Well, as Hegel said, the pendulum swings one way and then it swings the other. Right now, it’s swinging in a good direction for me (hallelujah, and thanks to my muse and the goddess of literary intentions). All of my hard work, all of the nights I agonized over commas and line breaks and word choices plus even more nights researching markets and reading journals and trying to decide if my poems/essays/stories would be a good fit (i.e., were clever enough, succulent enough, pithy enough, brilliant enough, etc., etc., etc.) has finally paid off, at least for the time being.

My creative nonfiction/prose poem collection Lies, and Saturdays was named finalist at the Cutbank Chapbook Contest. It was previously chosen as semi-finalist in the Rose Metal Press Chapbook Contest. It’s moved up a notch, though I’m smart enough to know that that probably doesn’t mean a damned thing.

After countless (and I mean countless) rejections, I have poems coming out in upcoming issues of Postcards Poems and Prose, Into the Void, Clementine Unbound, Barking Sycamores, Poetic Medicine and Theories of HER Anthology.

(Talking about rejections, I got another one as I was writing this post, is that ironic or what? Nothing like keeping me humble.)

Even better news: it’s been sunny here in Anchorage and in the 70s. This is a huge, huge deal, and our garden is growing like wild. Well, I don’t really do much in the garden but eat and admire. My partner does the rest. I grew up on a farm, and one of my chores was weeding the garden. And helping put up hay each summer. And feeding the horses. And shoveling the large mounds of manure produced by said horses. Needless to say, gardening lost its allure in the process and while I appreciate others’ efforts, I’d rather sit in the sun, read a book and let someone else do all of the hard work. Luckily, my partner is fine with this. He actually likes to garden. He thinks it’s fun. (He didn’t grow up on a farm, you see.)

But still, looky, looky: aren’t our strawberries gorgeous?

This is the first year that we’ve had decent strawberries. We don’t normally get enough sunshine in our patch of yard and end up with a few harden lumps of pink that kinda/sorta taste like a strawberry. This year I’ve been pigging out like crazy.

The raspberries are ripening, too. I’ve been stealing  borrowing from our neighbor’s bushes. Summer is truly the best, isn’t it?

Even though we are slowly losing daylight, it’s still light past midnight and I’m still taking advantage of it as much as possible.

And here I am starting to run down Powerline Pass to Prospect Heights at about 10:30 p.m. We ran the 3.5 miles of constant uphill and then turned around and charged back down: Wheeeee!

Halfway down a biker stopped us to report that a grizzly bear had been spotted on one of the connecting trails, and later that week my partner saw a grizzly from the distance around the same place, mostly likely the very same bear. Wild, eh?

And here are the mountains we ran past. Everything is so green and lush this year, it’s just amazing.

Hope everyone is out enjoying the summer. I’ll be back later this week to share the road trip I took with my sister as we drove my son down to Stanford, where he’s starting his PhD program.