A little time alone watching a flock of birds in the woods today inspired a poem.
My poetry is infrequent and when the drive to write one hits, I just have to get it out of my head. And since I’m not a practiced poet, lol, it never has a formal structure. Just free verse. Some imagery I needed to record, and I hope you enjoy it too.
click to enlarge About the voice behind this blog, Madison Woods
I'm a creative old soul living way off the beaten path with my husband in the wild Ozark Mountains. Besides homesteading, growing plants & making crafty things and newsletters, I write books and stories. My rural fantasy fiction, written under the pen name, Ima Erthwitch, usually takes place in a much altered Ozarks.
Ways You Can Support Wild Ozark
Spread the Word
Share this post or tell a friend about my website. "From little acorns do mighty oaks grow." A little thing like sharing could start momentum! This is a free and tremendously powerful way to help.
Unique gifts, books, and information for the nature lovers in your life. Adding more items as time allows: Wild Ozark Nature Boutique.
Become a Patron
A small monthly stipend of even $1 from enough supporters will help me continue the educational outreach and construction of habitat gardens. More information here: https://www.patreon.com/wildozark
Thank you for reading and/or participating in this Wild Ozark community! ~ Madison Woods
You’ve probably referred to projects you’ve put on hold as being “on the back burner”. I understood what the phrase meant, and had used it often myself, but when we got our new/old cook stove, I learned how the saying probably came about.
I’ll be putting things on the back burner for real with our new/old wood or coal cook stove.
While the previous owner explained to us how to operate the stove, the meaning of the “back burner” phrase became very obvious. On these old stoves, the heat is most intense on the front burners. The back burners never get very hot, but can simmer or slow cook the foods.
This link has a very good explanation of the phrase origins. The foods that don’t need a lot of attention can go on the back burner. If it needs to be frequently stirred, put it on the front burner and get it finished.
Nowadays we put things on the back burner if we’re not ready to work on them yet, but don’t want to completely forget about it.
Moving things back to the front
I’ve had some items on the back burner for a few months and today finally got one of them moved to the front, finished up, and taken off the stove altogether.
The first draft for an article on ginseng habitat through the seasons is in the hands of the Blazing Star editor now. There may be some edits required, and when those come back it’ll be on the front burner because the timeline will be too short to move it to the back again.
Tomorrow I’ll take two more of the things I had on back burners and move them to the front. Another article for United Plant Savers about our public ginseng sanctuary in Bentonville, AR and a third one about ginseng for a guest post at LiveVote.com. I’m not too sure about the possible exposure for the guest post, but I’m curious enough to find out.
Still on the back burner
I know it seems like my Bounty Hunter novel is on the back burner, and in a way parts of it are… is? Neither tense of the verb looks or sounds right.
Anyway, I’m not working sequentially on it right now. I’ve been recording some notes and ideas for scenes that come later on in the series and I need to write those down as they bubble up or I forget them.
Chapter ten is ready for me to upload to beta readers and so that part is moving to a front burner soon. Then I have to decide whether I’ll wrap it up as a short novel or continue to full-length. The target was 80K or so words, but it seems that shorter works are fairly popular right now and if I break it up to smaller books then I can publish more of them more quickly.
We now have real back burners to go with my metaphorical ones
I can’t wait to get our new/old stove hooked up so I can try it out. Then I can test the origin of the phrase myself and really “put things on the back burner”. As if I need encouragement with that.
About the voice behind this blog, Madison Woods
I'm a creative old soul living way off the beaten path with my husband in the wild Ozark Mountains. Besides homesteading, growing plants & making crafty things and newsletters, I write books and stories. My rural fantasy fiction, written under the pen name, Ima Erthwitch, usually takes place in a much altered Ozarks.
Ways You Can Support Wild Ozark
Spread the Word
Share this post or tell a friend about my website. "From little acorns do mighty oaks grow." A little thing like sharing could start momentum! This is a free and tremendously powerful way to help.
Unique gifts, books, and information for the nature lovers in your life. Adding more items as time allows: Wild Ozark Nature Boutique.
