LEE HALLISON

Well the summer was full of gardening, grandgirls, travel, and some writing! I decided to turn this area of the yard into a shade garden. I covered the grass with paper and cardboard and then filled it with soil to bring it up to the level of the pathway (a new pathway btw). Because it’s under a large old tree, I couldn’t quite fill enough – this kind of tree (weeping birch) is very shallow rooted, and covering the roots more than 6″ will kill the tree. So I was careful, and am planning to increase the soil over time. I then planted lots of fun shade plants – then, discovered that the tree was infected with birch bark beetle and part of the treatment involved cutting back some of the infected branches. So the shady part of my yard turned sunny, the worst sun, the afternoon sun. Lots of fun babying my shade plants all summer, propping up covers, watering a lot, etc.

We also went on a great trip to the Olympic Peninsula, and I took my husband to the place I go every winter on a writing retreat. We hiked, we saw ocean and mountains and rainforest. We had a terrible adventure involving a flooded cabin but survived with a story that might make it into a future flash fiction of mine.

I was reasonably consistent this summer with writing. My new writing group/workshop is inspiring. Its quite interesting to write literary fiction after so many years of writing speculative fiction. One thing I am pleased about is my decision to just go ahead and lean into my inclination to be a flash fiction writer.

I need to be more consistent with submitting work for publication. I hadn’t submitted since last March, and today I went for it – 6 stories polished, formatted, and submitted. I’m guessing it’s a bit like my online sales business – if I list items, I sell items. If I get lazy and don’t list, I don’t sell. Hah, can’t sell a story either if its sitting on the computer.