If you know Oklahoma, you know that summer can be brutal. Even if you get out in the early morning to do your gardening, you come in buggy and wet and thirsty.
For me, gardening starts with a good coat of bug spray because I’ve chosen carcinogens over chigger bites and tick-born diseases. I start early and work in short sprints. Fifteen minutes of weed pulling is enough before I need to dry off my glasses and rehydrate.
If I can get a full hour of real work in, I’m happy. Sometimes the chickens get the lion’s share of my time, and they always get the weeds. You should see how excited a closed-in flock gets when the weeds show up! I try to do my little bit in the garden as close to daily as I can, so that weeds and squash bugs and perennials I planted years ago and shouldn’t have can’t take over.
Once I get started, I don’t want to stop. I go in and out at intervals and keep going back out. While I’m engaged in happy physical labor, I’m plotting stories and perfecting lines.
To get those lines on paper, I have to do with my writing as I do with my weeding, commit to that daily little bit and get started. That little bit usually becomes a good stretch, but even if it is just a little bit of time, it keeps my writing project rolling.
Commitments, like diets, have to be reasonable. For me, a little bit every day is a commitment I can honor.
Sharon Edge Martin 