laura k bray

  Since I last wrote about my garden , a lot has happened. And a lot hasn’t happened. We went from a wet spring to a few sparse weeks of beautiful summer weather, and then roared into blistering heat. My garden, unable to contend with Mother Nature’s mood swings, had suffered. Between heat waves, I would wander into my garden and, instead of looking to see what was growing, I looked for destruction. Which crop failed this week? The beds, usually lush and beautiful, have big bare spots where the vegetables failed to grow. Our potato plants, which seemed to be the only crop that survived the wet spring, had dried and brown foliage, leaving me to wonder if my Irish blood somehow invited blight. While the garden withered so did we. Heat, illness, and general malaise made us wither almost as much as our garden. In the midst of this ennui, my husband and I trudged out to face our wilting, seemingly dead garden, ready to pull the dead plants, and to grieve over the failed plot. ...

Want to know the best way to bring on a heat wave? Blog about the lovely summer weather you are experiencing... Melting A week of heat is just breaking here and I've fallen back out of love with summer. I think I may need to move Iceland if I have any hope of truly embracing the season.  The good thing about being locked up in one's house for a week, fans carefully organized around oneself, air conditioning blasting, is that you get a lot of reading done. Since this is the year that I'm working on becoming a better writer, I've been reading more. I credit the fact that I can write to my insatiable reading habit. If you read any book about the art of writing, reading is usually touted as one of the ways to become a better writer. I patiently explain this concept to my husband and daughter whenever they find me in the middle of the day, draped over a couch, iced tea in hand, reading (instead of doing laundry or making their lunch). I'm working I announce. And I'...