My Month of May by Susan Sands

My birthday, Mother's Day, and my 32nd anniversary are all in the month of May. This sounds like a merry month, right? But it's the same as having one's birthday on Christmas day, pretty much. Everything happens as if it's only one thing. Nothing extra. My birthday often coincides with the same weekend as my birthday, so it shares a meal, gift, and celebration. Yes, first-world problems, I know.

My daughter and my oldest son and his girlfriend over the weekend from Charlotte, NC. We attended a fun Kentucky Derby party in our local downtown. We all ended up getting new sunglasses for my birthday. 

I'm looking toward May as my month of great weather, new beginnings for some publishing stuff (will let you know), and lots of writing. May really is my favorite time of year because it's so filled with the promise of summer, but not nearly over yet. Everything fun is still coming up.

I finally cleaned the pollen from my deck and furniture and got all my outdoor cooking gear ready to go. It's my go-to way to spend some time outside at the end of the day. The birds must agree with the promise of May as well because they are singing loudly out there all day right now. There are also books to read in my pile...

My pent-up need to go out and breathe fresh air and feel the sunshine on my skin is great this year. The community pool is already open to the residents in our neighborhood. A great excuse to wear my new sunglasses, yes?

Have a fantastic month of May!

Susan

Spring has Sprung! :: Anne McAllister

It's that time of year again!

I've spent lots of years in a cold climate  blessed, most years, with plenty of snow.  So when it gets to be March, I start looking around for signs of spring.

This year the signs began appearing well before March.  I teach class one day a week, and the first week in February one of the women in my class came in late and rather breathless and announced, "I've just seen a flock of robins!"

We practically all stampeded to the door to see what she'd seen. And yes, there they were.

There were crocuses well above the snow a couple of weeks ago, and the daffodils are pushing their way up by the back door.

When we went for a walk with the dogs yesterday, I could see that the scilla was beginning to come up, too. In a few weeks -- or less -- it will be blanketing the lawns hereabouts.

Blue lawns always make me smile.  I didn't grow up in this climate, so I've had to learn all about it. The first time I saw a

blue lawn, I thought I was seeing things as I drove past in a car.   I couldn't imagine what was making it blue.  Now I always make it a point to walk the dogs past all the blue lawns in our neighborhood just to enjoy the spectacle. It doesn't take much to make me happy, I guess.

Or maybe it's the feeling that we are coming out of hibernation, that we don't have to bundle up to our eyeballs to go out and get the mail anymore.

It even makes me happy -- most of the time -- to wipe the dogs feet every time they come back in after an excursion around the back yard.

In spring I measure the weather in 'dog-foot days.'  The more times they go in an out, multiplied by how many feet I have to dry (or sometimes wash and dry) is an indication of just how muddy it is out there.  Today was a "48 dog foot day," which is pretty

muddy -- particularly since I ended up washing one dog's feet every time she came in.

Still, I'm not complaining. It's spring. The book is coming along.  I'm going to see three reprints this spring when my Tanner Brothers trilogy comes back with brand-new covers. And I'm going to get to post them on my newly updated website (still in progress, but check around Easter and it might well be there!).  That will feel like spring all over again!

What are your favorite signs of spring?  (My apologies to all readers from Down Under for this very geographically oriented post. Feel free to tell me what you love about autumn.  I'm pretty fond of it, too!).


Photo credits: 
1) Dakota Lynch: own work. An American robin searching for food in a Missouri field.          CC BY-SA 3.0 Creative Commons license.
2) crocus By Thomas Wolf (Der Wolf im Wald) (Own work) CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
3) Ixtlilto (Own work) [Public domain], Creative Commons via Wikimedia 
Commons
4) BSchenck: own work 
5 BSchenck: own work

Signs of Spring :: Anne McAllister

I just came home from a week in Texas.  It was like fast forwarding through the first bit of spring.

Or it should have been.

As it happened, I packed spring things – you know, t-shirts, cropped jeans, sandals – and I should have packed a heavier jacket, a raincoat, and umbrella and more wool socks.  But that’s beside the point because, despite unseasonably lousy weather for half of my visit, the other half was splendid.

And I saw spring flowers. Bluebonnets, actually. Lots and lots of bluebonnets.  And I saw buds on trees. I saw flowers that we won’t be seeing for at least another three or four weeks. 

