Jeannine Atkins

Our Massachusetts town has some pretty cool agricultural triumphs. Two hundred watermelons from Harvest Farm recently went Hollywood, appearing in Taking Woodstock. Farmer Gary Gemme gave the movie two thumbs up and said his watermelons did a good job. “They were in character.”

The Chang Farm sends organic vegetables and bean sprouts to stores around New England, and is now trying to market schizandra berries, source of an energizing supplement,long used in China, with the more user friendly name of ChiBerry.




My friend artist Jo-Ann Denehy made her first attempt to grow an enormous pumpkin this summer at Quonquont Farm. Despite all the rain, her pumpkin came in at 396 pounds. If you want to see how a pumpkin gets weighed, and its competitors – Jo-Ann’s came in tenth at the Big E fair in Springfield, but the rivals had been growing pumpkins for years if not decades, and truly, some are .. pale -- you can watch this You Tube story.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGBt-Bn1Z8w

Jo-Ann offered me a seed to try next spring. Um, I don’t think my thumb is quite that green.

At eight this morning I arrived at the library to help put books on folding tables borrowed from the church. At three o’clock when Paula came to help pack, and picked up a book, and said, “This looks good,” I couldn't work up much enthusiasm, though early in the day I'm all about wanting to know what people like to read. I’d just helped load a truck to go to Salvation Army tomorrow. Hundreds of pounds of romance novels. Maybe I would have had more fun if I just crawled under a table like Natalie.



Nat also gave us a lot of help, as did her brother and cousins. People left happily with some bargains and treasures. One woman suggested we do this every week. Um, no.

The Whately Historical Society had their Harvest Fair, and I picked up some raspberries, blueberries, and green beans from Natalie’s dad under the tent for Chamutka Farm. You can see on the bag “Picked by Tom and Nat” and Tom carried one zillion boxes, though I don’t think he found one about tractors, which is his favorite subject.



The Historical Society had sold out their apple pies – “we need more bakers,” – I was told by the time I came over, but the Milk Bottle was open for free ice cream from Snow’s Farm.



Fiona plants herbs and flowers around my town, and I bought a wreath made with eucalyptus. When she came into the library later, she let me sniff her coat. I caught her talking to her daughter on her cell and she kind of summed up the day: “It’s wet, and horrible, and there are just a few… lovely.. people.”



Yes. When I was getting achy and grumpy from lugging boxes, Jeanne quietly came over to me, said, “This is for you,” and made me laugh by putting The Value of Love into my hands.

As we ate breakfast on the porch, my husband looked at my computer and asked, “So when can I read that book?”

“My goal is the end of August. It might still be a bit rough, but…”

He nodded. I’ve been working on this in various forms, stopping for various other projects, for years, but he knows I’m slow. Which is one reason why I like summer – almost everyone slows their pace, which matches my style of writing. Never fast. Leaving some spaces to dream.

I just finished a quite pretty draft of chapter ten, and like a kid with their first birthday in the double digits, I’m psyched. I expect what I’m now calling Conversations with the World to leave home around age, I mean chapter, eighteen, so I’m past the half way mark. The final chapters are all done in rough forms, so it’s rearranging and throwing out some wreckage and polishing what’s good that lies ahead. I’m fairly confident that this time through the foreword movement makes sense, though who can ever get those promises, on roads that have never yet been taken? So it’s all word by word, page and page, with lots of hope thrown in.

Working, taking breaks. I recently read Loree’s lgburns
blog with some great quotes from the book Creative Nonfiction, and in her reply to my comment she noted how it seemed helpful to read a good book on craft, but was it really procrastination? Oh that fuzzy line between inspiration and procrastination.

But when the clouds disappeared and I decided to swim, I was pretty sure that was not procrastination. After all, I want to write, but not with every joint making creaking sounds. Moving my whole arms, not just my fingers and elbows, felt good. Plus I got to see a toddler in a pink bathing suit running in circles on the sand, chattering and singing to herself. Which is kind of what it’s all about.

When I was driving back home down the rough road, a stranger flagged me down.

“I’m not from here,” he said. As in he-ah. “I’m from Texas, staying at the hotel ov-ah there. I took a walk and saw the sign.”

I nodded.

“So is that a joke? Is there really a beach?”



I laughed. “Yeah, it looks kind of unofficial, but there really is a lake, just a few minutes walk.” (You can’t really read the scrawl beneath the evergreen picture, about Xmas trees for sale.)

“I thought it might be a joke,” he repeated, then walked on while I drove out.

It really is a lovely lake that lets me float on my back, and reminds me that it’s good to spend a bit of time staring at the sky. It’s where, long ago, my daughter and her friends used to fling Barbies and plastic dinos and try to catch them as they drifted through the water.





When I told my husband I’d have a draft of my novel by the end of summer, I don’t want him saying, “Is this a joke?” Not that he would. But I mean I don’t want it to look too much like a hand-scrawled sign. I want him to be sure that there really is a lake.