June 1 peppers and angst

All the pepper plants have been sold, given away, or planted in my garden. Mostly planted in my garden. I'm getting...tired...of peppers. Here's the front garden, which is small and planted in mild peppers:


I did pick my first pepper this weekend, a sweet banana that Mom chopped up and added to the BBQ beans last night. I also picked a small but surprisingly ripe purple bell this evening that Mom plans to eat in a salad tomorrow.

Here's the big garden out back, which is planted mostly in peppers but also has ten tomato plants and half a row of very healthy lettuce. I've pulled all the radishes to make room for peppers. Most of the plants are still pretty small, which is why it looks like I'm growing nothing but weeds in some rows. The tall plants in front are sunflowers, along with zinnias, marigolds, and some wildflowers that I sowed in the clay-ey places that aren't good enough for vegetables. For some reason, in this picture you can't really see the tomato plants, even the ones in cages--they're sort of hidden behind the sunflowers or cropped off to the left--but so far it looks like we're going to get lots of tomatoes this year for a change.


Next year I plan to have more variety and fewer peppers.

As for writing (how's THAT for a segue?), I'm working slowly but steadily on The Trickster Society. The short story I had hoped to spawn from the novel hasn't really gelled. I'm just no good at writing short, or I've convinced myself I'm not. This is mostly why I have sold exactly zero stories this year--I've also written zero stories--and I suspect it's a big part of why I'm feeling so damn discouraged about my writing lately. Interest in Bell-Men seems to be running at zero too; I've still got twelve agent queries out, but the thirteen form rejects I've received so far have me pretty convinced that this is yet another project that will eventually only see print/e-ink after a slow, grim slog through agents, then large publishers, then small publishers, and ultimately I'll have spent months of my life writing the thing for a net result of a few dozen copies sold and low two figures in royalty payments. I think it's safe to say that I'm wondering a lot lately why I bother.