I'm dreaming of white grape vines

And if you hear that to the tune of "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas," you're just as cracked as I am.

I'm serious, though. I woke up from a dream of replanting grape vines. And yes, this has something to do with writing.

I'm a gardening fanatic, pretty much. I love digging in the dirt, planting, changing, harvesting, and using what I plant. The thing with this particular white grape (aside from the fact that my neighbor has grown it in this climate for upwards of 30 years) is that it's seedless. Raisins!!! There's just something about a raisin with seeds in it that turns my stomach and cracks my teeth. Bleh.

So last year I helped her prune her grapevines and started a couple for myself. This spring, six of those I planted came back up, but they can't just be left where they are because we need that space for other things.

I have hundreds of unused stories. Maybe thousands. Most of them will never see the light of day (I hope!) because they're one sentence to one page bits and pieces that I've been keeping since I was in third grade. But they can be helpful.

One story that I initially wrote when I was about fifteen or sixteen became my Demons Bay world. It was initially about a group of semi-aquatic refugees who created their own world because they couldn't find one that fit their requirements--terraformed it and planted it with their native plants, etc, then humans found it and when they woke up after millions of years they found their world occupied.

They may yet show up in other stories, but this particular story turned into the Demons Bay world. All it needed was a change of scene to come to life. When the Norn appear, it will be in a place where they can thrive rather than being tossed aside and having no part in the world they created.

Same with hundreds of others. A story doesn't usually stand alone. It's a conglomeration of thousands of experiences and curiosities and wonderings that all come together in the right place and the right time to make something new.

If the right thing is planted at the right time and in the right place, something wonderful may come of it. Otherwise it'll sit on the computer until I decide where it should go.