Fall has certainly arrived in New Brunswick and, with it, some of the most spectacular colours I've ever seen. This morning, I took my usual drive down Highway 7 between Fredericton and Saint John and found myself driving through an amazing landscape, almost other worldly in its vivid hues.

Highway 7 rolls over hills and through valleys as it heads south and offers some pretty impressive vistas. Sometimes, it's a hillside in the distance, awash in reds, oranges, yellows and golds, all mixed with a spectrum of greens. At other times, the forest comes right to the side of the road and the individuals trees leap out at you as you flash by, on fire with colour.

My mom would have loved this, the most impressive autumn I've ever witnessed. She would have wanted to drive and drive and drive, ohhing and ahhhing at the trees. She would have loved the trip Patti, Marlee and I took after work tonight, first along Highway 7 to the valley town of Welsford, about 40 km from Saint John, then for a bite to eat at Georgette's Diner, and finally the return trip home, along the back roads through Fredericton Junction. Almost every foot of the trip offered something amazing to see (including a flock of deer in a roadside field, which sent my heart into my throat!).

We videotaped the drive down Highway 7, then took some still photos in Welsford itself, including several of that magnificent tree you see in the photo at right. If you want to see the video (or at least some highlights of it), wait a couple of days, then check it out on Youtube by searching "markwwnb". It'll be there soon, along with numerous videos of Marlee Marie frolicking at some of New Brunswick's neatest spots.

Ahh, Fall. Nobody does it better than New Brunswick!

Tags: New Brunswick, Fall, Trees

It's been an interesting week. New Brunswick has tumbled headlong into fall, with temperatures dropping sharply and rain alternating with sunshine on a day-to-day basis. Most importantly, however, almost every night brings a warning of frost, that enemy of all things vegetable.

Since I planted most things late, as in at the end of May, my veggie plants are only at about the three-quarters stage of growth as autumn falls. While we've had a pretty good crop of beans (both string and runner), the tomatoes are still small and green, the cucumbers are just pickles, the carrots really want to be fully grown but aren't and the brussels sprouts, well, the poor brussels sprout plants. They just can't seem to generate enough oomph to put out a sprout or two.

And now comes frost. Tonight's forecast doesn't say "Frost Warning" it says "Frost". I guess it's time I accept that my lateness in planting is going to mean no vegetables whatsoever after tonight. So sad.

On the writing front, however, things are definitely more productive. I went back last night and did a full revision of the scene involving Shannon Olivier's appearance in court. I expanded it quite a bit and made some small adjustments and additions to the existing sections. Again, I think it reads pretty well. In fact, I'm quite proud of it.

I hope I can keep up the momentum. Time is such a challenge, though, with work hyping up and fall house chores arising and life just keeping on trucking.

And, of course, there are the other writing projects that keep calling out to me too. I had a really interesting conversation with a colleague in Saint John, who has read the Abigail Massey stories and seems to agree that a longer work (maybe a novel) that takes Abigail and her pals to Saint John in 1943 would be a good idea. So my colleague has been feeding me nifty tidbits about Saint John history, lots of ideas upon which I could base the book.

Abigail, it seems, is getting restless. She's bored just hanging around the McAdam Station and Hotel and craves another adventure.

Tags: Phillip Gold, Abigail Massey

Beans! About a pound of them. Fresh, green, crisp and delicious, straight from our garden to the table. What an amazing feeling of accomplishment it is to find the garden you dug and planted is now turning out fabulous-tasting morsels of freshness.

Even more exciting, the pound we picked the other day represents just a portion of the beans that were hanging on the plants. I had been worried that we'd have to pick some of the smaller, younger ones to round out the meal but I was pleasantly surprised to find there were quite enough full-sized beans to satisfy our hunger. And they were so good. Much better than the pathetic, thin-skinned things you find at the grocery store.

As if that wasn't enough excitement, I have also been making excellent progress again on The Silent Goodbye. I wrote an entire section the other day, as much as 3,500 words in one sitting. I have further developed and deepened the relationship between Gold and Constable McLean and I think I have done a decent job of providing some of the backstory from previous (unpublished) novels without dragging things out.

So far, so good. I have one more major scene to write before Gold starts the trial. That's going to be fun to write. I'm calling on my sister and brother-in-law, both legal professionals, to help me make sure I get points of procedure right.

I know, stop writing about writing it and get back to writing it.

Tags: Phillip Gold

Beans! Beans! Actual, real life, edible beans, popping out all over the place in our garden. We already have enough to serve ourselves for a single dinner. Twenty beans or more! Hooray.