Become a Patron
A small monthly stipend of even $1 from enough supporters will help me continue the educational outreach and construction of habitat gardens. More information here: https://www.patreon.com/wildozark
Thank you for reading and/or participating in this Wild Ozark community! ~ Madison Woods
For the next two weeks I’ll be on internet vacation trying to relax and have some fun.
I’ll be trying to relax. I know I’ll have fun. But for the blog and social networks, that means I’ll be spending little or no time on the internet. This is the first of the auto-posts I have scheduled. I’ll update you later on whether I was successful at “relaxing” during my break!
When I’m done with my break, I have some projects to begin:
Article to write for United Plant Savers
Article to write for North American Native Plant Society’s Blazing Star magazine
Column idea to pitch to Arkansas Wild Magazine
Nature Sketching workshop to organize and schedule
Author Event at Kimberling City Library to prepare for
Novel to finish writing
SEO issues with website to address
So, I’m not taking a break for stress relief, but to spend some quality time away from the computer. Instead of writing and creating or marketing things I’ve written or created, I’ll be having a two-week spree of fun with my husband. And then I’ll be regrouping and getting back to work.
Relax?
Although this break isn’t particularly to relax, thinking about stress relief got me thinking about it. I don’t think I know how to relax. Unless I’m sleeping.
Actually, I find thinking is relaxing. It’s when I can’t wrangle the time to think that I get stressed. But as far as lying-in-hammock-relaxed goes, I don’t think I can do that. Maybe one day.
If I have to do “nothing”, I’d rather be lying on a beach soaking up some rays where the water is clear and the sand is warm. But not too, too, hot. Is that asking for too much? Ha, it seems that anywhere there is sand and sun, then there is also excessive heat.
I did manage to soak up some rays on a beach this past summer for a little while, on the shores of the Persian Gulf, actually. But it was extremely hot and not very relaxing because of that, in spite of the gorgeous setting. I did, however, have a lot of fun. The summer before, we were on the sands of Destin, Florida and at the time I thought it was hot there, too, but my new beach experience showed me that there is nothing like the heat of the Middle East.
The beach
What do you do to relax when life is stressful or you just need a break?
For normal everyday stress I walk outside a bit or sit on my favorite rock in the creek and listen to the water trickle by. But for big releases, I like complete departures.
About the voice behind this blog, Madison Woods
I'm a creative old soul living way off the beaten path with my husband in the wild Ozark Mountains. Besides homesteading, growing plants & making crafty things and newsletters, I write books and stories. My rural fantasy fiction, written under the pen name, Ima Erthwitch, usually takes place in a much altered Ozarks.
Ways You Can Support Wild Ozark
Spread the Word
Share this post or tell a friend about my website. "From little acorns do mighty oaks grow." A little thing like sharing could start momentum! This is a free and tremendously powerful way to help.
Unique gifts, books, and information for the nature lovers in your life. Adding more items as time allows: Wild Ozark Nature Boutique.
Become a Patron
A small monthly stipend of even $1 from enough supporters will help me continue the educational outreach and construction of habitat gardens. More information here: https://www.patreon.com/wildozark
Thank you for reading and/or participating in this Wild Ozark community! ~ Madison Woods
This is an old post I’m recycling from 2009 about a funny dream. I’m going through my old blog posts and will reuse the ones I like. The old blog isn’t online anywhere anymore, anyway.
At this time I was working on a novel I had tentatively named “Retribution”.
Later I changed the title to “Symbiosis”, and finally finished it last year. I spent more than a few years working on that book. Now it sits in a figurative drawer, a file, waiting on a day when I might take it out and try to edit it into something worthwhile.
Being the first work of that length that I ever wrote, it is quite a mess.
Sleep thinking – 2009-11-30
I fell asleep musing over progress on my work-in-progress, wondering what the next step will be for the main characters. Sometimes going to sleep with those thoughts in my mind inspires dreams that will lead to answers.
