Of revisions, translations, gardening, and this elusive summer

Oh, dear, I’ve been horribly lax about my blog lately. But that has a couple of reasons:

1) Big translation project

2) The weather has finally turned better here in Central Europe

At the moment, #2 is probably the most important. We have a “garden” about a 25 minute walk away from our apartment, a plot of land in the vineyards between Bad Cannstatt, Fellbach, and Untertürkheim with seventeen apple trees, as well as pear, cherry, quince and plums. (A recent storm did a lot of damage, but that’s a subject for another post, and besides, I don’t have the pictures up on Flickr yet.) It’s our little piece of paradise in the middle of the city.

It’s also a lot of work. But with the recent ongoing rain, we haven’t had a chance to do any normal maintenance. So the other day we were finally out again, admiring all the weeds that sprouted up while it was raining for weeks on end. And the roses are getting spots and the tomatoes are developing blight. It’s enough to make a gal throw up her hands in defeat and get back to writing.

Well, I did a little of both, gardening and writing. The last couple of days in the garden, I’ve had my eeePC with me, and I’m now once through Beyond the Waters of the World, the next novella in the world of Looking Through Lace. Not completely done: I’m still missing two scenes I noted during the rewrite that I want to add in. I’d intended to be done by this past weekend, but revisions were a lot more substantial than I thought they’d be. (Duh.)

And then there was translating and Summer! Finally! (When summer is so rare, I think it’s a perfectly good excuse to temporarily fall behind in writing goals. We all need our vitamin D, after all.)

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