It Worked!

Better late than never... That "experiment" I mentioned I was going to try took longer than I thought to put into action, but it did indeed work, so I'm satisfied. Friday turned into a completely non-writing day, much to my chagrin, but it was productive in other ways, so I tried not to be too annoyed by it. My husband (known henceforward as Mr. Greenjeans, or Mr. GJ), had been doing massive research on California native plants, and there's a fantastic place called the Theodore Payne Foundation that specializes in CA natives, and they were having a sale. Beginning on Friday. At 8:30 am. We had no idea what to expect, whether or not there'd be plant people standing at the gate like customers at a Mervyn's sale, chanting "open, open, open!", so we wanted to go as early as possible.

Good thing we did--it was crowded. They were even out of one of the plants we really wanted, but when we found out that one woman had gotten there as soon as they opened and bought all 8 plants, we didn't feel too bad. Spending about 2 1/2 hours there, then hitting freeway traffic due to an accident, we got home just about lunchtime. Time enough for me to scarf down some leftovers and head to Santa Monica to meet another friend for a walk and massage appointments. By the time I got home, it was just about dinner time, and the day was shot for me, writing-wise. (Also, Mr. GJ was home, and I have a hard time writing when he is, but that's another story for another blog day...) The weekend was pretty much spent turning this:


into this:



Yes, it took us two days (well, all day Sat., Sun. afternoon and Mon. morning), including Mr. GJ taking out a tree stump that the previous owners had left behind when they had these plants put into the yard. Our across-the-street neighbors were so incredibly nice--the husband complimented us on our hard work on Saturday, then Sunday, as we're putting the new plants in around dinnertime, the couple came strolling over to compliment us again--and bring us dinner! They told us they'd made too much food and would be glad to bring us "a plate." We didn't know that was going to mean 3 barbecued chicken breasts, grilled asparagus, a full plate of pasta salad and a plastic tub full of homemade black beans. I've never had a neighbor do such a nice thing. When I bring back the plastic tub, it's going to be filled with homemade cookies--this kind act makes up for some other neighbors making comments about the state of our (overgrown) yard. I would never say anything about someone's yard unless it was a pure compliment, but people here have had no qualms about saying things like "Wow, ya got a lotta work there," and "Those weed grasses grow pretty fast, don't they?" and asking us directly to keep our flax plants trimmed because the neighbors get poked when they walk by.

But, I digress...on to my experiment!

I was having some trouble getting into a good writing groove last week when I came up with this plan, as well as yesterday, so I didn't implement it until today. I told myself that I wasn't allowed to blog until I got some writing done--in part because sometimes the writing here is more fun than writing my novel, but also because I want to give myself some accountability, so I'm going to post my progress here. Thusly: Today's productivity--combo of new writing, rewriting, and moving some pieces around (pieces I didn't want to cut but didn't really belong where they'd been) for a total of about 6 pages. Considering I've been working in fits and starts since the Working Writer's Retreat, I'm very satisfied with my output today. Hooray!