It led to dreams alright. But in no way were any of them related to my book’s plot. In fact, I woke laughing out loud at one of the dreams, and it wasn’t that the dream was funny. It was because my response to a situation in the dream was funny…so I was laughing as I observed the dream while I was dreaming.
The line that made me laugh: “No. HELL no.”
A funny dream about fish
That was in response to a question as to whether I wanted some fish. The fish were in an ice chest and still needed to be cleaned. What’s so funny is that this was a line from the book that I’d just added yesterday. In the dream, I used that line to turn down an ice chest of fish. It was totally out of character for me, because I would likely have been glad to take the fish if they were of good eating quality.
I thought that kind of strange but I guess most dreams are. Usually, I’m the only person I know in my dreams and they’re all populated with people I’ve never seen in my life. Last night was unusual in that all of my dreams featured people I know.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get any of the answers to my book questions.
About the voice behind this blog, Madison Woods
I'm a creative old soul living way off the beaten path with my husband in the wild Ozark Mountains. Besides homesteading, growing plants & making crafty things and newsletters, I write books and stories. My rural fantasy fiction, written under the pen name, Ima Erthwitch, usually takes place in a much altered Ozarks.
Ways You Can Support Wild Ozark
Spread the Word
Share this post or tell a friend about my website. "From little acorns do mighty oaks grow." A little thing like sharing could start momentum! This is a free and tremendously powerful way to help.
Unique gifts, books, and information for the nature lovers in your life. Adding more items as time allows: Wild Ozark Nature Boutique.
Become a Patron
A small monthly stipend of even $1 from enough supporters will help me continue the educational outreach and construction of habitat gardens. More information here: https://www.patreon.com/wildozark
Thank you for reading and/or participating in this Wild Ozark community! ~ Madison Woods
My nature workshop is designed to help you reconnect to nature and express your experience through art, writing, and photography. It can be tailored for whatever environment is available (even cities have nature), but generally we’ll take a nature walk, look at plants and wildlife, listen to the sounds of a forest (or whatever nature exists in the area), and sit in meditation outdoors when time and weather allows.
If the slant is on writing:
We learn about the history of nature writing, examine the various ways the genre is represented (poetry, prose, photo essay), take a nature walk, capture the essence of an experience with nature by writing a “flash” scene of 100-200 words (or sketch), share & discuss.
If the slant is on sketching:
We study the work of other nature writers, examine the different styles of capturing nature on paper and discuss the various ways it can be shared if that is desired (I publish mine online and as books). Then we take a nature walk and if weather permits, do some sketching in situ. If weather isn’t cooperative, we’ll either make the nature walk quickly and collect subjects with photography or bring small objects back to the conference room to draw while inside. I usually take photos no matter what so I can finish sketches later if I don’t have time in situ. And if we draw while inside, I’ll put the photo on the projector screen so we can all work on the same item, or if the participants have gathered their own items of interest, they’ll work on them individually. At the end, we share and discuss.
For a combination workshop we’ll sketch, photograph, and write and share.
June 4, at the Art Room Gallery & Workshop of the Place on the Square in Kingston, AR
Past workshops:
Today (Nov. 22, 2015) at the Hobbs State Park in northwest Arkansas, the weather cooperated to give us still winds even if it was still fairly cold. But not so cold that we couldn’t take a nature walk and gather a bit of outdoor ambiance for the “captures”. Participants shared their flash captures (100-200 words or less) and gave us all insight on the various perspectives each individual wrought from the same experience.
Here’s a few of the photos from the walk and talk at Hobb’s State Park:
Geared up and heading out for a nature walk
A study in textures
Fungi on a log
Grass seed head
Captured light
Rich colors
Fungi among the needles
Seedling full of life
Pinecone
Moss on rock
Split at the top pine
The only wildlife I saw
Stellaria media a.k.a. Chickweed- Good food and medicine from nature.
If you’d like to book a similar workshop please email me at [email protected].
I can tailor it to be heavy on the writing focus or more to the sketching/journaling slant.
