I am an author and I like to grow food. My latest book is “Rockstar Mom: 7 Ways To Be The Greatest Mom Ever“.
Writing & Growing Food
This is not the first book I have written and I now realize that being in the garden and growing food really helps a lot. What do I mean.
Growing food is the same to me as gardening. When I was in Ghana all the women had a garden. Every woman I met and heard about had a garden. This was where miracles happened. This was where they were in charge. For those women in the rural villages, this was the key to their living. I began to understand more about the seasons. And where we had greenhouses, I begun to understand more about that sense of order and greatness of the Master.
Returning to Canada, the feeling is still present but now I hear a lot about the summer solstice. I suppose this is because finally the frost is gone, spring rains continue and we can look forward to that quickly fleeting summer.
According to the Old Farmers Almanac:
“The timing of the solstice is not based on a specific calendar date and time. It depends on when the Sun reaches its northernmost point from the equator. The word solstice is from the Latin solstitium, from sol (sun) and stitium (to stop), reflecting the fact that the Sun appears to stop at this time (and again at the winter solstice).
In temperate regions, we notice that the Sun is higher in the sky throughout the day, and its rays strike Earth at a more direct angle, causing the efficient warming we call summer. This summer solstice is the day with the most hours of sunlight during the whole year. See our handy sunrise and sunset calculator for how many hours of sunlight you get in your location”.
For us here in Ontario, summer is supposed to begin on June 21st. Frankly I hope it lasts much longer than it did last year where suddenly we were in fall without any warning. Besides I have not been able to go outside in no-sleeves or my granddaughter in shorts up until now. So there. Saying it’s summer might be a technical detail but in reality the rain continues to power down with thunderstorms to boot.
But back to the growing food and writing.
The Old Farmers Almanac has a poem from Gallienne
I meant to do my work to-day
But a brown bird sang in the apple-tree,
And a butterfly flitted across the field,
And all the leaves were calling me.
–Richard Le Gallienne (1866–1947)
And that’s why I feel good when I garden. The pea-dove thought about making her nest in the potted plants on the porch. And it made me feel good about the peace, the serenity that gave me some motivation to write. Coming to a full stop in the writing, I leave the desk, go outside , prune a tree, transplant a seedling or mulch a vegetable. It stretches the old muscles (not as young as I would like to think), and helps the blood return to the limbs.
In this short video https://www.dropbox.com/s/xh4y3iqftfqbmp8/20170616_115214.mp4?dl=0 you will see me in my garden. It’s really an introduction to an interview with Cheryl, a young Mom in Canada.
I mention my book Rockstar Mom which has a launch date of June 30th to July 4th, 2017. For those days you will get the book for 99 cents or free on Amazon.com or Amazon.uk I will also introduce you to a great way to make smoothies and a wonderful place to get ice cream in Markham. Lots of videos also from Moms .
Writing is not all that simple. There are numerous books and sites on the web telling you how to write, how to get PLR content to help with the writing, how to steal plots for books , all sorts of things. But every writer has a trick somewhere. For me I just found out how much growing food helps.