#TeaserTuesday: Rising Sun

This Lord Have Mercy: Part Three post contains spoilers, so I've split it under a cut. Proceed with caution if you haven't read Part Two yet, or, better yet, go grab a copy! 

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#TeaserTuesday: College Town

It's a bit of a mafia story, and a bit of a coffeeshop story, and neither of those things actually. It's not what you're expecting, I'll say that. Coming 2/14!

 

Noah’s unimpressed. “He was really trying last night to make things right.”

Lawson snorts. “He didn’t try very hard. And again: it’s twenty years too late for that shit.”

Another End

 

I took this photo at 6:33 pm, thereby proving that it's staying light a little longer each day, which is wonderful news! 

Here's another bit of wonderful news: I finished another book today! College Town should be all set for a Valentine's Day release. 

There's always something terribly bittersweet about writing the last lines of a novel. Whether it's one that I've breezed through, or one that I've toiled and lost sleep over, the excitement of finally finishing is quickly eclipsed as I realize that I have maybe half a page of text left before I get to type THE END. Each sentence feels heavy, then; the weight of "gotta get it right," "have to end on just the right line" presses down and down on my shoulders as I move down the page, and then, suddenly, that's it. I'm done. And as glad as I am that I'm done, I'm always struck by all the ways that I could keep going, if I wanted to. The characters are still talking to me, they still have so much more to do...but all stories must end. Books can't go on forever. I find myself thinking "but what if someone wants to know what happens the next day? Or the next?" And maybe people do want to know...but the book has wound its way to a soft and reasonable ending, and it's time to let go. 

With College Town, it was really fun to know that I was working on a standalone, but it made that bittersweet THE END all the more potent. I never say never to sequels, or shorts, or little blog tidbits, but for now, it's time to turn the page. 

Look for College Town next month! 

Fortunate Son: Aidan and Tango

 This debrief post contains spoilers, so I've split it under a cut. Proceed with caution if you haven't read Part Two yet, or, better yet, go grab a copy! 

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“Don’t say fine,” Aidan said, more harshly than he’d intended. He was still jittery inside with being dismissed by Ghost, and Tango looked as pale and drawn as if he was destined for the next bed over in the cardiac unit. “’Cause that shit yesterday, after that Fallon guy questioned you? And earlier this morning? What, were you out for a garden stroll? And just now? You’re not fine. What’s going on?” He softened. “Tango, just…tell me, man. Whatever it is, you can tell me.” He tried to make his gaze imploring, however a person did that. Tried to say with his gaze, I pulled you half-dead out of a bathtub full of your blood. I went through two detoxes with you. Don’t pull away from me now. 

Up Next: College Town

It's common practice for me to have multiple projects going at the same time. Sometimes it's installments in two different series, juggling writing schedules and release dates. But sometimes I start little independent exercises that merely serve to keep my brain fresh. Most of the time, those exercises get slotted away into a Desktop folder somewhere and might or might not ever see the light of day. I move onto a bigger project, or further reflection reveals I was never that invested in it. They're the mental equivalent of lifting weights or going for a jog. 

But sometimes those projects grow legs, and take off, and I've been in this game long enough not to question that kind of magic: when your brain coughs up an unexpected novel by accident. That's what happened with the Hell Theory trilogy, with Long Way Down, and with the Drake Chronicles. Most recently, it happened when the exercise I was toying with before Christmas got up and set off at a dead run. Suddenly, I was 95k words deep into a book that's turned out to be a fun and refreshing change of pace. 

So my next release is:

“It was shitty, what I did. Leaving without saying anything.”

Lawson pauses with his drink halfway to his mouth. He wants, perhaps needs, to down it all in one go, like a shot. “Wow,” he deadpans. “You’re just diving right in, huh? Right for the throat.”

Tommy sighs, and rakes a hand through his hair, mussing it further. It’s a terribly attractive gesture, one that Lawson steels himself against (poorly). “You said you’d give me fifteen minutes. I’m trying not to waste your time.”

