All right, it’s a controversial title. Here in northern New England, praising this endless, toothy winter is risking a scenario involving torches and pitchforks. However, I’m going to play the eccentric author card, so hear me out.
I’m an avid gardener and spring in this climate is a special thing. By spring I mean May or even June, as anything before that is either winter or this soppy, icy, muddy, drab phenomenon we call April. Enter the greenhouse. This adds a month or two onto the growing season, allows me to grow things that simply won’t thrive in the ground up here (like peppers, what is it with peppers?) and provides me with hope during the aforementioned month of April.
March 7, 2015
I’m writing a new fantasy novel called Outpost (no amusing metaphor intended). I just passed 100,000 words and am rapidly closing in on the last few chapters. It’s all gathering and racing around in my mind to its beautiful, poignant conclusion. No problem staying dedicated to this when — ok, I’ll weigh in now — it only recently got above freezing for the last forty-eight days or something absurd like that, the temperatures in February were fifteen degrees below average and all it does it snow; yes and as a point of interest March tends to be the snowiest month. But I’m shooing off the winter whiners because right now it’s providing me with a great big pillow fortress to hide in while I finish and polish up Outpost so I can send it off to my editor.
Because when my seedlings emerge, the perennials wake up from the cold ground and it gets warm enough for me to sit outside like a pagan sun worshiper? You can do the math.
Outpost, Book One in The Fylking.
A race of immortal warriors who live by the sword.
A gate between the worlds.
Warriors, royals, seers and warlocks living in uneasy peace on one side of the Veil.
Until now.
© F.T. McKinstry 2015. All Rights Reserved.
F.T. McKinstry 
Lucky you! I live in the densely populated part of the city and rally miss my gardening hobby. There are community gardens but they have 2 year waiting lines. The growing season is about the same, spring comes in late may in Finland. When I lived in South Texas, the growing season was short due to the long and scorching summers. Now we had virtually no winter in Finland, there was hardly any snow.
LikeLiked by 1 person
We get crummy winters like that sometimes, too. But this one and the last were horrendous. Yes, my parents live in Texas. Every February or March my mother calls and brags about the wildflowers and dogwood trees while, of course, I’m still buried up here. I tell her the same thing every year. Call me come July (when her gardens are toast and the air is full of dust) and we’ll talk. lol
LikeLiked by 1 person