Pruning the apple tree, I carried the clippings to a bin, and got a close smell of them. It was apples. It was the way good apples smell compounded with the smell of new leaves. If I could have gotten that scent into a bottle, I would’ve. I now vow the yard will never be without an apple tree, and I will happily put myself in charge of pruning. This little tree has 6 varieties of apple—6 grafted branches: Red Mackintosh, Golden Delicious, Gravenstein (which is included because it blooms slightly first, and the bees will carry its pollen to the other branches), Transparent Yellow, Fuji, and Gala. It’s a wonderful tree, and becoming a favorite. Of course Washington is a pretty good place for apple trees, but apple trees grow nationwide, are hardy beyond belief, and if you have to figure what fruit tree to plant, this is not a bad choice at all.
The pond has developed a new algae. Lucky us. I’m going to do a water change today, though I hadn’t wanted to because of the temperatures, but this stuff is disgusting and I don’t want to let it proliferate.
And the writing is going well. Nothing like a rolling rewrite to recover your focus. It’s like trying to do patterns on a tapestry: sometimes you need to back off and view the whole thing to see how they relate and how you can make it better.
I smoke and barbecue meat with apple and hickory wood, it’s wonderful stuff.
My writing has stagnated. I have reached the climax of two pivotal chapters, but for the last few weeks I just can’t get back into it. Maybe I will try your method and do a rolling reedit and see if that inspires me to continue.
Man against white paper is very difficult.
Man against the writing that’s almost what you want is sooo much easier. And it helps find all those threads that got lost under the texture of the piece, and helps you pull them together.
I used to suggest (and still do) if you lose your way in a book, write out “What’s This Book *About,* Really?” and tack it over your workspace. It helps center your thinking in a good way.
Was this the one tucked off beside the garage? If I walked from the irises away from the gate to the front yard, I would walk right up to it, right? Sorry, I just don’t remember directions, must have been all of the bright lights in the yard that dazzled me so I couldn’t figure east from west.
Beside the garage, against the fence.
It sucks, I will give you that. I am stuck between points on a outline and can’t fill in the gaps to my satisfaction.
What is the book really about? This one is about pain and revenge, the main characters are not young pups put on their first adventure. These are hardened vets that have been outcast from their perspective cultures to do what is right over societal boundaries. They have given up all to fight what they see as evil and paid a heavy toll for their choices. One has even been brought back from the dead to be given a second chance and is pretty morose the underworld has rejected him. I am in the 190’s as far as length and just can’t get over the hump.
I just read Merchanter’s Luck this week, and can’t believe what you could do in around 200 pages. It will take me at least 300 to define this one for part one…
Thank you for the compliment. In the bad old days we were given only 80,000 words to tell a story. Books were meant to be that long. Now they’ve expanded. The difference is how many characters you can handle in a given length.
Oh, apple smells…
Once upon a time, when I was but knee-high to various bugs, my uncle owned an apple processing plant on the shore of Lake Washington. I remember my mother bringing me and my sister to it and setting us loose among the crates of apples ‘to find the most perfect one’. The combination of wood and apple and rot and water and sun is one of my very best memories.
As for stories… I like the idea of putting up ‘what is this story about?’, but have to admit that for me, that isn’t always possible. F’instance, in the mighty tome that I’m currently wrestling with, I’m figuring it out as I go along… and although I know I have to somehow resolve five nations’ representatives’ opinions such that at least four of them end up chasing My Heros into the wild blue yonder (literally), right now? NO CLUE how to get them there.
It’ll come. But CJ’s comment re: the difficulty of the white page is very apropos. 🙂
I’m giving it up for today… You’re welcome. I inherited about 4,000 paperbacks from the 60’s-80’s and read about 4-6 a month. C.J. Cherryh figured predominately in the collection. So I have read about 40 of your novels and they have influenced me as a writer, though I have my own style and don’t get as much into the character’s head as you do. But have learned from the insight. To interact with the author, however briefly, is an immense pleasure for me.
It’s sometimes salutary to go do a hobby for a bit, tinker with something, and let the lizard brain process the bits and pieces. Never give up. But never batter yourself into a brick wall. Just trust the hindbrain.
By water change, do you mean that you are draining the pond and refilling? How do you drain and where does the water go? How long does it take to refill? Do you have concerns about chlorine, etc. that might be in your water?
Yes, but not a total drain: to handle algae, I’ve started doing what one does with a marine tank: draw off 10-20% of the water volume and replace, which handles any mineral accumulation due to evaporation. I drain it into the garden, which will head for the driveway if the ground is saturated—or use a bucket to splash water onto the plants, who like the crud. To get a 20% change, which is 800 gallons, I may do this 2-3 days running—partly because I can only drain the pond down about 6 inches before it drops below the skimmer intake, and quits. I can get below that but need a pump to do it.