It was lovely. It was like skipping through the last dregs of winter – those snowstorms that the weather people promise (well, hint, anyway) will be the last of the season.  It was going to bed one night with the temperature at 39 and piling four (count ‘em. I did, religiously, as I piled them on because there was really nothing much in the way of heat) comforters, and waking up in the morning to find it was 60 degrees – and by noon it was 75. 

Sorry, I’m not going to convert that to Celsius for you.  Think of this as your math lesson today, and you can have extra credit if you get all the temps right.  What’s the extra credit?  Brownie points?  A free book?  Take your pick.

Anyway, I had a great time.  And I came home last night –and brought the rain with me.  Not sure how that happened, but all night long we had thunderstorms and I had a dog doing heavy-breathing in my ear. He has a Thundershirt, but I had to get up and find it before I could put it on him – and I had to turn on the light to do that. And after that, well, who could go back to sleep?

Like I said, signs of spring.

Here we are getting a few – the daffodils are not quite ready to burst into flower but they are at least poking their stems above the parapet these days.  When I left they weren’t.  The robins are out in full force – flocks of them. The geese are hedging their bet by flying, well, sort of due east these days. But once in a while a vee of them turns north.

And the dandelions are actually making a showing. Trust weeds to get a jump of everything else.  But they are cheerful and bright and that’s what we need now that the snow is gone (momentarily at least) and the grass still isn’t totally green yet.

My book, too, is looking cheerier. After a year-long winter, it’s moving into spring. My hero, who has been hibernating for I don’t even want to tell you how long, has yawned and stretched and opened and eye. He’s actually deigned to say a few things that I’m not instantly inclined to delete. My heroine has her bridesmaid dress for the wedding that will happening in June. 

Not long now.  Summer will be here before we know it.  But I’m going to bask in spring for as long as I can.  How about you?  What’s your favorite season? What signs of spring make you happiest? Or if you’re heading into autumn and winter, how do you feel about that?  Ready for it?  I’ll share mine with you!

photo credits:

1: User:Drumguy8800/Picture|Scalable Vector Graphic map of the location of Tarrant County in the state of Texas, via Wikimedia Commons.

2: Mannypr (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons.

3: Christoph Michels (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)  via Wikimedia Commons.

4: Photograph taken by and (c)2007 Johnathan J. Stegeman (Midimacman) (Own work) [GFDL 1.2 (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/fdl-1.2.html)], via Wikimedia Commons.

5: By Sujit kumar (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

 

Happy St. Patrick's Day

 I love spring!  Winters can be long here on the shores of Lake Erie.  We have this thing called, Lake Effect Snow.  Cold Canadian winds blow across the lake, picking up moisture, which hits the lakeshore in the form of...you guessed it, snow.

Here in Erie we have an average of almost 80 inches of snow a year.  That's a lot of snow.

But now it's March!  At this moment, the snow in my yard has all melted.  Although, they're calling for more snow tonight.  This time of year the weather is more precarious than ever.  This last weekend it was in the sixties.  I opened the windows and I wore just a sweatshirt as I walked the dogs.  Tuesday, when I walked, I was back in a heavy coat, but still wore sneakers.  If it snows, well I'm back in boots and bundled up.

But spring is busting out all over!  If you look closely at the picture on the left, I've got purple flowers starting to open on my crocuses.  The one on the right is a hyacinth.  The birds are loud as I walk in the mornings.  I love this season of rebirth and renewal.  I just turned in my Christmas book and I'm working on something new.  I come to my computer each day with that same springtime sense of potential...anything can happen!!  And since I'm working on one of my comedies, it probably will!

Now, this is Erie, so I know we'll have at least one more snow.  Local legend has it that St. Patrick's Day generally means a late season snow storm (although at this moment, weather.com is calling for 33 degrees and only a 10% chance of snow).   But even if it snows, St. Patrick's Day seems to herald the official start of spring here on the lake.  It's a day when everyone's a little Irish.  A day when green isn't simply a color that's coming back to life in our gardens and lawns...its the color everyone's wearing.  A day when you can get Guinness at almost any bar in town! (As a Guinness fan, that's a good thing!)

So, Sláinte, everyone!  I hope spring is arriving where you are and that even if you're still snowed in, you remember that spring is just around the corner!  I hope this season gives you that same sense of potential and glee that it gives me.  Anything's possible!!