That stings. More than it should.

“Fine.” Lawson takes a sip of his drink, finally, and gestures at him. “Go on, then. You’ve had twenty years to concoct an excuse. This oughta be good.”

It's a totally standalone, contemporary M/M second-chance romance, spiked with coffeeshop vibes and a mafia chaser. Be on the lookout for College Town coming your way very soon!

Welcome to Eastman, home of the Eastman University Eagles. They’ve got twelve bars, twice as many coffeeshops, and Lawson Granger’s probably going to die behind the counter of Coffee Town, watching all the bright young people in town get their degrees and get on with their lives. He’s not miserable, exactly, but between working retail, writing books that’ll never get published, and helping take care of his infirm father, his life’s running a little short on joy. He has his family, though, and his best friend, Dana, and dreaming about being published is somehow better than accepting that he never will be.

Then the boy who broke his heart twenty years ago walks into the shop one day and throws Lawson’s entire small world into chaos. Tommy Cattaneo grew up handsome. And rich, clearly, judging by his suit, and his watch, and his chauffeured Lincoln. If Lawson’s shocked to see him, Tommy is dumbfounded. Lawson’s happy to pretend they’re strangers, despite the traitorous racing of his heart, but Tommy is adamant that they talk. He wants to explain why he left town suddenly…and returned twenty years later, with a beautiful fiancée, and a mansion, and a wardrobe that costs more than Lawson’s car.

When it becomes clear that Tommy means to stay in town for a while, and that he won’t take no for an answer, Lawson agrees to hear him out. Just once, and then he can lay his old heartache to rest. It’s probably a stupid excuse, anyway. I mean, t’s not like Tommy’s in the mafia…right? 

And don't worry, Lord Have Mercy Part Three is coming right along, too. 😉

Fortunate Son: The (Not So) Empty Hearse

  This debrief post contains spoilers, so I've split it under a cut. Proceed with caution if you haven't read Part Two yet, or, better yet, go grab a copy! 

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At the head of the line, a gleaming black Cadillac hearse had been only a formality on the funeral home’s part. The driver and his attendant stood leaning against its grill, smoking, as they waited for the funeral procession to glide slowly out the gates. The attendant was older, graying, his face lined, but his eyes were bright, and quick, and youthful.

The driver was younger, long and lean, slender legs crossed at the ankles. When he took a drag on his cigarette, the matte black metal of a lip ring glimmered dully in the sunlight.

When the last bike was gone, they snuffed their cigarettes, and climbed back into the car. The engine turned over with a muted purr, and the hearse made its way down the swooping driveway, through the gates, and out onto the road.

A mile from the cemetery, the attendant let out a deep, satisfied sigh, and raked off his little black cap. Loosened his tie, popped the top button on his collar.

“Well, that’s done, and done well, I’d say.” His accent was British, precise, but not polished.

The driver tossed his own cap up onto the dash, and his hair, black and shiny, spilled down to his shoulders. He drove one-handed while he fished out a fresh cigarette, and the attendant leaned over to light it for him. “Thanks,” he said after his first puff, and his voice was accented, too, but not British.

They kept driving. 

I've talked before about the way I started conceptualizing Lord Have Mercy back in early 2020, and how it took writing four books to finally get us here. All of the earliest ideas of the book centered around a funeral. 

#TeaserTuesday: The Club

  This debrief post contains spoilers, so I've split it under a cut. Proceed with caution if you haven't read Part Two yet, or, better yet, go grab a copy! 

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It's been several books coming, and it was bound to happen: the club's reached a boiling point with regard to the overarching plotline. 

2023 Garden Recap Part 2

 

In Part One of my 2023 garden retrospective, I talked about planning, outlining, digging, and then prepping the beds for the new cutting garden. That was in January/February. By April, the soil had been amended multiple times, and the farm was starting to well and truly come alive for spring.