And everything else seems to be coming up very well too. The tomato plants are about six inches high, the cucumbers are starting to come along and I'm honestly starting to think I may have to pull some carrots soon. Parsley, arugula, thyme also becoming available for eating. I'm so impressed.

And Patti's experiment with planting nasturtiums along the carport in my recently moved sod has actually produced flowers. Amazing. All the books told us they'd be killed by the grass. Very exciting, to say the least.

In the meantime, work continues to go well on The Silent Goodbye. I am again in a rhythm and things are moving along very nicely. I think I'm going to have some rewriting to do to even out the tone and style but that's okay. I like the flow and I think it's working out well.

I'm not sure what to do about the sexual tension between Gold and the lovely constable Stacey McLean. So far, she's kept him at a distance but...

Of course, some of my hesitation might be because I'm not sure I can write the romantic stuff. We'll see.

In the meantime, the writing is flowing and the veggie garden is producing. What more could a guy want?

Tags: Phillip Gold

I have to come clean: I haven't written any Phillip Gold in three days. Okay, there, I said it. I admitted my fault. Work has been extremely busy and so has life in general. Add that the constant rain of the past few weeks has finally broken out into glorious sunshine (and the resulting golf game) and you'll see why I haven't been able to get back to The Silent Goodbye.

My subconscious has been working on it (or is that my unconscious?) and I expect to be able to get rolling again when I next sit down. Too many things have gotten in the way.

By way of update on other things, however, I still have not heard from the publisher about my Abigail Massey submission. I have also given up trying to figure out what that means: they don't review new submissions very often so they simply haven't taken a look at it; they have looked at it and rejected it but figure bad news can wait; they like it but it has to go through the channels for approvals before they contact me again.

I"ve heard all the possibilities and have no clue which is true. I don't want to give up but I'd feel a lot better if I had heard one way or another.

My vegetable garden is coming along surprisingly well. Although we have little critters that seem to go after certain plants, the whole garden plot (so brown and barren two months ago) is alive with varying shades of green. I even had to go out and do some heartless thinning to most of the rows of veggies but learned from the way the remaining plants suddenly exploded in growth thereafter that thinning is a good and kind thing for plants. No actual, edible vegetables yet but we're getting there.

With regard to backyard birds, I made the mistake of buying the really cheap seed and ended up, perhaps not surprisingly, with a yard filled with grackles, crows, doves and pigeons. I'm surprised the neighbours didn't come to complain. So I took the main feeder down and put it in the shed. Within two days, most of the undesirables had disappeared and, for the last two days, we've enjoyed the company of gold and purple finches as well as chipping sparrows and chicadees at our finch feeder. Much better. Lesson learned.

In the area of reading, well, I've gotten myself caught up in Harry Potter again. In preparation for the disappointing film that came out a couple of weeks ago, I re-read The Half-Blood Prince, then followed the natural course of things and read The Deathly Hallows. Now I'm whipping through the first three books, reading the novel and watching the movie in rapid succession to see the changes. I can't believe I never realised how different the ending of the first book was from that of the first movie: in the book, Harry's battle with Quirrell/Voldemort is killing both of them when Dumbledore intervenes to save Harry; in the movie, Harry is victorious over Quirrell but knocked out by Voldemort's escaping spirit and wakes in the Infirmary. Very different.

And, still on the video front, I am now watching the third season of Star Trek: The Original Series again. You can feel the change in quality from the opening moment. For one thing, Kirk and the rest have been allowed to grow their hair out from the military cuts of the first two seasons to hippie styles of the sixties. It just looks bad.

Anyway, that's the update. Off to the golf course now!

Tags: Phillip Gold, Harry Potter, Abigail Massey, McAdam Station

Another Saturday of hard work paid off today with a finished garden that, I must say, looks great. Ready for seeding once we're beyond the possibility of frost.

First step was a bit more raking, then lining the edges (using a thumb-hungry hammer, mind you) with some of the stones I pulled out of the plot. Next I used more of the stones I dug up, plus a number of nice red bricks from our front garden, to create three "walk ways" or, perhaps better, "weed ways" that sectioned the area off into four separate beds. Finally, off to Kent to get bags of "Black Earth", which were on sale at 50% off, to fill up the sunken beds.

I followed my sister's advice and used more stones to section off the herb bed into four parts again, thus creating what I think is an interesting visual impact for the garden as a whole. With the Black Earth in, the lighter coloured stones stand out better and the whole garden looks very nice. I'm pleased with the outcome, even if my thumb is still throbbing!

Sore muscles, weary bones, but a pretty good result, I think. I'll be seeding before the end of May, I think, and we'll see what grows.

