Green Space

My Green Peace

This week is clearly one I’ll wish away to my memory banks.

I’ve found my best way to cope with stress is digging in the dirt. It’s inherent to my life, an attribute solidly implanted in my DNA.

Getting outside really clears my head of nonsense.

The last few days have been spent with salvia and coreopsis and wild lime, caladium bulbs and wild flower seed, pine straw and crabgrass.

This pre-Spring season is the Florida I love best. The tolerable temperatures and humidity. The fragrance of fruit tree blossoms. What I imagine heaven to be.

Potato Soup Journal published my story “Green Space” online January 11, 2019. Unfortunately, the link was there and now gone. In its place, a sketchy gambling-type site featuring a mahjong event.

I can only hope a sound effect of clicking tiles is incorporated into what certainly appears obvious fraud.

Fortunately, the story appeared in the Potato Soup Journal Anthology (2020). Print journals are important. Thank you, Potato Soup Journal for publishing my story.

“Green Space” is a lengthy work for this presently tiny tales writer. The setting is post-hurricane associated shared madness with property line issues building to a boil; yet within the piece, I give the reader my sense of peace.

“My thoughts turn marigold. I planted five hundred of the flowers early in the spring for use as a natural dye. With my wicker basket draped across my arm, my bed of merry extended their blooming heads in sacrifice for a few dyed orange-yellow tee shirts. No amount of inner fortitude could compel me to deadhead the flowers. I simply was unable to stand in daily witness of a garden full of headless blind stems. I shelved the harvest and learned to naturally dye another way, with turmeric and tea, red cabbage and beets, leaving the marigolds to serve as a natural mosquito repellent.”

Thank you for reading.