Green grass, green leaves. 

Iris and shrub roses in full bloom. 

The next step in the process was to get three of the six beds ready for planting dahlia tubers, and that began with driving in the T-posts. 

When the horses first came home to the farm, the perimeter fences were all board, but a lot of temporary fencing on the interior of the driveway had to be put up in a hurry, and that was done with T-posts and electrified tape fencing. Eventually, we got board fence up on every pasture, and pulled the T-posts up and stored them as we went. One of the chief rules of farming: don't throw things away! Over the years, the T-posts have come in handy for all sorts of tasks, even if using the hammer to drive them into the ground is a special kind of torture - if you know, you know. 

We set up the posts at intervals along the edges of the beds, and then used bird netting on the exterior to keep the dog from digging in them. *sigh* You can't ever forget to factor in Strider.

This would have been the time to set up the supportive netting, but alas, we didn't have it ordered yet. 

Next came the landscape fabric, to act as a weed barrier and a means of keeping all the freshly amended soil from eroding in the spring rains. 

Then, it was time to plant the tubers. 

The tubers themselves were ordered and purchased in the months leading up to the last frost date - April 15th here. A mix of locally-bought tubers from the hardware store, and some ordered from Eden Brothers and Breck's Bulbs. Since this was our first time planting dahlias, we wanted to make sure we had some of the trendy staples - like Jowey Nicky and Cafe au Lait - and then filled in with some more economical, but beautiful varieties from Lowes. 

We cut holes in the fabric, buried the tubers horizontally, eyes up, and labeled each carefully, in the ground and on paper. Then, it was time to wait and see what germinated. 

A Peek Behind the Curtain (Or Over the Stall Door): Updates 1/21

It seems like the whole country's been in the grips of a major cold snap, and I just feel lucky we didn't have any snow or ice here. It's finally starting to warm up, for which all things two- and four-legged around here are grateful. I'm about to dive back into writing, but I wanted to check in first since it's been a while since I posted an official update of any sort. 

First things first: in case you missed it, my first release of 2024 dropped on the 5th. Lord Have Mercy Part Two: Fortunate Son. It's part two of the four-part tenth novel in the Dartmoor series, and it picks up right where The Good Son left off. You can follow one of the links below to grab it for your bookshelf or favorite e-reader device. 

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I'm in the middle of debriefing the book here on the blog, though I'm breaking it into more manageable chunks rather than posting one long wrap-up. So far, I've talked about Boyle, Mercy, and Ava, and there's more to come. Y'all are KILLING it with the insightful and thoughtful comments, and I promise to respond to them when I get the chance, because it's a really great discussion in the works. 

That brings us to the future. What's up next? 

Well...a lot. 

Obviously, Parts Three and Four of Lord Have Mercy are at the top of the agenda. Considering Parts One and Two are together as long as the entirety of Fearless (haha, I'm in danger!) I'm not sure if I'll be able to compile a physical copy of the final book; we'll have to wait and see what Amazon's page limit is. Suffice to say, we're only halfway there, and there's so much left to come. 

I haven't been actively working on it, but the Drake Chronicles Book Six, Avarice of the Empire, is also right up there at the tippy top of the writing to-do list. I haven't talked about it much, but it's very much still in the works. 

I have a few other books in progress that I'm not going to divulge just yet. Soon, but not yet. I've been a busy bee, though, and there's some exciting stories to tell this year. I'm going to play it closer to the vest out of necessity, but I can promise that I have lots of fun things in store in the months to come. 

Hope you're all keeping warm! Be on the lookout for more debrief posts this week. 

Fortunate Son: The Ava Debrief

 This debrief post contains spoilers, so I've split it under a cut. Proceed with caution if you haven't read Part Two yet, or, better yet, go grab a copy! 

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Ava greeted him with genuine kindness, though she seemed distracted, her dark eyes large and darting, searching the dining room, snapping toward her kids every few minutes as if checking that they were alright. She was tense – but not in a familiar way. She didn’t seem frightened or on the verge of an anxiety attack.

