Not the Mood of the story setting, but the mood of the writer in writing the story. That’s why it’s not capitalized in the title; I’m ashamed to say that I’m dependent upon it to write. It seems so whiney and full of excuses and reminds me of my mother’s words, "a lousy ballerina will say her skirt’s too long." This is the translation from Polish, and I suspect that I myself put in the "lousy" but the meaning is clear. Excuses. Blame. Failure to thrive, strive, survive.
Now I’m pinning my deadline stickers on July 27th, the last day of the summer semester. With luck, I’ll even push it up closer to the 24th, the first day the final exam is available online. (Right now, I’m cramming for an exam due by tomorrow night.) Then I’ll have to hustle my butt with reading, writing, and putting together otto for September publication, while trying to submit some new or reworked stories around.
And too, I’m antsy to return to formal study, perhaps a Lit course somewhere to help interpret my revived interest in learning to read, not trusting myself to maintain a regimented program on my own although posting on Spinning and your feedback on literature and writing posts will help keep me on course.
In other words, I must make a plan to fill my time with productive literary study and effort after the tomatoes, peppers, onions and cilantro have been chopped into salsa.
So for the past two weeks I have been pulling weeds, sowing seeds, transplanting flowers that pop up in the lawn to the garden and replacing them with the grass lush and long from the good garden soil. I am Susan, Mover of the Earth. And as you can see, while my vegie garden is about a month behind where it should be in mid-July, it is alive with the persistent flowers that drop seeds and bloom wherever. Obviously, I didn’t have the heart to pull them out and even transplanted them to the back of the garden behind the large grouping here. In the front, are my sadly in need of a long hot September peppers and tomatoes, and the barely discernible rows of everything else just peeking out. The trees at the far end are the peaches, two of the smaller ones up front had started themselves from fallen peaches just a few years ago, and I never dug them up in time to move them to a better spot. I’ll be moving the garden instead, come autumn, to a sunnier spot.
Took another photo this evening but it didn’t really reveal what I wanted to show you: A cardinal’s nest, lined with plastic, truly sheltering from the cool June that we had.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology