So it's Sunday morning and I'm enjoying the early morning sounds and scents of the garden as it awakens to a new day.
The breeze moves gently over lilac and pushes the fragrance to me. I notice how thick the tiger lilies have grown and realize that the wind chime hanging above will be engulfed by them within the week. Why did I hang it there? And so begins what my husband calls 'puttering' in the garden.
A quick fix to move the chimes to another spot. Under the Chinese Maple, near the sitting area. Hmm, the bird feeder is on the best branch. The bird feeder could move to the crab apple tree in front of the solarium but we might have birds careening into the floor to ceiling glass.
The chimes could work in the main garden if I put them on the Sheppard's crook by the birdbath. Would chimes scare away thirsty birds? Got it! I can hang the chimes in the center of the arbor arch. I can snug up the chain so the chimes don't bounce against anyone's head. Perfect. Maybe not. That far away, I won't be able to hear their whimsical tinkle.
Puttering in the garden is a lot like writing scenes. You realize that where you have placed an event or person or clue won't work adequately because the story has overgrown to the point of suffocating or obscuring the scene. So you lift the clue out of that scene and 'walk around' with it in your head, hoping for a perfect place to relocate your perfect clue. It can work beautifully and the 'bird feeder' and 'bird bath' are intact in your story, or the scene falls apart. Puttering--always the risk--sometimes the reward.