Outdoors2

Returning outdoors more often has started generating new ideas for writing. I don’t know, but if you’re a writer do you often find that changing where you write helps to either get you going on a story or shows you where a story might be better?

This morning going into the garden I thought about a whole series of short pieces that I’d love to put together into a collage of Garden Stories. Sort of a picture book for big kids who love gardens and think of them as metaphors for life.

So if you can forgive the rather shaky camera work again, here’s a venture into my garden and some of the writing that came while I visited.

I can pick beans for an hour, know I’ve found all of them, and then circle the bush one more time and find a cluster of those stealthy green pods tucked behind leave. I know they didn’t grow while I walked down the row. I just hadn’t seen them the first time. It occurs to me that picking beans is a lot like solving problems. You have to look for solutions from a different angle. Sometimes the answers are there all the time. You simply haven’t seen them yet.