Bring pencils, camera, notebook if you can or want to do some hands-on writing, drawing and photography. I’ll have a few copies of the nature journals I’ve designed on hand for $10 ea, if anyone wants to buy extra ones of those. Workshop organizers may opt to supply materials. I will usually supply the art journals. My fee can be per event or charged per person and split with organizers (with a minimum guaranteed turnout). If the location is outside of northwest Arkansas there will be travel expenses.
A little about me and the reason I offer this workshop
It is said that a relationship with nature is necessary for health. On the average, people have become more disconnected over the past few decades and often don’t know where to start to reconnect to nature. I think of myself as a “liaison for nature”. A Nature Ambassador. Wild Ozark is my outlet for helping others reconnect. Words, sketches, and photography are the mediums I use and I enjoy teaching others how to enjoy my process, so they can evolve it to their own.
This is a great event for companies to offer employees. Nature writing, sketching and journaling can spur creativity and help employees reconnect to nature!
About the voice behind this blog, Madison Woods
I'm a creative old soul living way off the beaten path with my husband in the wild Ozark Mountains. Besides homesteading, growing plants & making crafty things and newsletters, I write books and stories. My rural fantasy fiction, written under the pen name, Ima Erthwitch, usually takes place in a much altered Ozarks.
Ways You Can Support Wild Ozark
Spread the Word
Share this post or tell a friend about my website. "From little acorns do mighty oaks grow." A little thing like sharing could start momentum! This is a free and tremendously powerful way to help.
Unique gifts, books, and information for the nature lovers in your life. Adding more items as time allows: Wild Ozark Nature Boutique.
Become a Patron
A small monthly stipend of even $1 from enough supporters will help me continue the educational outreach and construction of habitat gardens. More information here: https://www.patreon.com/wildozark
Thank you for reading and/or participating in this Wild Ozark community! ~ Madison Woods
Nature is a treat for the senses but sometimes it takes effort to get past the immediate sensory input and experience a deeper relationship. Madison Woods will lead the class on a voyage of listening, looking, and feeling for connections that transport. The class will include an optional easy nature walk, a communing exercise, a discussion and practice of nature translation through words, art, and photography. – See more at :http://www.villagewritingschool.com
Join us at the Hobbs State Park for a Nature Journal Writing Workshop!
Date: Nov 22
Time: 1 pm to 4 pm
Where: Hobbs State Park, 20201 East Hwy. 12 , Rogers, AR 72756
Cost: $15
Bring pencils, camera, notebook if you can or want to do some hands-on writing, drawing and photography. I’ll have a few copies of the nature journals I’ve designed on hand for $10 ea, if anyone wants to buy one of those.
Village Writing School
Eureka Springs School of Literary Arts
479-292-3665
177 Huntsville Road
Eureka Springs, AR 72632
About the voice behind this blog, Madison Woods
I'm a creative old soul living way off the beaten path with my husband in the wild Ozark Mountains. Besides homesteading, growing plants & making crafty things and newsletters, I write books and stories. My rural fantasy fiction, written under the pen name, Ima Erthwitch, usually takes place in a much altered Ozarks.
Ways You Can Support Wild Ozark
Spread the Word
Share this post or tell a friend about my website. "From little acorns do mighty oaks grow." A little thing like sharing could start momentum! This is a free and tremendously powerful way to help.
Unique gifts, books, and information for the nature lovers in your life. Adding more items as time allows: Wild Ozark Nature Boutique.
Become a Patron
A small monthly stipend of even $1 from enough supporters will help me continue the educational outreach and construction of habitat gardens. More information here: https://www.patreon.com/wildozark
Thank you for reading and/or participating in this Wild Ozark community! ~ Madison Woods
Get “No Qualms” delivered to your inbox in daily short bites. Perfect for coffee break reading. And check out the cool leggings featuring one of my nature journal entries.
One of my passions that I haven’t indulged much in lately is story writing. Until recently I’ve been working exclusively on nonfiction. Added to that I’ve been working on the marketing end of business, which is a lot like nonfiction, even if it does allow for a certain level of creativity.
