The Fruits of Our Labor

Freshly cut garden chives.

Years ago, someone gave me a few chive plants. The chives liked where I planted them, spreading and producing nicely every year.

If only all garden herbs and vegetables grew as reliably! Some take dedicated effort to bring to fruition. 

With experience and experimentation, plus a little luck, I can get a decent crop of tomatoes. I'm getting close to conquering peppers in our fickle climate.

But chives? This weekend I had to enlist my husband's help to get them harvested, chopped, and placed in the dehydrator.

Writing mimics my gardening efforts. Some projects just seem to line right up, flowing from start to finish. Never easily, don't get me wrong. I agonize over every word I write. Some projects lead to easier success than others.

Chives are the first thing I can harvest from my garden. It's a quick, easy reward. Well, sorting and chopping aren't exactly easy tasks, but definitely a simpler process than preserving and putting up most veggies.

In my writing world, short stories would be my version of chives. Quicker coming to fruition. A novel takes a minimum of six months, all the way to several years, to complete. Again, I have to qualify this. It might take me a year to complete a short story. Depends on the story.

Writing a variety of lengths and styles means I have something coming "ripe" a few times a year. In the garden, my season runs April (in a good year) through possibly as late as October.

​It's so satisfying to harvest a crop! Or finish a story. Just like every season presents different gardening challenges, each writing project has its own journey from start to - hopefully - finish.

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