Here we are with the First Harvest almost upon us, and I'm pleased to have been fairly productive this year. In the last few weeks, I've submitted the first 50 pages of a novel to my agent (at her request), entered a story in a contest, and e-mailed a query -- synopsis, prologue and first three chapters -- about another novel to a publisher. I won't say more than that right now 'cause I don't want to jinx anything, but I will say I'm happy to've gotten that much "done."

It now seems fairly realistic to think that Mother Earth Ministries' book, Enchantment Encumbered, will be out by the end of the year, too. We haven't signed any deals yet, but we're asking serious, final-round questions of two companies. Enchantment has had a rough go of it: two, maybe three years ago, we submitted it to a few traditional publishers, none of whom (obviously) bought it. Well over a year ago, we signed with a subsidy publisher, but they went bankrupt (and no, we didn't get our money back). We then made another round of inquiries in Traditional Publishing Land, again to no avail. Now we're trying to decide between two more subsidy publishers, and we hope to make the decision and have "production" underway by Mabon. Fingers crossed, eh?

Today, Husband-man and I ventured forth on Errands, and one of them was to buy a small connect-to-the-garden-hose vacuum for our pool (pictures of which you can see in the "Summer Fun" gallery). We also bought another Mr. Duckie -- this one a Mr. Temperature Duckie, who, fortunately, doesn't seem to be the least bit evil. The vacuum works very well -- we can't help tracking a bit of patio dirt and debris into the pool, and we can't capture all of it with the kitchen sieve we use as a pool net.

Mr. Temperature Duckie tells us that our pool's right around 89° and I am personally quite amazed to be tolerant of such a low temp. Could it be that the hormonal furnaces are settling back into some sort of normality? Wow. (Hmm -- that's given me a story idea! Woo hoo!)

We bought a few more plants for the yard today, too. (We can't have houseplants because the cats eat them.) We've seen that whatever eats the outdoor plants -- can't blame the cats for that-- doesn't seem to care much for lantana, so we got some more of it, to replace whatever we used to have that the assorted critters (doves included, we discovered after we fenced out the bunnies) did like.

As I mentioned, Lammas -- First Harvest -- is coming up, and I've prepared this year's Harvest God. He's presently hanging from the shower curtain rod in the guest bath. I'm afraid that if I leave him outside, he'll get literally blown away, or spoiled by rain; but that leaves me on the horns (ha ha) of a dilemma. If I keep him inside, safe from the rain, well, then, there won't be any rain. If I leave him out where he could be ruined, we might well get rain -- but then our Harvest God would be unavailable for ritual. We're having a guest in the Lammas Circle this year, so I've decided to go ahead and make sure the Harvest God is fit for his role in the rite.

We're celebrating Lammas on the 2nd of August -- and on the 9th, there'll be another ritual here at the Traditionstead. I can't tell you much about that now: not only do I not want to reveal the plans ahead of time, but I won't presume to guess how it'll actually go. We have begun the last set of preparations we need to make, but there's a fair amount left to do -- for some of which I am inviting inspiration, with every confidence that it will shortly attend.

I was inspired this afternoon to write some new poetry -- maybe more accurately doggerel -- for Lammas. We'll hope it scans as well when we read it aloud as it does when I center it in the text box on the screen. :-)

Here's to a happy Lammas and a fruitful harvest! May your fields be full and your berries ripe!

Blesséd be,
Ashleen





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