Since wrapping up the American Ginseng & Companions book, and then the My Nature Journal book, I’ve been working on my novel Bounty Hunter again. I’ll be uploading it chapter by chapter to Wattpad until I’m ready to publish it, then I’ll take it down. If you want to read it as it unfolds, click here to begin reading now.
A little something for both of us
To help myself get back into the groove and give a little something to fans of fiction out there in my Wild Ozark world, I’m taking an old story (No Qualms) out of the file and will begin parsing it out as 200 – 300 or so daily words of fiction. This will go out only to newsletter subscribers who have checked off the box to get the Free Reads.
The main character in No Qualms will eventually meet up with the Treya and DRSS from my novel, so this story is a little background on Ledeir for you if you will be reading Bounty Hunter when I’m done 🙂
This begins Sunday, Oct. 25. If you’d like to get your free coffee break reading serial, subscribe to the monthly newsletter and be sure to click the appropriate box on the signup form. If you’re already a subscriber and didn’t get the last story I did this with, then you’ll need to update your preferences. You can do both from here. If you’re already a subscriber, when you enter your email address it’ll direct you to the update form (I think and hope): http://eepurl.com/Q2dBP
Nom de Plume
Oh, and by the way, if you didn’t notice the name on the cover image, I’ve adopted the French version of my name for all of my fiction work 🙂
Reading it Later
When the series is complete through the email sends, I’ll post the whole thing over at my new fiction blog: http://fiction.wildozark.com. You can read the previous coffee break read (Ozark Pixies) there now.
Nature Sketching, One of my Other Passions
A second passion I have been making a point of indulging is nature sketching. I’m very excited about this. It’s been more than twenty years since I’ve done much artwork and I can’t even begin to explain the magnitude of my gratitude that the ability is still with me after neglecting it for so long.
I’m doing all sorts of cool things with the sketches and offering them as products. None of them are listed in the online catalog yet, but if you’re local you’ll be able to find them on the square in Kingston at Place on the Square Ice Cream Parlor/Coffee-shop/Vintage Store. So far, they’re carrying my post/note cards and blank nature journals. Let me know what kind of interesting items you’d like to see made from my journal entries.
There are more products, including leggings(!) made with one of the journal entries at RedBubble.
Nature Journal Leggings at RedBubble.com
About the voice behind this blog, Madison Woods
I'm a creative old soul living way off the beaten path with my husband in the wild Ozark Mountains. Besides homesteading, growing plants & making crafty things and newsletters, I write books and stories. My rural fantasy fiction, written under the pen name, Ima Erthwitch, usually takes place in a much altered Ozarks.
Ways You Can Support Wild Ozark
Spread the Word
Share this post or tell a friend about my website. "From little acorns do mighty oaks grow." A little thing like sharing could start momentum! This is a free and tremendously powerful way to help.
Unique gifts, books, and information for the nature lovers in your life. Adding more items as time allows: Wild Ozark Nature Boutique.
Become a Patron
A small monthly stipend of even $1 from enough supporters will help me continue the educational outreach and construction of habitat gardens. More information here: https://www.patreon.com/wildozark
Thank you for reading and/or participating in this Wild Ozark community! ~ Madison Woods
When the sun rose high enough to top the trees it washed the hills in a tangerine glow. The trees are changing fast now and I really want to take pictures every day.
Photo quality isn’t all that great but you can see how bright it makes the oranges when the sun hits the hills in the morning.
I have been drawing more often than photographing these days. Here’s the journal entry for the most recent native plant subject. It’s so dry and being late in the season, only a few of the natives in my favorite deep woods habitat are still green (at least of the ones I visit most often), but even the aging ones with spots and yellowing borders are still beautiful in the way things of autumn often are.
If you click on the image it’ll bring you to my online journal website:
If you enjoy sketching or want to begin, I have blank nature journals just for you. Beginning on Oct. 15 and running through Oct. 31 you can enter my Goodreads Giveaway to win a copy with an original sketch and journal entry in it by me. There are also four black and white journal entries as part of the front pages (the inspiration) of the journal.