Happy St. Patrick's Day...and spring!

Holly


A St. Patrick's Day Gift for you all:

I've tried my hand at publishing a short story trilogy this year.  I gave Nothing But Love away for Christmas, Nothing But Heart away for Valentine's and my springtime/St. Patrick's Day gift is the final book, my first St. Patrick's day romance, Nothing But Luck.  It stand alone, so even if you didn't read the other two, it's fine.  And it's free for Kindle this weekend, Saturday the 16th, Sunday the 17th and Monday the 18th.  So mark your calendars and stop in and pick it up before you go get that Guinness!  (And I know that many of you have other types of eReaders.  The entire series will be out next year for those platforms.)

Nothing But Luck

Spring is here Downunder!

My boys have just headed back to school after our 'spring break'. We have four school terms here, broken up with a two week break between terms 1, 2 & 3 and then six weeks summer vacation after term four.
We took a mini trip during the break, funnily enough to visit Kandy Sheperd who blogged yesterday! It was so great to visit her and her lovely husband and to meet the cats and horses she often blogs about.

On the last day of our trip, we visited The Royal National Park in Sydney. Back in the 1870s, when this park was declared, I am sure it was in the middle of nowhere, but now it is surrounded by the southern suburbs of Sydney and on a public holiday, everyone was there taking advantage of having rugged coastal  beaches and glorious bush right on their doorstep.

And the flowers were out. I wanted to share some of them with you....

This is a Waratah and it is also the state flower of New South Wales. My photography doesn't show off how big the flowers really are but they are about 4 inches across and a glorious maroon red. They last in a vase for about six weeks. I love them but it is a bit too cool for them to grow where I live.

This is pink heath. Although I took this photo in New South Wales, it is the state flower of my state, Victoria.

Sorry, I have no clue what this is but it's pretty, right ? ;-)

 This is flower eucalpyt. Eucalyptus trees can flower in white, red or even orange, depending on the sub species.

I have exhausted my knowledge here but wanted to share them all with you.

So tell me, what is your favourite local flower? Or what is your state flower? I would love to know!

Fiona Lowe is a RITA^®  and R*BY award-winning, multi-published author with Harlequin and Carina Press. Whether her books are set in outback Australia or in the mid-west of the USA, they feature small towns with big hearts, and warm, likeable characters that make you fall in love. When she's not writing stories, she's a weekend wife, mother of two 'ginger' teenage boys, guardian of 80 rose bushes and often found collapsed on the couch with wine. Yyou can find her at her website, facebook, Twitter and Goodreads.

Her most recent releases are Letting Go Wiht Dr Rodriguez, Boomerang Bride and Sydney Harbour Hospital :Tom's Redemption

Her Christmas novel, NewBorn Baby For Christmas is up for pre-order now

Where Did Winter Go?

I'm not sure how it happened, but clearly winter has decided to skip southern NJ and go to other parts of the country instead. As I write this, a MAJOR winter snowstorm/blizzard is heading for Seattle. . . SEATTLE? Around here? Well, after a Halloween weekend surprise snow, we've had nothing! I am seriously not happy. Then my azalea bushes began to bud and three blossoms even showed up a day later. 65 degrees in December is simply not acceptable.

It's this time of year that I get at least a couple of wonderful, hunker-down reading days during snowstorms or just after it. I make a nice pot of tea and curl up with a good book. . . or two or three. If the weather is really bad, I could spend two whole days on the couch. Ah, those are good times.

Not this year -- 2011 has slipped into 2012 and there's no sign of winter! Spring will bring its flowers and nice(r) weather and outside activities and I will have missed my significant winter reading time.

So, at this point I'm hanging my hat on the only guilt-free reading day that's possible -- I've been called for jury duty next week. Since it can be difficult or inconvenient to bring my laptop and attempt to get some writing done, I can only bring along a book or two and simply sit and read through the day while waiting to be called to the courtroom.

Either way -- it's pretty bad when I have to rely on winter storms or jury duty to get some quality reading time for myself! LOL!


How about you? How do you carve out reading time for yourself? Is it weather-related (more or less in winter or summer)? Is it job-related? Some other way? Post a note and I'll be choosing two commentors to each receive a copy of the special Mills & Boon release - ROYAL WEDDINGS THROUGH THE AGES - an anthology of seven stories about historical royal weddings. (It's only being released in the UK so it is SPECIAL!)

