Pictures and Conversations

I have a confession to make.

I love it when readers comment on my blog.

When I was a little girl, I wished urgently for letters. Back then, it wasn't "snail-mail," but letters. As a teenager, I maintained pen-pal correspondences with fellow music fans. One of my pen-pals and I exchanged fan-fiction starring John Taylor of Duran Duran and ourselves. I would write a fan-fiction piece with her as John Taylor's romantic interest, and she would do the same for me. While there was intense kissing in these stories, the scene would always end in ellipses when we decided it was time to fade out.

Ahem.

Anyway, it's been a long time since I've written fan fiction, and a slightly shorter time since I wrote snail-mail letters. Now, my correspondence consists monthly House of Glee vignettes sent by email, and this blog. When you comment, even if it's just to say hello, I appreciate it very much. Comments from readers stimulate my imagination and inspire me to think of new things to write. When I've entertained you in some fashion, I feel as if I've done some part in praising Creation. Sure, I can check the statistics of people who visited, how long they stayed, and how they found the blog in the first place. Comments are more enjoyable because they open up paths to conversations.

This is the opening paragraph of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll:

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, "and what is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversations?"

For "book," read "blog." (Yes, I know some bloggers don't post photos or illustrations, but that's fine. You create pictures in our minds.) Speaking of pictures, here are two photos of what I've been working on all week:


I forgot to label the strawberry plants Lucia picked out. They're in front of the pansies. Regarding the strawberries, sweet-peas, lettuces and herbs we've planted, Lucia says, "We're going to eat them!" I told her that I was counting on it. Maybe she'll eat more veggies if she actually grows them herself. One can hope. This garden plot originally only extended a little bit beyond the callalilies. I have ambitions of making the entire yard nothing but garden.