Gardening Your Soul

The author spent many years, as a contributing source for major “shelter” magazines.  She also has many short stories, which have been published in various well-known magazines.

This book is a collection of vignettes relating to plants and how they inspired her to write her innermost thoughts.  Some are whimsical, some are solemn and some are thought-provoking.

There are many short stories, remembering her life experiences and her love of family.  With her sensitive wisdom, she has written these stories with a warm compassion for family and friends, a deep sense of spirituality and the love that is shared by her family.

This book contains stories of diverse thought, humor and a bit of the serious side of life.  It provides an interesting read from cover to cover.

How does one fall in love with words?  An early memory was my first reading teacher telling us there were no two words with identical meanings.  I mulled that over for days and decided she was right.

Reading “Little Women” cinched the deal.  I would have to be a writer like my beloved Jo.  Most women writers say the same thing. 

Then I wanted to become a newspaper reporter.  In my senior year in high school, I was editor of the school newspaper.  I thought I was destined for fame and success.  Fast-forward through some college years.

After college, I got a job with a Davenport, Iowa advertising agency.  I wrote national radio copy for a “dandruff shampoo”, but gave up after a year.  How many variations can you do on that?!

Then I married my high school sweetheart, Herman and moved back to Des Moines, Iowa, where he could attend Drake University Law School.  I still wanted to write and took some evening classes and met other aspiring writers.

Along came the family and with four children to care for, there was little time to write, but I did make up some stories for their ages.  After a trip to Philmont Scout Ranch, I wrote about our experiences and it was published in the national scouting magazine.  No pay--but it was exciting to be published.

Later, I worked a few years at the Iowa Legislature and loved it for the politics, but no writing was involved.  I left that job and began writing articles for Better Homes and Gardens and other Meredith publications.  I then became a “scout”, in magazine parlance, and sought out homeowners who had remodeled their kitchens, baths, or bedrooms.  I would coordinate the photography setup and then write the script for publication.  There were about 25 “scouts” in various cities, finding houses to photograph.

Twenty years past and Herman and I moved to Scottsdale, Arizona to enjoy our retirement years.  Our daughter, Susan had moved to Phoenix, married and began raising her family.  Dan, our youngest son, soon followed and is now a successful businessman.  Jim, our oldest son was living in Indianapolis, Indiana and was a photographer for UPI Wire Services.  Our ‘middle’ son, Tom was living in Washington, D.C. working in the Senate post office and attending American University.

I was still doing my “scouting” for Meredith, but decided I could no longer do it justice, so I began to write--about what?  When all else fails, there are always your own life stories.

Some sorrows happened--the death of my beloved husband, Herman at 74 years of age, my granddaughter, Laurissa at 21 and then our oldest son, Jim at the age of 59.  I ‘wrote my way’ through these sorrows.

I have had a fulfilling life, away from the printed word, mainly because of being blessed with a great family.  I can’t imagine my life without any of them--grandchildren, step-grandchildren, in-laws and great-grandchildren and, of course, my own children.

To write about them would be a book in itself. This book was just meant to tell you, the reader,  “how I became a wordsmith”.  I really had no choice.  Life saw to that.