Galium odoratum – lievevrouwebedstro (Photo credit: AnneTanne)

Green is never so bright as it is in spring, during rain.  It rained like England today, the way it’s barely visible but pouring, lets you can wander happy among the new plants.

I got everything in last week: lavender, lemon thyme, strawberries, hostas, columbines, sweet woodruff, dicentra, poppy, ranunculus, creeping phlox.  Only the cilantro and basil await, and all the annuals from seed.  Here I advise anyone who loves to garden to immediately go to Dan Pearson or Nigel Slater.  They will captivate with lush pictures and solid tales of growth.

I just planted, having amended the soil with compost, but not topsoil.  Hopefully, the rental association will give us mulch and gravel (for paths.)  Though I am only here for another twenty-eight months, I’d like to plant a trio of roses (this morning I thought six) even as I hear my mother shake her head and advise, annuals, from the supermarket, because if they can survive there, then anywhere.  The daughter of thrifty parents with longings for the world of plant luxe, the heady catalogs of White Flower Farm, Logee’s, Landreth’s.

Something is chirping.  Is it a frog–one of those tree peepers? Or a sparrow baby,lost?  Such a disconsolate sound.  The supermoon has past.  He’s quieted now, peeper or bird.  Roses, blooms, buds of spring.

2012, Indira Ganesan, Sticky bun, teapot, and vegetables

In the interest of improving my blog, I am taking an on-line class called “Blog Triage” with Cynthia Morris and Alyson Stanfield.  In the first lesson, I am asked to describe my ideal blog reader, as a way of defining perhaps what is central to this blog.

My ideal reader I think would be interested in reading my fiction.  This reader does not have to read the fiction, but I hope to stir some interest about what else I might write.  Unlike, say,  101 Cookbooks  or The Gardener’s Eden, two of my favorite blogs, this blog is not necessarily practical, but I hope for a reader in search of a touch of inspiration and curiosity about the daily life of a person who writes.

In a way, it is like fiction, hopefully entertaining reading that might contain recognizable truths for a reader, which might of course be quite different from the writer’s truth.  What I seek in a reader is someone who is interested in words, literature, in the hedonistic pleasures of botany, food, caffeine, music, yoga–the arts. A blog is an open letter not only to my friends and family, but to a wider audience; this blog is a series of essays and observations, pensees, a place to practice, to attempt.

Writers like to be read, they care about their words, hope their work is of value.  Thank you for following me on this journey, and I hope you will stay tuned for more.

~What do you like to read about? What would you like to write about? And are you ready for The Transit of Venus in June?~