By the time she and Emmie stood to clear the plates and shoo the kids into the den to watch a movie, he realized what she reminded him of, and was alarmed to realize it wasn’t a human being. He’d caught part of a nature documentary on Discovery late one night when he couldn’t sleep: a pride of lionesses stalking wildebeest in the long grass. The lions tucked low along the ground, shoulders and haunches coiled, golden eyes unblinking and fixed. They’d been tense, ready for the kill.

That was Ava tonight. Her all the time, really, but he’d glimpsed a bit of softness by the time he left Knoxville back in February. Now, she was in stalking mode. 

As I've said from the first, this series quite simply could not exist had Ava been an innocent civilian. She is and always has been the Cathy to Mercy's Heathcliff, and the narrative has never sought to justify or moralize their love. Their love simply is. It's something they've always understood, and which their friends and family finally understand now, after all they've been through since Fearless. 

Fortunate Son: The Mercy Debrief

This debrief post contains spoilers, so I've split it under a cut. Proceed with caution if you haven't read Part Two yet, or, better yet, go grab a copy! 

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The footsteps paused, and then resumed, shifting to quiet puffs as he ducked into the garage and stepped onto its powdered dirt floor. “I wanted you to,” Alex said, drawing up beside him at the truck’s grille. “Didn’t want to give you a valid excuse to stab me in the neck for sneaking up on you.”

“You think I need an excuse to do that?”

Alex sighed, and didn’t take the bait. “What are you doing?”

“Hand me that bottle of Valvoline,” Mercy said by way of answer. “Over on the bench.”

Alex retrieved it, and then lingered at his side, closer than before, peering into the guts of the engine while Mercy poured in the oil.

At this distance, Mercy felt a prickling awareness all down his left side. He knew it was mental, that Alex wasn’t radiating any sort of intent – he might not like the guy, but he could admit it was more a case of disliking the idea of him, his existence, than disliking the man himself – but it felt like a kiss of unwelcome electricity across his skin. The strains of Remy in their blood calling to one another, a cellular effort. They’d been here three days together, and Alex hadn’t been allowed to bring a bag. His clothes smelled of skin and sweat, his actual skin like the Irish Spring soap in the shower they took turns in each night. In a move that felt like a copy of Mercy’s, perhaps some stab at kinship, he’d laid off shaving, and his beard was growing in thick and black, too.

That sensation of looking at an old photograph of himself wasn’t going to get more comfortable any time soon.

#TeaserTuesday: The Boyle Debrief

 

Though he was careful to complete his chores every day, and gave his stepfather an even wider berth than before, Harlan couldn’t stay away from the clearing in the swamp behind his house, where he skulked in the underbrush and watched the older boys congregate. They didn’t meet every day, and they weren’t always all three there at once. Sometimes a fourth or a fifth would join them. Usually, they smoked cigarettes and flipped through dirty magazines; talked of nothing and everything. Colin was cruel, and Felix seemed to hate him, so Harlan wasn’t sure why they met at all, but he watched them all the same, hungry for the sight of him deep down in the pit of his stomach in a way that no food or drink could sate.

Over time, he got the impression that not only did Felix dislike Colin, but that Felix was something of an outcast amongst all of them. He never contributed a dirty magazine to the rotation; tried, once, to offer up a battered hardback collection of Tennyson poems, only to be scoffed at. Colin snatched the book from him and hurled it into the underbrush. Harlan had stopped breathing, heart rabbiting in his chest, terrified that Felix would charge into the undergrowth and trip right over him. How could he possibly explain himself if he was caught? Hey, guys, I’ve been spying on you for, like, three years. Is that cool?