And if you would enjoy a little fiction with your morning coffee, be sure to sign up for my newsletter or set your preferences if you already have so you can get the “Free Reads”. I’m working on serializing “No Qualms” and hope to begin daily deliveries of it on November 1.
Click the image to go to the newsletter signup form. I believe when you put in your address it’ll let you change preferences if you’re already a member.
Here’s a nice fat rose hip down by the gate. I’m not sure what variety of rose it is, but the flower is a beautiful deep red and when the japanese beetles leave it alone it makes the most spectacular buds which open to a pretty, but fairly ordinary rose.
Rose Hip
About the voice behind this blog, Madison Woods
I'm a creative old soul living way off the beaten path with my husband in the wild Ozark Mountains. Besides homesteading, growing plants & making crafty things and newsletters, I write books and stories. My rural fantasy fiction, written under the pen name, Ima Erthwitch, usually takes place in a much altered Ozarks.
Ways You Can Support Wild Ozark
Spread the Word
Share this post or tell a friend about my website. "From little acorns do mighty oaks grow." A little thing like sharing could start momentum! This is a free and tremendously powerful way to help.
Unique gifts, books, and information for the nature lovers in your life. Adding more items as time allows: Wild Ozark Nature Boutique.
Become a Patron
A small monthly stipend of even $1 from enough supporters will help me continue the educational outreach and construction of habitat gardens. More information here: https://www.patreon.com/wildozark
Thank you for reading and/or participating in this Wild Ozark community! ~ Madison Woods
I’ve been busy lately, but you wouldn’t know it from my lack of posts to the blog. New projects started (Wild Ozark Nature Journal) and a new website to go with it, new products, and new adventures. Last Friday I spoke at Compton Gardens in Bentonville about the habitat of American ginseng. Afterwards I talked with people, sold and autographed books. That was a new thing for me, and it was lots of fun! I think I’m almost over my fear of public speaking 🙂
Back to Market
I’m finally able to get back to the Huntsville Farmer’s Market on Tuesdays and Saturdays. The one today was disappointing. I thought with Bikes Blues & BBQ there would be more browsers at least. But there was hardly any traffic stopping at our little market. Lots of traffic passing us by, though.
I did get a very nice visit in with my friends Duke and Kim Pennell from Pen-L publishing, though. We had a great lunch at the Madison County Coffee Shop and lots of “shop” talk about publishing, authoring, and marketing.
Since the flood, my booth features a different selection of items than it did before. I lost most of the plants so now you’ll find herbal balms (featuring our local American ginseng), books, ginseng information, and nature journal crafts.
I’m usually there on Tuesdays and Fridays from 7-12, but this coming Saturday there won’t be a market because instead there’s a car show. To keep up with the most current info on where I’ll be and when, follow my FB page. If I haven’t posted about it, feel free to email or message me or post on my timeline to ask.
Nature Journal
Daily entries featuring a sketch and a bit of musing about my choice of subject or setting.
Here’s an excerpt from the post part of today’s entry:
I love rocks. I love collecting them, especially the ones with fossils embedded. I also like sitting on them. When I find a rock to sit on, I like to just listen. When you sit alone in nature you’ll hear a lot of sounds. At first you’ll hear the loudest, closest, or most prevalent sounds. But then you’ll start to notice the other more subtle ones that are usually overlooked by people in a hurry on on a mission to get from point a to point b. – excerpt from the new Wild Ozark Nature Journal (Day 6)
New Products
Balms with American Ginseng
Post and Note Cards and Prints using my Nature Journal Entries
About the voice behind this blog, Madison Woods
I'm a creative old soul living way off the beaten path with my husband in the wild Ozark Mountains. Besides homesteading, growing plants & making crafty things and newsletters, I write books and stories. My rural fantasy fiction, written under the pen name, Ima Erthwitch, usually takes place in a much altered Ozarks.
Ways You Can Support Wild Ozark
Spread the Word
Share this post or tell a friend about my website. "From little acorns do mighty oaks grow." A little thing like sharing could start momentum! This is a free and tremendously powerful way to help.
