Spring has sprung

Well it’s been awhile since I wrote my last blog.  For writers, and most people in general these days, there never seems to be enough time to get the ‘to-do list’ done and before you know it a week, or two, has flown by!  As you’ll read in this blog post, this most recent gap between my posts has mostly to do with the change of seasons…

Where I live in Canada we have been experiencing an unusually warm spring, which is both good and bad.  It’s good because the grass is green and the flowers are growing, but bad because the snow is melting too rapidly in some locations causing flooding.  I feel very lucky that the mountain-fed creek that runs through our property has not breached the banks.

One of the fallouts I’ve personally experienced from this unusually warm and sunny spring has been the sudden and quick growth of grass.  Translation, more frequent lawn mowing and string trimming!  You would think with owning three horses I wouldn’t have to mow the grass.  But here’s a little known fact to non-horsey people; spring grass is too high in sugar and can make a horse very sick, even die if the owner doesn’t carefully monitor their intake.  This means that as tempting as it might be to turn my horses out to eat down the grass, annually I have to ease them onto the grass – starting at ten minutes and then increase their grazing time in slow increments of ten minutes each day.  Right now we are up to about one hour and fifteen minutes and the maximum is about two to three hours per day.

Managing the horses grazing is just one of the many scheduling adjustments I make as we turn from winter life into spring and then summer here on the ranch.  Another spring activity for me involves making and maintaining lovely flower baskets, and of course when the nice weather becomes more of a day-to-day affair, it’s hard for me to resist saddling up one of my three horses and going for a trail ride.

Because I love the outdoors so much, I find it difficult to stay inside and write at this time of year, except when it’s really warm and then it’s a nice escape.    I’m not making excuses – it’s just all about balance.  I need to make time to write and to do the other things in life that make me happy. Many of my successful author friends don’t have any struggles keeping up the writing schedule even in nice weather.  That’s probably why they are successful and well…I’m not quite there yet.

With all this said, I will not to be deterred by a little stumble in my writing.  I am back on schedule with my blogging and writing, and determined to get these couple of books finished and off to the editor.  On that note, I’m going to wrap up this blog and dive back into my writing.  Here is my quote for the week, keeping within the theme of today’s blog.

Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other.

Walter Elliot

Have a great week,

Tamara