But Felix didn’t charge. Instead, he slowly unbent himself from the fallen log and stood to his full height, hands balling to fists at his sides. He wore a brown t-shirt with a sea turtle silk-screened on the front, and it didn’t fit very well, though it had only a few months ago. Now, it was too short at the hem, the button of his jeans and a slice of lean, sun-browned stomach showing; he was starting to have a fuzz of dark hair beneath his belly-button, leading down into his pants. The shirt was too small in the shoulders, too, stretched tight across his chest, swelling the sleeves until they looked like the stitches might unravel.

His face, starting to be lean, now, as manhood barreled toward him like a runaway Peterbilt, flexed, tightened, and threw stark shadows up to both cheekbones, which popped beneath the faintest flush of anger.

He wasn’t teasing, and Harlan saw the moment Colin realized it. And the moment Colin thought that maybe, if they came to blows, he wouldn’t be the winner.

In a very even, very chilling voice, Felix said, “Fuck you, Colin.”

Tucker looked back and forth between the two of them, head snatching wildly. He bolted upright, in the wake of Felix’s declaration, and said, “I – I’m gonna go. See ya.” He turned and went tearing off through the underbrush.

Harlan should have used the racket to make his own escape, but he couldn’t have moved if he’d wanted to. He sat rooted, the dampness of the moss beneath him soaking into the seat of his jeans, cicadas droning loud overhead. He wasn’t sure he breathed, in the crackling silence that arced between the two boys.

Much too late, Colin drew himself up in a crude mimicry of Felix’s posture. He was big, too, clothes starting to sit oddly on his expanding frame – but there was a certainty about Felix, a possession of his vastness that made Colin seem small by contrast. “What kinda pussy brings poetry out here to read?” Colin demanded.

Felix stared at him a long, unblinking, awful moment, and then turned and walked away, far more gracefully than Tucker had gone, without another word.

Late that night, Harlan lay awake, staring at the water-stained ceiling, heart thrumming in his chest as he thought of the quiet animal rage on Felix’s face. He didn’t understand why the memory left his underarms blooming with anxious sweat, but it did all the same. 

You know how actors talk about how fun it is to play villains? The same holds true for writing them. The nastier the better. Because Dartmoor is about violent criminals, I don't generally enjoy writing villain POVs because, in their own way, the Dogs themselves are the villains, and you're already getting that seedy underbelly perspective from all of them. 

But with Lord Have Mercy, it becomes necessary to get inside of Boyle's head, and what a snarled and ugly place it is. Half a child, caught by arrested development; half the absolute worst sort of psyche to tackle a career in law enforcement: the sort of person who enjoys using authority to hurt those who can't resist. I'm painting him as a genuine psychopath, one who doesn't understand his own emotions and attractions, and that makes for some very entertaining writing, if more than a little disturbing. 

Each part of the book, down to titles, highlights the way the three brothers are different, but they are in fact complements to one another, rather than foils. Alex thinks of himself as the "good" son, though he's quickly learning that his own morality doesn't dovetail all that neatly with society's definition, nor the legality he's sworn to uphold. Mercy's the "fortunate" son - and I hope it's clear that the title of the CCR song is ironic, as is Mercy's application of the word - because he had Remy's name and parentage...but was he really? Was Remy a good father? Or just the father figure Mercy idolized. 

Boyle, though, is the genuine foil for them all, because all three brothers have a code, and Boyle has none. Boyle has only base wants and needs and impulses. Did he wish he was Mercy growing up? Did he have a crush on him? Crave his approval? Was he afraid of him? Is he still? Does he hate him because he's an outlaw? Boyle doesn't really know the answers to these questions, and that makes him dangerous. 

#TeaserTuesday - 1/9

 

The cabin, when they reached it, had been eviscerated. Izzy had found it spooky and unnerving, but the sight of it now, as the boat arced around the final corner, dropped the bottom out of her stomach.

