Well, the soreness from weeding my garden yesterday wasn’t as bad as I feared.

Yes, I woke up stiff and sore, but I’d taken valerian last night to relax the muscles. As soon as I got up and got moving it wasn’t too bad.

As if weeding yesterday wasn’t enough, the weather cooperated enough for me to go outside this afternoon and rake up the sheet of pine needles that had fallen during the last wind storm. I have one very tall Ponderosa pine and it coats my back yard in needles nearly every year. It did smell good though as I was raking them. Just like being in a forest. Strangely enough, raking all the needles from my whole yard took me about half as long as weeding the garden even though my yard it 4-5 times the size of my garden. Granted, I wasn’t being too picky and I wasn’t moving things around to get everywhere. I was just trying to get the bulk of it up.

We also had the last harvest of broccoli from the garden tonight. There is just something about fresh broccoli in the instant pot. If we’re lucky, we’ll get two more zucchini. Come Sunday night, the temperature is dropping below freezing, so I think that will put an end to everything that’s not done growing. I know I’m certainly not ready for freezing temperatures and neither is my garden that finally figured out how to produce good stuff in this last month. (Except for cucumbers – those were plentiful all summer long, but since I can’t eat cucumbers – or very much of them – it didn’t do me any good.)

I finished the videos for the series lecture today as well. I can’t say it helped me get out of the conundrum with the three book series, but it did make me wonder if I was just trying to fit the story into something that it doesn’t want to be. I decided I just needed to get back to writing it and see where it wants to lead me.

I read thought the short story I wrote for it earlier this year because I remember that I had started building a path there (nothing like leaving clues for yourself). I didn’t realize how much world building I’d also incorporated into the story. As well as a mystery. Or two.

Anyway, I started making notes. I pitched the previous compendium of notes I had started because I was, at that time, trying to force the story into a direction. After both Sacred Knight/Onesong and The Loki Adventures series, I have to trust my creative voice and the process of storytelling. It will come together.

Then I started rereading part of the story which I knew might have a clue in it for the larger whole. It’s making me very excited to get down into it.

I really hope that tomorrow I can say that I picked up writing on these novels again. I’m ready to get back down into it and see where they go.

Happy adventuring!