandparents in Devon. Some potatoes that had grown eyes at the bottom of the bag got planted out. Apple and lemon pips were planted and there is now a miniature orchard in the garden and a porch filled with lemon 'trees'.
In due time, we reaped our harvest: a handful of peas, nine tiny carrots, fifteen mini potatoes, and one knobbly strawberry salvaged from the family of woodlice that got the rest of the crop. The courgette plant got infested with flea beetles (although it did yield a solitary marrow, after we'd abandoned it to its fate). The lettuce, rocket and spinach grew well, but were situated under a tree branch that served as a long-drop toilet for our local pigeon colony.
It was the first harvest for our children, and although it was small, it was a real joy in an otherwise fairly bleak season.
Which makes it a convenient analogy for my writing....
Over the summer, I was very grateful to have been selected for the MumWrite development course (see my post about it here). As a result, I got some new writing done and started submitting work again. This month, I have a crop of publications to share with the world. Like the children's harvest, it is small, but it is an encouragement for me to keep going, and hopefully it will also bring a bit of joy to anyone who comes across the poems. Here are some links:
My poem 'dream' is in issue #3 of -algia.
Two poems, 'Selfharm/Selfcare' and 'Twitter-light' on the Selcouth Station website.
My poem 'Headspace [no vacancies]' is in issue #69 of streetcake magazine.
I also have another poem 'The truth about sea glass' posted on the
Places of Poetry map (a sea-quel, if you will, to the poem about Seaham, 'Sea Glass', that I posted there last year).
While all these small fruits have been emerging, we have been cocooned back in isolation as cases of covid have cropped up at school, so there hasn't been much writing going on (by me, at least - the 5 year old has written a lot of painstakingly slow sentences about seasons). Hopefully there will be more time for writing and submitting again soon!