The roof was gone, as was all the time-silvered siding, and the tarpaper beneath. The windows had been removed and laid out on the clipped lawn, by the looks of it, the wink of glass in the now-short grass. The slope leading down to the water, where honeysuckle had grown in thick tangles, was now a mess of churned-up mud and exposed roots, laid over with piles of timber, stacks of shingles, big pink hanks of fiberglass insultation: all the detritus of a house pulled apart.

The dock was still there, had in fact been reinforced with fresh boards. The house had been reduced, though, to the porch, its now-roofless support posts, and the studs of the interior. People milled about in their windbreakers, snapping photos, dragging more trash along on makeshift litters made of tarps.

It was a bit like a construction site in reverse, the skeleton of a house – but sight of it filled her with a cold, clammy dread the way a new-build house site never had. These were the skeletal remains of a place, rather than the frame that would be the base of one. Tearing down felt so very different from putting up.

Unbidden, an image of Felix Lécuyer popped into her mind. The driver’s license photo Boyle had slapped up when he’d arrived the first time. She thought she’d done a decent job of not looking at Alex when she caught sight of it – they weren’t exact duplicates of one another. Felix was older, long-haired, his face both more weather-lined, and easier at the same time. Alex carried a weight across his brow that Felix didn’t, like Felix was quietly settled in his own skin.

Though the cabin had left the skin on the back of her neck crawling before, it had been easy to envision the man from the ID photo moving through its single room; washing his big hands at the lone sink; eating the protein bars lined up in boxes on the shelves. A rough and ready, outlaw sort of man who didn’t mind moving through the wilds of the swamp, content with his own company. 

For me at least, Knoxville feels like the setting of the Dartmoor Series, and New Orleans feels like another character. I have - admittedly, by design - written it as an almost parallel dimension. A magic place that operates outside of the normal bounds of settings, a place which only Mercy has the tools to know and to navigate. It's a notoriously haunted place - they run ghost tours and cemetery walks on the daily - and it's always felt right that it's cloaked in a kind of veil. Mercy can pass through unharmed, because his bones and blood were formed there, but anyone else who crosses the border has a hard time seeing their way. 

That's a theme I'm definitely going to feature heavily in Part III: Rising Sun.
("There is a house in New Orleans / They call the Rising Sun.")

Part II: Fortunate Son is now available for purchase! 

Fortunate Son: The Playlist

 

For The Good Son, I did a whole chapter-by-chapter song list breakdown, with scene cues and everything, because that's how it all played out in my head while I was writing. With Fortunate Son (available now! run go get it!) the vision wasn't one-song-per-chapter, but, rather, a few specifics accompanying certain scenes. I've included scene cues below. Starting with:

opening scene
(light coming up on the exterior of the police precinct)
"long cool woman (in a black dress)" - the hollies 

.

alex goes to the clubhouse
"white rabbit" - jefferson airplane 

.

refrain throughout
"fortunate son" - credence clearwater revival

.

aidan and tango
"sweater weather" - the neighborhood 

.

fallon gets a drink (and more than he bargained for)
"in-a-gadda-da-vida" - iron butterfly 

.

alex comes back to Knoxville
"ride the lightning" - warren zeiders 

.

the car chase
"cochise" - audioslave 

.

alex up a tree
"rooster" - alice in chains

.

at walsh's old place by the train tracks
"way down we go" - kaleo

.

at the funeral home
"dear god" - XTC

.

final scene
opening notes
"the killing kind" - marianas trench

.

It Was Felix Who Hunted...

 It was Felix who hunted. Who went out in the boat with his father to haul up and shoot the gators that they took to the depot, trading tags for money. State-sanctioned gator murder. It was no frightened hare, nor fleeting, white-flagged doe that Felix pursued, but a fellow hunter. A fellow predator. Harlan had spied long enough to know that at some point in the past year or so, as Felix’s dimensions changed rapidly from those of a lanky boy to those of a broad, strong man, he and his father had traded tasks. Felix had been the gun man since he was eight: the one who wielded the .22 Remington and delivered the kill shot to the gator’s head at point-blank range when it surged up out of the water. But now that he was big enough, powerful enough, he’d become the rope man. It was his father who waited with the gun, and Felix who dragged the big bull gators up out of the muck and into the light

One of my absolute favorite aspects of writing characters over a course of years is having the chance to tell their formative tales. I'll never grow tired of reaching back into their pasts and using their early childhood memories, and their adolescent experiences to paint the portrait of the adults they are in the present-day action of a story. That's why I'll never get tired of writing about Mercy's early life growing up hunting gators with his daddy. 