Terri is working on her next Harlequin Historical release (returning to the MacLerie Clan in the Highlands of Scotland!) while re-publishing her first four books that include 3 time-travel romances and one historical. Visit her website for all kinds of info about her and her books and events!

Spring Is Sprung! - Anna Campbell

by Anna Campbell

I'd hoped to put this up last month but my scanner died so I couldn't share the pictures which really are the whole point of this blog!

As my Northern Hemisphere friends edge towards winter, spring broke out in a big way here in late August. Since then, we've had a few cold days, but basically the Aussie year is on its way to its hotter part.

Summer where I live (on Queensland's Sunshine Coast about an hour north of Brisbane) is awful. Hot, sticky, humid, exhausting. But spring is lovely. Clear days and crisp nights.

Because we've had a wet winter, my garden burst into flower in a big way with arrival of the warmer weather. And it all seemed to happen overnight. I thought you might like to see some of the photos I took!



Look at these two spectacular azaleas! They definitely appreciated both the arrival of spring and the recent wet weather. I love the massing of color. They spend most of their time looking really scraggy so it was lovely to get a good showing this year.

The native shrubs have gone wild too. Where I live, grevilleas do really well. It's something about the sandy soil, I think.

I'm sure a lot of people overseas wouldn't be familiar with these beautiful plants but I just love them. The flowers are delicate and spidery and come in a huge variety of shapes and sizes. They scent the air with a sweet honey fragrance and the birds go crazy for the nectar.

I love to sit in my office and watch the parrots and the wattle birds fight over the blossoms which come in an extravagant array of colors from creamy white through to brilliant red.

It's extremely colorful to watch the red, green and yellow lorikeets or the more subtly colored rosellas fluttering around these lovely flowers. And with the hotter weather, the nectar ferments - so you can see where the phrase "p*ssed as a parrot" comes from in vivid detail!

Oh, and parrots drinking the hard stuff are amazingly noisy!!!

By the way, check out the lovely blue skies in these shots! Wouldn't you love to come to Australia right now? It really is lovely!

It's also wattle season so the air is heavy with the sweet scent of yellow flowers. They're our national flower and they grow pretty much everywhere. Well, not in my garden, but on road verges and in the bush, they're omnipresent.

A shrub of mine that has never been particularly spectacular has decided to show off this year. This beautiful red calistemon is usually cut back so harshly, it doesn't get the chance to flower. But this year, because I've been away so much and neglecting my pruning, it's finally shown me how beautiful it is.

The red is so strong, it almost burns your eyes! This is a plant where I often find my friends the bearded dragons.

It's not quite warm enough yet for them to appear but it won't be long. They always make me smile, these lovely little miniature dinosaurs. We have generations of them living in the yard. They're quite shy and you don't always see them but they're definitely around. I've got photos of the hearded dragons on my Facebook page if you want to check them out: http://www.facebook.com/annacampbell.writer#%21/album.php?aid=2006785&id=1574454103

If you go to the Facebook page, you'll also see some shots of my backyard. All these flowering bushes are in the front yard.

By the way, if you're on Facebook, why not join my Fan Page? http://www.facebook.com/pages/Anna-Campbell-Fan-Page/464724380503?ref=ts

So what's happening in your neck of the woods right now?

FROM FOUL MOOD TO FOWL MOOD - Jenny Gardiner

I’d been in a funk for days. A whole lot of life circumstances had conspired to form a perfect storm that ushered in a seriously foul mood in me. To top it off, the weather seemed determined to contribute to the cause, as cold rain had descended to hover over us as gray and dismal as my temperament seemed to.

As much as I wanted to get over it, I couldn't escape the shackles of my unpleasant mood.

Then my kind friend Aggie showed up on my doorstep, surprising me with a dozen eggs. And with little more than that humble gesture, suddenly I felt much better.



Right about now you’re wondering how weird I must be that I would be cheered up by eggs. But these weren’t just any old eggs: these were fresh from her henhouse. Coveted eggs with bright orange yolks as cheerful as a May morning. Eggs that aren’t quite so easy to come by in this day and age. The fact that my friend wanted to share her limited supply of her treasured eggs was such an act of impromptu kindness, it couldn’t not brighten my mood.

