Where is Spring?

This weather is just not getting any better. Where the heck is Spring? Summer is just around the corner and we still have frost at night. I’ve bought all of my plants and seeds and I’m ready to seed and plant my garden. My plants are standing in the garage, waiting and wondering what is going on.
I saw a hummingbird yesterday feeding from our feeder and today I watched an Oriole clinging to the feeder and dipping its beak into the yellow plastic flowers for some sugar water. Poor thing. It tired itself out by hanging on and pretending to be a hummingbird. Once in a while, it nearly fell to the floor from exhaustion and rested on the ground to try again a few minutes later. I’ve never seen that before. I wonder if it is common that Orioles feed from hummingbird feeders. They sure are beautiful birds.
The Juncos are gone now. They hang around only for a short time. We have plenty of sparrows, all different kind. I see a lot of Harris Sparrows; they have black heads and throats, with yellowish bills, and are fairly large. Then there are the White-Crowned Sparrows with their white strips running from the back of their head to the front. Some have three stripes, some only one. Some of them are probably White-throated Sparrows. There are also the Chipping Sparrows with their red heads. Of course, there are others that I can’t identify. I’m not really a bird specialist.
We’ve had a few American Finches on our Finch Feeder. Once they are here, they stay, but they do most of their feeding in the fall before they go back south. That’s when we get large numbers of them. Most of them are the young ones, they are quite small and need to fatten up before they leave.
A few Black Birds and Blue Jays also show up to scare the smaller birds away. They are a bit messy but they are beautiful birds. I don’t chase them away. We’ve also had a few Common Redpolls passing through on their way up north where they breed in the summer. I believe I saw a straggler yesterday, unless it was a Red Finch.
I started planting an apple tree but had to give up because it began to rain. And that after the weather people said this morning no precipitation today. Well, we all know how dependable those forecasts are. Luckily, it didn’t rain too much and I shall carry on tomorrow. Actually, I have two apple trees to plant. I did manage to plant a Pyramidical Cedar though. The one we had in front of our fireplace didn’t make it through the winter. I’ll never buy another Cedar from Home Depot again. Or Walmart. Those Cedars are grown south of the border, in the USA, and not hardy enough for our climate. This was the second one that didn’t make it. That means I lost two years of growth. The one I bought cost me $50.00 instead of $20.00, but it was grown in Manitoba and I have a five-year warranty on it. We’ll see. Cedars are finicky. Many of my neighbors planted large numbers of them around their properties and most of them turned brown and died. I never asked where they bought them, but I’d bet not at the local garden center. I’m not trying to run down Home Depot and Walmart. They are good stores and I buy there. In fact, when I was in business, I bought most of my materials at Home Depot, but there are just some things you have to buy at the right places.
The only good thing about rain is that I get a bit of time to do some writing. I’m over 51,000 words now with my ‘Mindgod’ novel. There is more to come.

Surprise, Surprise

Somebody screwed up. When I woke up this morning and looked out of the window I saw something that shouldn’t be there. Snow. Not on May 9. As a writer with a fertile imagination I immediately thought that I might have slipped into another dimension or possibly traveled back in time. Whoopee, I am young again. Then I looked in the mirror and still thought ‘time travel’. Only I traveled in the wrong direction: into the future. The image I saw in the mirror was that of an old guy in need of a haircut and a shave. Then reality set in. That old guy was me and I was still in the present. Damn!
Well, I guess I’ll have to beg my wife to give me a haircut. That always shaves ten years off my looks. Unfortunately not my age. Yes, that’s right, my wife cuts my hair. No, she is not a barber or hairdresser, but she has a talent for it. She used to cut our kids’ hair and one day she cut mine. I liked it and after that she did it all the time. There are advantages to that. I don’t have to take time off to go to the barber and sit and wait for my turn. I don’t have to pay and best of all, no tips. Well, that’s not true either. I help her with the dishes and with making the bed. And I go shopping with her. Although, she complains that we always buy too much when I’m with her and it takes too long, but she doesn’t mind when I carry the grocery bags.
Tomorrow is Mother’s Day and the weather people promised warmer weather. Let’s hope they are right for a change. Yesterday, I bought some seeds for my garden. I’ve already tilled it under and I’m ready for seeding and planting. Usually, I plant my garden in the last week of May or right after the long weekend. The way things are progressing it may not happen this year. There is nothing more heartbreaking than seeing your plants die because they were hit by frost. Even the seeds won’t sprout if the soil doesn’t warm up.
I put out the Finch feeder and the Hummingbird feeder because somebody told me they saw their first Hummingbird in their yard. Poor bird. There are no flowers blooming yet.
The birds are slowly coming back from the South. On Thursday I saw seven Pelicans circling over our property. I talked to a friend this morning and he said that he has a pair of Mallards nesting on his pond and also a pair of Wood ducks in the nesting box near his house. Maybe Summer is just around the corner.
Happy Mother’s Day.

Nothing political

Did my periodic check of my sales on Fiction Wise today. Here is the list of my book sales:

Stardogs 2 in position number 6
Cliffs of Time in number 7
Seeds of Chaos 2 in number 9
Stardogs 2 in number 12
Orion, the Hunt in number 23
Daughter of the Dark in number 27
Mother of Light in number 28
Goddess of Life in number 30
Seeds of Chaos 1 in number 31
Dual Visions in number 34
Men of Eros (Digest) in number 42
Midnight Raunch (Digest) in number 52
Beyond the Stars (Digest) in number 66

As you can see from 34 books 10 of them are mine. That is nearly 30 % of all the books published by MSFiction and sold on Fiction Wise. I have to admit that is impressive. If only the numbers were there to make it really special, but it still makes me feel good.

I’ve been busy with writing ‘The Mindgod’. So far, I’ve written 40,000 words. Most of the novel I copied (and translated where necessary) from my scribbler. I also edited it and re-wrote some at the same time. Now I’ve come to the end of what I’ve written, and from now on I’ll be working from scribbled outlines and vague ideas. That means it will go a bit slower. It’s been years since I wrote it (over twenty!) and, of course, I don’t remember exactly where I was actually going with the story (If I even had it mapped out in my head at that time). I wrote an ending for it but I’m not sure if I’m going to use it. We’ll see.

Right now, there is so much work in the yard and that keeps me from writing, but the work needs to be done. We’ve raked and cut the grass, collected and burned the fallen willow branches. It was a huge pile. I’ve tilled my garden once. Now I want to put in some fertilizer. In the past I’ve used Alfalfa pellets. They are actually rabbit food but Alfalfa is a good fertilizer. Last year, in the fall, I tilled a lot of leaves into the garden. They should help to make the soil fertile.

I also bought a couple ‘Goodland’ Apple trees. They need to be planted. The one I planted two years ago, died and my one good producer, a ‘Parkland’ Apple tree, didn’t have any apples at all last year. I hope it isn’t giving up now, I need that tree.

Today is quite cold (4 Celsius) and it is drizzling off and on. Not a nice day. It better warm up because I usually plant my garden in the last week of May when we shouldn’t get any more frost, but here are never any guarantees.

In case I don’t get a chance to post something until Sunday, have a Happy Mother’s Day.