In Lord Have Mercy, I get to revisit some of those memories from an outside perspective, and with the new knowledge that Remy was keeping even more secrets than Mercy ever suspected. 

Part Two, Fortunate Son, is available now! 

Fortunate Son: Available Now

 

Good morning, everyone, and happy release day to our favorite Monster and his Fillette! Lord Have Mercy Part Two: Fortunate Son is finally, finally available! 

I'd hoped to have part two of the four-part tenth book of the Dartmoor saga out last fall, but life got busy and difficult for a while there. But here we are at last. Thank you all so much for your patience while I chipped away at what is fast becoming the most challenging book of my career to date. I hope you all enjoy this second installment and are looking forward to parts Three and Four. 

Happy reading!

Links:

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2023 Garden Recap Part One

2023 had its ups and downs: death in the family, death on the farm; some long days, and not nearly enough words written for my liking. But one of the bright spots was the garden - which was, incidentally, the cause of so many of those long days, but well worth the effort. 

Gardening has always been one of my mom's passions, and though I resisted in my teenage years, I finally began to understand the therapeutic aspects, as well as the simple joys and satisfactions of it, once I became an adult. The farm had sat empty and allowed to grow unkempt and derelict before we moved in back in 2006, and transforming the blank canvas of the yard into a cottage garden has been a long, slow process. This year, we decided to try our hands at a cutting garden. 

Work began last January breaking ground on a blank patch of yard between the side of the house and the pasture fence. My veggie garden - seen inside the white picket fence in the pics below - was over there, but it was an otherwise root-filled, dusty stretch of nothing. 

Here ↓ you can see the first of the six new beds we put in last winter, and the patchy, rock-strewn ground around it. 

The veggie garden has raised beds, built of untreated lumber, which works great for a small area, and means that compost and soil can be dumped in without any need to dig into the rocky, red clay earth below. But that approach didn't make economic sense given the dimensions of the cutting garden beds. We had the space, we had the tools, we had more than enough compost to amend the soil, and labor is free around here. 

Step one was mapping out the bed placement, and then using landscape bricks, string, and spray paint to draw the edges. 

Then there was nothing left to do but dig. And dig...and dig some more.

Each of the six beds is lined with landscape bricks, and each is a different length in order to avoid the diagonal slant of the water line that runs from the well to the house. Of the two pictured above, I used the smallest on the right for cosmos last year, and the one on the left for zinnias. 

Some of the grass in the planned bed spaces was the much-coveted centipede we're trying to cultivate across the whole of the yard (it doesn't get tall, and makes for a good, non-invasive ground cover, unlike bermuda) so it was lifted in sod plugs and transplanted along the edges of what would become the new gravel bed. 

In this pic, you can see beyond the table toward the fence where the chicken house would eventually go. 

To avoid the hassle and expense of renting a sod cutter for this job, all the digging, lifting, and transplanting was done by hand. 

Once the beds were all in place and lined with bricks, it was time to amend the soil. It was March by this point, and Strider and I made many, many trips out into the pasture to dig and cart the old, black-gold horse manure from the back of the pile. Each bed was heaped with composted manure and thoroughly turned several times to add much needed nutrition to the soil. 

 

By March, Cosmo's pink dogwood tree was blooming, and just a few weeks later, the chicken house arrived and was set down in the blank patch just beyond it. In this year's pics of the blooms, there'll be chickens in the background. 

Next up: planting seeds and tubers.