And it reminded me that we all ought to try to remain better connected with one another, because ultimately it is those bonds with our friends and family that help to elevate us when we're feeling most down.

Sometimes in this world of disconnect it’s hard to personalize one’s sentiments. We’re so busy zapping out emails and staccato’d text-messages and scurrying to and fro, we never find the time for conversation. As much as I enjoy catching up with friends on the phone, for instance, I rarely have the time to talk when it’s convenient to me. So instead? I communicate electronically, until I can find the time to squeeze in a chat with someone. And I don’t think I’m alone in this--it seems to be the norm. Yet somehow that email or e-card just doesn’t have the same grand delivery as does a simple thoughtful deed. Like Aggie's.

You know the crazy thing is I don’t particularly even like eggs, although my family sure does. But I do greatly appreciate the sentiment behind fresh eggs, and as a cook and avid supporter of buying locally, I know that fresh, local eggs are vastly better than store-bought. I actually find it extremely gratifying to crack into an egg and see that brilliant yellow-orange yolk: it means something to me. So in Aggie's message was much more than an egg, it was sharing of something relevant, something to be savored.

There is a tradition in the Cajun French culture of lagniappe: something for nothing. For instance, throwing in a thirteenth donut when you get a dozen. A little extra something. It makes imminent sense how that little something can ultimately mean so much.

With Easter time upon us, I could go all deep and exploratory and ponder the symbolism of eggs, the poster child for renewal, being that which lifted me up from my bleak mindset. Or I could just tell you I was one of those children perfectly content to play with the ribbon, rather than the expensive toy beneath the ribbon. Either which way, there is something so very right about that gift: the sweet simplicity of the thought behind it. From one friend to another: "Have some eggs." And to be reminded that someone cares.




Jenny Gardiner is the author of the award-winning novel Sleeping with Ward Cleaver and the upcoming humorous memoir Parrothood: Twenty Years of Caring for a Vengeful Bird Determined to Kill Me.(Simon Spotlight, Spring, 2010)

CALGON! TAKE ME AWAY (or May is a Four-Letter Word) by Jenny Gardiner

Ah, the month of May…The flowers in bloom, the birds whistling a happy tune. Parents across America ready to throttle the next teacher, coach, or offspring activity-related person who dares to lump one more have-to in their lap.

The month of May…what my friend refers to as the Storm before the Calm. What I view as the annual rite of hazing inflicted upon every mom (and most dads, to a certain extent) every springtime as the school year draws to an imminent close.

The drill goes as follows: class play, class music program, soccer practice, soccer games, soccer try-outs, baseball, baseball and more baseball, lacrosse games, lacrosse playoffs, state cup championships, piano recitals, ballet recitals, field trips (why weren’t these scheduled for the dull month of January?!), pre-school graduation, kindergarten graduation, lower-school graduation, middle school graduation, college graduation, teacher appreciation luncheons, class parties. Class parties? I’m thinking class warfare at this point.

I get nightly calls: can you come in for the teacher appreciation luncheon? Can you drive for the field trip to Pakistan? Can you pledge your extra kidney to be auctioned off at the school fund drive?

Can you stop calling me before I have the national do-not-call list enforcer come after you for harassment?

Truthfully, I’m happy to be of help. To a certain extent. But when I start to wake in the middle of the night, fearful that I have sloughed off my duties to prepare Pad Thai for 300 for International Day, I get to worrying. And when I realize that I am clenching my teeth so hard that I think lockjaw has set in, I’m a little more concerned.

And when the call comes in for me to do just one more teeny little thing to help out so and so, and I—without thinking, without feeling, snap the first snarky come-back that pops into my head to the poor unsuspecting room-mother calling me in a desperate spot, I know two things. One, that it’s time for me to hang up my mommy cleats for a few hours and re-gain my grip on reality, and two, summer vacation must be just around the corner. At which time I might just be longing for the days when the kids were in school and the demands on a mother’s time were at their peak.

*a note from the author: I must tell you that Claire Doolittle, the lovable heroine in SLEEPING WITH WARD CLEAVER, penned this piece. Jenny Gardiner had absolutely NOTHING to do with it. Jenny is, without question, perfectly contented to have a life that is out of control and she never loses her temper with room moms and she has in fact already donated a couple of organs to the spring fund drive. She has had no weeping fits, no stress-related breakdowns, and hasn't even noticed that it's Parental Hazing Month.