But I don’t want to deliver too much cold water, which the fish wouldn’t like: it could send them toward sleep and mess up their digestion. So I do only as much as the sun can warm in a day. In any sort of aquaculture, fast is generally not good.
I use a product called Vanish to remove the chlorine. Most cities now use chloramine, which won’t break down, so the old trick of letting water set no longer works.
I’m considering using water from the swimming pool to finish filling the fish pond when I drain the pool down to the outlet for the winter. It would be 800-1000 gallons. The water going into the pond would be diluted and chemicals should completely dissipate by spring. We are not doing any fish until next year. My water is from my own well and precipitation so I don’t have to worry about any chloramine, flourine, etc.
Sorry to keep pestering you with so many question, but you have given me the best information around. Thanks! 😉
I’d say if you’re going to do that, get a chlorine test (I assume one from the pool). I’m not sure what it takes to break down chloramine, should there be any, and the variety of stabilized chlorine that goes into pools is really severe. If you’re going from a well, you should get a battery of tests to start with: I believe your county may provide free water testing—many do. Takes a little, but knowing what’s in the water (some well water contains arsenic in small amounts, etc…not scary until it piles up after a summer of evaporation.) For your situation, probably a regime of drawing off water to water your plants (get a spare little giant pump and a garden hose, and just pump it down a bit (10%) once weekly and give that rich water to your plants, then refill with fresh well water. That will prevent buildup of certain non-evaporatable elements (things that aren’t h’s and o’s) and use the water to a good purpose AND allow you to keep refreshing the water with water that does not have a big chemical buildup in it.
Be VERY careful about any spraying done anywhere near your pond, including by neighbors. One fairly pricey thing to keep on hand is called polyfilter.
“Poly-Filter® sorbs excess organics such as amino acids, proteins, lipoproteins, dissolved organic matter, all forms of phosphates, tannins & humic acids and related complexes. Poly-Filter® also sorbs volatile organic chemical such as chloroform, bromoform, benzene, phenols and organophosphate insecticides/pesticides. All metabolic wastes are sorbed by Poly-Filter®.”
It’s pricey: but if you do have an accidental poisoning, it is about your only hope. Keep some sheets in reserve, and don’t use them unless there’s poison. Think of them as the chemical equivalent of a fire extinguisher.
There is nothing quite like the smell of fruit wood to bring back memories. Whenever I cut wild cherry (beloved of tent worms) I am back to the wild cherry cough drops of my childhood. Sassafras is root beer, my mother’s favorite. The sense of smell must be *very* old; it calls up deep memories.
Thanks for all the pond info. Chlorine is not a problem as such because it breaks down in the pool fairly quickly. Right now with all the rain we had it is almost zero. Sprays from neighbors should not be a problem as the nearest are about 300-400 feet away through the woods and don’t spray anything. The strongest thing I use in my gardens are BT and Safer’s. I like the idea of having polyfilter on hand. It will become part of my Paranoid Preparation System. (Yes, I have gotten a lot of teasing about it. On the other hand I don’t have to assume maniac mode when a hurricane threatens.)
We had the well tested after the monsoon. The guy who was helping me translate the test said, “Wow! Your water is better than the stuff people buy.” I am really spoiled by good water. 🙂
Thank you again for all your help with this. I never in a zillion years thought my favorite author would become my pond advisor. 🙂 😀 😆
😆 Just as the science ‘aside’ for the day, the olfactory bulb is just about the most primitive, basic part of the brain. Back in the 90’s there was interesting research done on analyzing its responses and how it ‘recognizes’ smells. It becomes less responsive to repeated doses of an odor, but a new odor sparks activity and it forms a sort of template that the researcher believed is used for comparison against older patterns. It’s a sort of storage not in the regular brain, but in cells that have dedicated themselves to do just one job, like the ‘open hailing frequencies thing’ in Galaxy Quest. When constellations of those cells are ticked off, the pattern is unique to each smell. It’s memory without intelligence, the body’s most basic recording system. That’s what I recall, anyhow. So ‘apples’ is definitely in there!
Remember Proust’s ‘Madeleine’-cookies? Or isn’t that example quoted as widely in the high-school biology lesson about the nose as I thought? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Search_of_Lost_Time
Late to the party, but when I saw this I had to register just to comment. I don’t know how you feel about perfume, but if you DO like it, there is a small-batch perfumier called Black Phoenix Alchemy Labs that does several scents that are WONDEFULLY apple-y. If you were interested, I’d suggest Eden: Apple blossom, fig, white peach, honey absolute, red sandalwood, and wild thyme; or Verdandi: Deep herbs and apple with black amber, or The Hesperides (my favorite) sturdy oak bark, dew-kissed leaves, twilight mist and crisp apple. It really does smell like the whold apple tree. And no, I don’t work for the company. *lol* They are a mostly-online company, and the company name is the website: http://www.blackphoenixalchemylab.com/ Hope you enjoy!!