And maybe I'll start writing again too.

In the meantime, got my first picture of a cardinal (a lovely female in the tree above the feeders) the other day; it's proudly displayed on the Backyard Birds section of this website. Be sure to have a look. And we picked up a couple of other plants for the backyard that are supposed to attract different kinds of birds, including hummingbirds, so we'll hope for results from that too.

Star Trek tomorrow. Quite the buzz around it. I'll give you my thoughts once I've fully digested it.

Tags: Garden

A nasty cut on my finger, a rainy forecast and a new on-line graduate course are combining to make life challenging for me and my plans.

The garden is on hold for at least a couple of days due to the rain and the injury. I did get some more raking and stone removal done yesterday before the knife leapt out and bit my finger. There are still more stones than I can count but I will soon move on to the edging and top soil. Once the weather and the ouchie improve.

As for writing, the finger also has an impact. It's quite sad to see myself trying to type this. So slow. So inaccurate. Lots and lots of mistakes that have to be corrected. The left hand still fully functional but the right reduced to thumb and index finger to protect the damaged third digit.

And the on-line course. Wow. What a nightmare. 90 students, 20 per cent of the mark for participation in on-line discussions. 480 messages to read and respond to in just four days. Interesting topic, sure, but this could soak up hours and hours and hours. If it were an in-person class, you'd have three hours per week plus reading and studying. Workable. But this...

It doesn't help that I'm old and not technologically inclined. So I have to learn the on-line learning environment as well. It took me, for example, an hour on the website just to find the first assignment. I can only trust that things will get better as I grow used to the format.

Gold is still in my mind, though. I'll get back to him. I just don't know when.

I finished the digging this morning. What an amazing feeling of accomplishment to stand back and look at that big, rectangular patch of dirt. Odd, really, considering it is just a big, rectangular patch of dirt. But I made it. Me. No one else. Feels good.

Next step was to get a garden rake and go at it, breaking the earth up, preparing it for the top soil. My cheap little garden rake turned out to be a real trooper. It turns out there's more stone than dirt in there. Big huge pieces of rock, some flat, some like cannon balls. The little rake finds them and then, with a little muscle from yours truly, yanks them out.

My neighbours tell me it is possible that my garden is going in exactly where an old stone wall used to stand. Part of the farmer's fields about 100 years ago when this was still farmland. Just my luck. New Brunswick is already the rockiest place in Canada and I have to put my garden in on top of an old stone wall!

At least now I have plenty of nice stones with which to line the edges of the garden as well as a selection of nice flat rocks to serve as paths between the beds. I also have aching muscles up and down my back, shoulders and arms (not to mention my legs). I gave in after raking about two-thirds of the bed. I'll do the rest tomorrow.

Next stop, top soil and seeding. Oh my!

Oh yeah, before I forget, I've put photos of two new birds on the "Backyard Birds" page. I'm not sure what either of them are because they're both small brown, speckled birds. If you can help me, please e-mail!

I spent a long, cool day outside yesterday, doing something I have never done before: digging a garden. A vegetable and herb garden. Our backyard is set up such that the fence that keeps the dog in is located about eight feet inside our property line, leaving a nice strip of land outside the fence that is available for gardening.

So I spent about six hours de-sodding a six-foot by 12-foot strip of land, preparing it for our new garden. I have the other half left to do today to make what now seems like a massive six-by-24 foot plot.

It was very slow work. I cut out each 8-inch by 1-foot patch of sod individually, using a long-handled shovel. I then moved and placed each chunk carefully on top of an extraneous section of gravel driveway to see if I can accomplish two things with one task: create a garden and re-sod the wasted driveway space.

The garden is going very well, if slowly. The driveway, well, we'll see.

Emotionally and psychologically, it was a very satisfying day. Slow, hard, repetitive work, with the results visible instantly. Most muscles involved somehow but my mind free to wander where-ever it wished to go. And it didn't stray far. Mostly I thought about how nice the breeze was, how good it will be to harvest arugula and chives, peppers and basil, all of that kind of stuff.

It would appear that I need these kinds of days. Marlee, our dog, was content to sit out in the yard, watching me from behind the fence. Friends came over with their long ladder to help me clear our eaves and replace a couple of light bulbs that hang high in our car port. We had coffee, then it was back to work on the garden.

I'll finish digging it today. Then we will line the edges with stones, create a couple of brick paths at intervals for weeding and tending purposes, then finally refill the area slightly with top soil or some such mixture. Finally, it will be planting time.

Challenging physically but mentally a holiday. Something I guess I need.

We'll see what grows from this weekend in all kinds of ways.