Post #56 – Women’s Memoirs, News – Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler
[Note: Don’t miss the news about Women’s Memoirs all-new, two-day workshop called Lucky Sevens! 7 Steps to Winning Story Structure that Takes the Gamble Out of Your Memoir Writing. You are invited to join Matilda and me in Las Vegas this October to learn about Structural Alchemy to help the memoir writer…this is actually the prelude course to our original Writing Alchemy.
And don’t worry, we’ve kept this affordable. Matilda also reports that there are some incredible airfare deals to be had (as for me, I still drive). Check out our Early-Bird Special that saves you even more (and includes a special bonus) when you register by July 8th.]
I began relating the sad, pathetic saga of my failed gardening adventures over on the Story Circle Network’s “Telling HerStories” blog this morning. You can read all the sordid details by clicking here.
I’m confident, however, that 2011 is going to be different. With grocery store prices soaring, once again I have considered growing a few vegetables. Tomatoes are what I really crave…big, red, soft (but firm), juicy, flavorful ones like my father grew every year. He must have put in more than 30 plants every spring. The payload was rich. All summer long we had tomato salads, and come September my mother would can several dozen jars of quarts of tomatoes for us to enjoy all winter. I don’t think we ever ate a store-bought tomato.
And then I moved away from home. Between living in dorm rooms and apartments and my perennially brown thumb I didn’t even consider the possibility that I could grow tomatoes.
I’d had a common fern once during my sophomore year in college. Its name was Ferdinand. It lived into my junior year…barely. I learned that you really have to work hard to kill a fern. But, then, I am an over-achiever. From then on I pretty much sublimated any desire I might have had to garden.
And so things remained…until Jodi Avery gave me three tomato plants. You can read that adventure over on the Story Circle Network blog today.
How Does My Garden Grow?
Let’s get back to the here and now. Grocery store prices are ridiculous, with no end in sight. While I’m willing to go without some things, I’m a foodie. I love good food, and I especially appreciate good produce. And since desperate times call for desperate measures, this summer I’ve put in a vegetable garden.
Structure in your garden...structure in your writing.
Okay, I had better come clean. I made a deal with a friend to give him a place to stay for a while if he’d help me become a vegetable gardener. So now I’ve gone from dead Ferdinand and the three failed tomato plants of two summers ago to:
16 tomatoes
6 pepper plants
2 oregano
16 lettuce
2 basil
2 mint
3 cilantro
3 garlic
1 chive
and a mess of small onions
Now aren't those pretty tomato plants!
Lunacy you say? No just a last-ditch measure to have affordable vegetables. And I’m not through planting yet. I’m planning to put in some fruit trees: apple, cherry, pecan and peach…all varieties that will thrive in Maine. And looking into my crystal ball I see hazy shapes forming…they could be cold frames…maybe even a simple shed/greenhouse. My father wouldn’t believe it. (When my father dug the foundation for his greenhouse, I cried when I discovered it wasn’t going to be a swimming pool.)
So what makes me think I can go from killing ferns to now growing all these vegetables? Well my friend who’s helping me actually knows what he’s doing. That’s the first rule of structure…get a good mentor and teacher. I’m figuring some of his knowledge will rub off on me. See, my brown thumb is already looking a little greener.
Yes, it's starting to turn green
But the real secret is the structure itself. Virtually everything in nature has structure…right down to the DNA in our cells. My garden structures are called raised bed frames. They’re fabulous, and we’ve filled them with some good (stinky) compost I got from a local strawberry grower who also knows what he’s doing. The raised beds with compost mean that I don’t have to fight the clay soil so common here in Maine. I shouldn’t have to fertilize or fight a bunch of weeds. And so far none of the local varmints have decided on a midnight snack.
Structure is the Solution
As the summer continues, I’ll keep you apprised of my progress. But I have to say that I have a really good feeling about the structure in my garden this time. And speaking of structure, please click this link and consider joining Matilda and me in Las Vegas this October. Structural Alchemy will solve a whole host of writing problems, challenges and irritants.
And don’t believe the ads…not everything in Vegas stays in Vegas. You’ll be taking home Structural Alchemy techniques that will stay with you for a lifetime.
memoir writing
story structure
theme and message
Structural Alchemy
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