To yomp is to march with heavy equipment across country. Cameras are heavy. So are lenses. And tripods.

I’m not complaining you understand. I love helping my husband with his work and I’m sure he’d carry my notebook and pen if I asked him to.

I’ve started writing herb and gardening articles for a website called Medium. Admittedly this is at least in part to give me an excuse to take lots more pictures, but I also find it interesting to do and there’s the possibility I might make a little money from it.

The website allows anyone to read up to three stories per month. If you’d like to read more you can subscribe for $5 a month.

Medium call everything from news reports, opinion pieces and factual articles to novel chapters, stories. They also call stories stories!

 

Here’s my article about the herb fennel. (That’s the feathery stuff shown in the photo at the top of this post.)And here’s one on roses.

I’ve also uploaded one short story, which just happens to have a gardening theme. You can read it here.

Wednesday word of the week – tepal.

A tepal is an undifferentiated part of a perianth.

You’re welcome.

Writer friend Theresa Van Meter has interviewed me on her blog – https://theresavanmeter.com/an-interview-with-author-patsy-collins/#comment-377

Today’s word of the week is spandrel.

It’s the space between arches or between an arch and its frame.

I like arches.

I was approached by NFReads.com to answer some questions about my writing. I don’t have many readers in the US. so it seemed like a good opportunity to get a little publicity there. Here’s the interview.

My latest collection of short stories is out today!

Happy Families is a collection of 24 family related tales, available as a paperback, ebook and through kindle unlimited.

Here’s the blurb –

Being a family is about far more than having a surname in common, but that one thing brought Lorna and Lucy Wainwright together. Their new friendship also helped them see their blood relatives in a more positive way. Daniel thought his son’s poor performance in a school play might discredit his own good name in the acting business – until he heard the boy’s lines. Charlotte Yonge felt like a failure compared with her famous namesake, but her brother kindly agreed she was an idiot.

Mattie ‘Super’ King has no intention of fighting now he’s left the military. Then he learns that his grandson Jack plans to follow in his footsteps and into danger. Veronica is battling against the relentless cheerfulness of her colleague and her mother – at least that’s what she tells herself. Carrie has tried to convince her friends and family that she doesn’t want a houseful of stuff. She thinks they’ve finally got the message until they give her a mountain of gifts for her birthday and she feels she’s never going to win.

Memories and shared stories can help hold a family together, even if sometimes the details do get exaggerated just a little. In the case of Gladys and Betty it’s their varying recollections of the very recent past which threaten to spoil a trip down memory lane – unless they accept they’re both wrong. Sara is reminded of her mother’s reaction to her own childhood rebellion, which helps her deal with her daughter’s bad mood and allows them to build a strong relationship and create a happy moment to look back on.

Families, whether we’re born or married into them, or choose them for ourselves, all have stories to tell. This collection contains 24 of them.

Get the book here, or order through you local bookshop or library.

Gross has a variety of meanings. It can describe something large, outrageous or thick bodied. Twelve dozen of anything are a gross or it can be a total without any deductions.

These tulips are fairly outrageous, but I wouldn’t call them gross, would you?

Fred Mitchell produces a podcast about Hampshire and includes work by local authors and poets. This month he’s reading one of my short stories. You can listen here.

Don’t panic, Gary and I haven’t fallen out, leaving me looking swipe right or whatever it is people do these days. The frizzy redhead in question is one of my characters. You can read her story on the My Weekly website.