Friday Features’
Guest talks about
Gardening in the Ozarks
by
Susan Varno
When my husband and I retired, we moved to the Arkansas Ozarks. We built our house in a forest meadow. I knew the land wouldn’t have the black loamy soil we’d enjoyed in northern Illinois. A neighbor recommended we put in raised flower beds.
I said, “Over the winter, I’ll cover them with black plastic so weeds and seedlings won’t grow up.”
He gave me that “you aren’t from around here” look and said, “That won’t be necessary. The beds will be fine until spring.”
He was right. After we had what passes for dirt delivered, mostly sand, some gravel, and crumbled clay, not a thing grew, not a weed, not a blade of grass. One brave acorn sprouted, looked around, and promptly died.
Spring came. I visited the garden department at Walmart. I didn’t care what the flowers looked like, only that they grew in partial shade and didn’t require much watering.
I bought bags of black top soil, some organic fertilizer, and compost. I mixed it into the sandy soil and planted marigolds, wildflowers, gladiola bulbs and some unidentified clearance flowers. They all drooped. I scattered pine bark mulch around them. The flowers still looked forlorn. Every time I watered, that night it rained. Then one night some critter ate my pansies, vinca, and moss roses. Just nibbled off the buds and left the leaves.
Back to Walmart for something to discourage the all night critter buffet. The ingredients included putrefied egg shells, cayenne pepper, dried blood, and cat urine. It smelled awful but seemed to work.
I planted hostas (too much shade), marigolds (weather too hot), gladiolas, (magnificent but kept falling over). The sole zinnia did well, though it seemed lonely for its own kind.
Then I made friends with Juanita Stowers. She told me to use manure for fertilizer but wear gloves. She gave me heirloom petunia plants she’d rescued 30 earlier from her mother’s garden. They not only bloomed but moved from one bed to another every year. Each spring I had to search for them. I told her I watered the yucca bulbs she’d gave me, but they didn’t bloom. She reminded me they are a succulent. I stopped watering. They grew four feet tall and shot forth with giant white flowers. Covered with an ice glaze, my violas gallantly bloomed. Coneflower seeds grew into a bush. English ivy engulfed a flower bed and headed up the outside of the house.
One day Juanita and I were driving in the woods. She suddenly stopped her SUV.
“I’ve got to have that fern,” she said. From her trunk, she lifted out a pot and small shovel.
“Watch for sheriff’s patrol cars,” she warned. “Digging up these heirloom plants is illegal, but I’m only taking one.”
I stood lookout while she explained that in the forest, many homesteads had been abandoned. When a family moved away, the cabin caved in or was taken apart to use the logs elsewhere. But the flowers the farm women had planted continued to come up every spring. For decades, even a century, they marked the places where a family, had farmed, survived, but been forced to move.
A REBEL AND HER ROGUE (A Regency Romance Novel from Soul Mate Publishing)
Excerpt
Sherwood Forest, 1815
Through the trees, Blake heard the wild rumbling of carriage wheels. Wood splintering. A horse shrieking. A man shouting.
Giving Valor his head, Blake raced through an opening in the trees. He burst onto the road and pulled sharply to a halt. Half in the ditch, a small carriage canted against a tree. The vehicle teetered. One wheel turned slowly in the air. While the coachman struggled to release the harness, the wild-eyed horse pawed the ground ready to bolt.
Blake leapt down from his horse Valor. The carriage door flew open. A head of lush black hair appeared followed by the most enchanting face he ever beheld. Dark brows, dark lashes. As he surveyed her freckled nose and cheeks, his gaze came upon the damsel’s plump red lips. They arched in a vicious frown.
He slid his hand around her waist and lifted her into his arms. She was lithe but endowed with graceful curves. She laced her arm around his shoulder. Her body pressed against his made sweat prickle in his most intimate places.
“Cassiopeia Valient?” he asked.
“Mister Durgan,” she snapped. “Is this any way to conduct a kidnapping?”
Durgan? The name pulled him up smartly. Did his potential bride-to-be mistake him for Dangerous Dan Durgan, the Gentleman Bandit? Beneath his leather jacket, Blake’s shirt collar stood open. His breeches were tucked into rough boots, and he wore his light blond hair tied back with a buckskin thong. Those details might explain her confusion.
What confusion? She expected him to kidnap her! Ransom must be her motive.
Amazon buy link
Susan Varno Bio:
Like many readers and writers, I watch stories inside my head. When I read a Regency romance, I imagine myself dancing at a London ball or racing through Sherwood Forest. When I write, I imagine an intriguing scene, always one with action and attraction. I watch how my hero and heroine act. That’s how I discover who they are and what they care about. I love researching their time and place in history almost as much as I love inviting these “strangers” inside my head.
For twenty-five years, I wrote columns and reviews for Video Views Magazine. I’ve seen almost every new movie release, especially the romances and anything with an historical setting. Though I was born and raised in Chicago and its suburbs, I married a country boy from rural Ohio. Richard insisted we retire to the hinterlands of the Arkansas Ozarks. Our post office was so remote you couldn’t find it on most maps. While we lived there, I interviewed more than a hundred people for articles in magazines and newspapers.
My husband died three years ago. I miss my hero every day. We have two grown sons and one grandson. I now live in a Chicago suburb. I volunteer in the local schools and help at my church. I’ve visited the western Caribbean and the western Mediterranean. Someday, England here I come.
Find Susan at:
Website – Facebook
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Helena Marshfield is in hiding. Once the indulged daughter of a baronet, she is now governess/companion to a businessman’s daughters. Her family has been in disgrace since her father’s very public suicide. What if someone discovers she has another secret to hide, that her father had promised her to the revolting Lord Elverton as payment for a wager?
C.D. Hersh 