GardenBanter.co.uk - View Single Post

20-08-2003, 07:22 PM

In article , wrote:

I'm an author of 22 nonfiction educational books.
I'm also under contract with a major publisher. [clip] So I
I live in a condo so my gardening is limited
mostly to container gardening ... but the incredible jungle
I've created in pots around my house is to die for.
Best,
PJ

Good for you. One very OCCASIONALLY finds actual surgeons posting in the
medicine newsgroups, but mostly a bunch of dumb farts who think they can
cure cancer with echinacea, & one VERY occasionally finds working writers
in the "writers" newsgroups, but mostly just wannabes who reinforce each
others amateur standards & beliefs. It's generally to be expected that
anyone in a How To Write Good newsgroup will speak loudest about How To
Write Good when they've never figured out how to go about it at all,
beyond the utterly democratic context of usenet, or posting their crap at
websites. And frequently their delusions & ideas are so off the mark that
they doom themselves through their own poor choices & mistaken beliefs, &
really won't like the HONEST answer to such questions as "how do I get an
agent" and other wannabe obsessions -- thus never can get can count
working writers among their peers. But if they're talentless anyway,
perhaps no reason to give them the correct information. Even so,
misc.writing, in among the flamers & fools, is sometimes very comical (on
purpose even), & a few genuinely charming people, with or without
delusions of actual talent.

One of the books I was contracted for, which I turned in, was paid for it
& spent the money, but which has been pending now for YEARS, was a guide
to miniature vegetable gardening in finite innercity spaces -- it was such
a cute book with tiny pictures of tiny veggies growing in tiny gardens, I
just loved working on that project. It got to the point of galleys, &
proof flats for the cover illustration -- then illness struck the
publisher & they went from ten books a year to less than one a year. Every
time I think about that little book I wish I could get the rights back as
it would be so easy to sell again. But alas it was work for hire & I
cannot just withdraw it from that publisher, even if they never do finish
the project.

It's been years since I've had to garden in an ultra-finite space & even
the yards I have now sometimes seem too limiting since I can't do such
things as collect a whole bunch of beech tree cultivars, which I would
certainly do if I had a lot of land. I wish I could plant a flowering
understory in a surrounding piece of property that was half wilderness. I
just want to spread out & spread out, & collect more trees as well as
small things . . . if someday when I'm a feeb and have to garden only in a
window box in the old folks home, I suppose I'll readjust, but cannot at
present quite imagine it. If I ever sell the house we own now, the only
thing that would make the disruption rewarding would be if the next place
could be gigantic garden time.

A regular here, Valkyrie, went from big gardens to patio gardening, & her
experiences shared in this group have many times gotten me thinking about
whether I would get depressed about scaling down or just maximize the
experience of smaller space & get just as much pleasure. People do adjust
to much tougher things.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/