This month has been a slow one for writing, between sending my faerie book out into the query trenches, returning to the very messy first draft of another book, and every single family member taking their turn to get sick. But it’s happening, word by word!
From the Bookshelf
I’m on a reading roll at the moment! The Foxglove King for a book club, and The Haunting of Hill House to continue my gothic theme. A highlight was The Offing by Benjamin Myers, which was a gift from a friend and utterly charming, languishing in the joy of language for the sake of indulgence. And I’ve started The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, which is the first book by the much recommended Stephen Graham Jones that I’ve read, and I’m only three chapters in but totally hooked.
From the Garden
As I slowly chip away at all the little spring tasks, the pay-off of last year’s hard work is in making itself clear. Although I previously tested a dozen or so tulips that came in a pack of mixed bulbs, this is my first time growing them as they’re supposed to be grown: in magnificent drifts of colour. In the bed formerly housing a bedraggled rosemary bush, I planted these fantastic red and yellow tulips where they catch the morning sun. The other tulip bed always spends the summer growing sweet peas, but the rest of the year it’s fallow. This was a great idea, because I get to enjoy lovely flowers instead of mud and weeds, but the timing is a little off—the sweet peas, indoors and currently several inches tall, are supposed to be planted out in the next few weeks, but the tulips are still going strong.
The star of the show is, of course, the bluebells. I am lucky that they grow in greats sprawls through my garden, as well as popping up beside the hyacinths and white dead-nettles in a charming, cottage-garden display.
Beatrice Morgan 