Welcome PJ Sharon
Welcome to Mary's Garden. Hope you had a wonderful St. Paddy's Day. As I'm Irish it's always a month long celebration. It is PJ's monthly visit to the garden. Enjoy!
Cut branches of
the pussy willow, forsythia, or quince to force into early bloom. Bring the
branches indoors and place in a vase of water. They should bloom in a few
weeks. Once pussy willows reach their peak, remove them from the water and
allow them to dry. Aside from being a lovely reminder of those early spring days,
they are a wonderful addition to dried flower arrangements that last all summer
and well into fall.
Garden tip: Force blooms of early flowering shrubs for a pop of indoor spring
color!
Cut branches of
the pussy willow, forsythia, or quince to force into early bloom. Bring the
branches indoors and place in a vase of water. They should bloom in a few
weeks. Once pussy willows reach their peak, remove them from the water and
allow them to dry. Aside from being a lovely reminder of those early spring days,
they are a wonderful addition to dried flower arrangements that last all summer
and well into fall.
Stalking the elusive Pussy Willow
When I was a kid, I recall my
mother taking me on early spring hikes in mid-March to gather pussy willows. We
would tromp through the still-frozen, swampy lowlands by the Scantic River, not
far from our house in suburban CT. We would get so excited; it was as if we
were stalking a rare bird or embarking on a naturalist’s hunt for the holy
grail of blossoming treasures. It took keen observation to detect the long thin
willow shoots among the beach saplings, cat tails, and gray chaos of a long-winter’s
thrall over the marshes, but when we would find them—boots covered in mud and
chilled to the bone—mom’s face lit with amused satisfaction. A rare expression
for the troubled and overburdened mother of seven.
As much as we enjoyed those hikes, they
stopped abruptly when I was twelve. My mother’s health declined, and her forays
into the great outdoors she loved so much were curtailed by chemo and multiple
cancer surgeries. But knowing how much she loved the wispy willows, and feeling
helpless to do little else, my dad planted a pussy willow tree right in our own
back yard, where she was able to enjoy them for a few more springs before
cancer finally took her the day after her fiftieth birthday.
That was long ago when I was a
child of sixteen. I’ve since outlived her years, and been blessed with several
more, but I never forget those adventures into the murky woodlands, and I
always keep my eyes open for tell-tale spikes of furry little buds when I hike
in my own woods in the month of March.
Do you have certain flowers, scents, or experiences that bring to mind special
memories of a lost loved one?
Fact and
fiction often blend in the mind of a writer. That is true of ON THIN ICE,
my second novel, which was as much my story as it was my protagonist, Penny’s. Although
the names, places, and characters are fictional, some of the events are based
on my life experience. Including my mother’s illness and death, my teen
pregnancy, and discovering a secret my mother kept for far too long—the
consequences of which are still unfolding today…
ON THIN ICE blurb:
Seventeen-year-old
figure skater, Penny Trudeau, is a liar. She knows it, hates it, and can’t help
herself. The truth is too hard and ugly. Her mother’s health is failing, her
father treats her as if she’s invisible, and she is starving—for food, for
love, for acceptance, and mostly for the perfection that is just beyond her
reach. When she finds comfort in the arms of Carter McCray, a hockey hunk a few
years too old for her, her lies begin a chain of events that have dire
consequences, not the least of which are a rape she can’t remember and a
pregnancy she can’t ignore. If she reveals her secrets, will the shock and
disappointment mean the end for her mother? Or has her mother been keeping the
biggest secret of all?
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