Unique gifts, books, and information for the nature lovers in your life. Adding more items as time allows: Wild Ozark Nature Boutique.
Become a Patron
A small monthly stipend of even $1 from enough supporters will help me continue the educational outreach and construction of habitat gardens. More information here: https://www.patreon.com/wildozark
Thank you for reading and/or participating in this Wild Ozark community! ~ Madison Woods
Soon the digging season for ginseng will begin here in Arkansas. For those doing a bit of searching online for a picture of a ginseng root, here’s a one of an interesting root design. This one has two necks and two root portions, but only one bud. The one pictured below is from last year.
This is a picture of a ginseng root. The bud for next year is on the lower left horizontal. The skinny part in the center is the other neck.A man-shaped root from Ohio. Click here to read the story about it.
Sometimes the roots will get damaged and begin growing a different direction. Sometimes there’s a rock in the way. There’s no telling why a ginseng root will take the shape it does, but the wild ones are often quite tricky when digging because of the way they reach in unexpected directions.
A few things distinguish a ginseng root from other roots. One is the neck with bud scars. Each year the stem leaves a scar when it dies back in fall. The bud for next year is already in place and waiting for spring. On the root portion you can see concentric rings where dirt collects and stains.
Those rings are a defining thing to look for, as are the bud scars on the neck. Judging from the scars, the root pictured above is probably more than 15 years old. I don’t have the root here to examine now, and it’s sometimes harder to see when they’re dried, but it’s likely older than that. The stem swaps sides each year, so there’s a scar on either side of the neck.
Here in the Ozarks, at least in our area in northwest Arkansas, most of the berries have already fallen. The leaves are beginning to turn yellow and with all the rain we’ve had, some of the plants have actually died back already. They should come back next year. Some of mine were probably washed out in the flooding we had during June. Those might find new root in new locations if they washed high enough ashore in a good place.
My seeds should arrive in early October and then I’ll be in the woods daily planting new stock. In April next year I should have a lot of new seedlings to bring to the Huntsville Farmer’s Market. I have some new locations I want to test, too, so I’ll be planting some in places I haven’t tried before.
Mired in a To-Do List
I haven’t been making many posts lately to my blog.
Lately it seems I’ve been busier than normal and I haven’t even been out to take my usual slew of photos.
Writing Fiction
Almost all of the priority items on my to-do list have been indoor things, like catching up on business ledgers. And posting a daily dose of short story to my list members who like fiction.
I’ve also been working on a novel. I tend to go quiet on the blog sometimes when I’m working on fiction projects but I might start posting a few excerpts from the novel here and there.
Seasonal Allergies
Then, too, the ragweed is blooming now. It’s the one plant that really doesn’t get along well with me.
So I do tend to stay indoors until the worst of the pollen has drifted away.
But I’m getting antsy to be outdoors.
Being indoors so much is beginning to make me a bit stir crazy.
About the voice behind this blog, Madison Woods
I'm a creative old soul living way off the beaten path with my husband in the wild Ozark Mountains. Besides homesteading, growing plants & making crafty things and newsletters, I write books and stories. My rural fantasy fiction, written under the pen name, Ima Erthwitch, usually takes place in a much altered Ozarks.
Ways You Can Support Wild Ozark
Spread the Word
Share this post or tell a friend about my website. "From little acorns do mighty oaks grow." A little thing like sharing could start momentum! This is a free and tremendously powerful way to help.
Unique gifts, books, and information for the nature lovers in your life. Adding more items as time allows: Wild Ozark Nature Boutique.
Become a Patron
A small monthly stipend of even $1 from enough supporters will help me continue the educational outreach and construction of habitat gardens. More information here: https://www.patreon.com/wildozark
Thank you for reading and/or participating in this Wild Ozark community! ~ Madison Woods
Get “No Qualms” delivered to your inbox in daily short bites. Perfect for coffee break reading. And check out the cool leggings featuring one of my nature journal entries.
