Introducing my Sekrit Projekt: RootLeaf Stories
Rhymes With Camera || FIFTH MONDAY—IN SEASON || July 4, 2026
July 4 2026 CONTENTS
⭐Happening TOMORROW! Freedom 250? Virtual Poetry Reading with Zoom registration link
• Introducing my Sekrit Projekt: RootLeaf Stories
• Green Day in the Greenhouse (photo gallery)
• Living Mulch Experiment (photo gallery)
• What is my storyteller’s garden growing?
+ Trust Fall Updates
+ Podcast Updates
+ Anthology Updates
• Garden to Table: SALAD DAYS: Three recipes for June 2026
+ Bok Choy Slaw
+ Savory Breakfast Rice Bowl
+ Summer Garden Spa Water
• Literary Citizen, Green Edition
• Because protest is patriotic…
• Message RWC
• Associations I support
• Declaration: Your Support is a Revolutionary Act
• More about Rhymes With Camera
• Contact
• Declaration: 100% Human Made
• Subscribe
Happening Tomorrow!
Introducing My Sekrit Projekt: RootLeaf Stories
As soon as I started leaning hard into growing vegetables in raised beds in 2020, I began to see connections between gardening, storytelling, and personal growth.
They’ve led to a regular practice of sowing… not just seeds, but words, ideas, and calls to action. They’ve also led to a deeper understanding of how creativity feeds creativity, how what we spend our time creating can be a roadmap to spiritual growth, and how the urge to grow or create has never been more empowering and is yet an act as old as the hills.
Maybe it’s just me getting older, but I can’t not see these links while noticing how others don’t seem to notice them at all.
This practice for me has a rather systemic feel to it, from root to stem to leaftip, so I began to think of these forays outside as not only “yardwork” but the birthing of “rootleaf stories”—essays with a specific build to them resembling, well, the structure and ecosystem of a plant: seeds to leaves to roots to branches to flowers to pollen to fruit and right back to seeds.
I’m finally making good on my desire to collect these bits and bobs culled from my adventures in gardening. I have a short list of essays to start and realize I could write about this all the way to my life’s end… there’s that much cross-pollination between the activities one engages in as a gardener and the tasks one leans into as a creative person (and I don’t just mean creative writers).
So I’m starting to put “pen to paper” (yeah, no, it’s a keyboard and a screen, but you get it) and formulating a series of essays about the interconnectivity of gardening principles with aspects of an active, intentional creative life geared toward less material growth and more toward personal—even spiritual—growth.
So nope, I’m not going to tell you how to get rich quick by growing your own food just like I won’t tell you have to get rich quick by writing novels.
Naturally I will cross-compare with creative writing as my chief medium, but I’m also a filmmaker, so I imagine some of that experience, especially as I’m such a newbie at it, will bleed into these essays.
I’m unsure what I will do with these… maybe share them in Substack? Make short videos? Collect them into a book? Produce in a podcast? Turn into a workbook and learning system? Read them aloud at open mics?
For now, it’s enough for me to capture these inspirations on the page and make them shareable and—ideally—inspirational, beautiful reads for anyone in need of a motivational booster.
Stay tuned as I work out the “bugs” (pun intended) and get busy with noticing, learning, articulating, and synthesizing my lessons so that readers may benefit.
Green Day in the Greenhouse
The greenhouse has been a fantastic, if sometimes challenging, edition to the gardenscape.
A quick timeline
Bought: January 2025 (A 6×8 Harbor Freight DIY job)
Sited: August 2025
Constructed: October 2025
Planted: October-November 2025 to present
It’s also a work-in-progress; no heat in there yet, though it has task lighting, fans and a heat-sensitive automatic vent, plus shade cloth. I’ve also used a heat sink, adjusted the door for windy days, and learned a few things about fungus gnats.
Here are some shots since April to give you an idea what’s going on inside (and yes, sometimes I listen to Green Day while I’m in there!):
Row 1 (L to R): truest blue sweetpeas from Renee’s Garden Seeds, first started in the greenhouse in March; when the babies were still small; first harvest of greens and herbs in March
Row 2 (L to R): Two kinds of mizuna (pink and black); my current seedbank!; late April greens include mesclun, frisee, and black radicchio
Row 3 (L to R): The greenhouse at night; Amsterdam celery (so good to have on hand for quick celery flavor or even just in salads); red Swiss chard; reclaimed mallow from the yard after the rabbits denuded it twice
Row 4 (L to R): (top left) Red-veined sorrel; (bottom left) new sprouts of baby mustard; “pumpkin-on-a-stick”; the third setup in June (already changed since!); Big Leaf Basil
Also, here’s what I’ve been growing in the greenhouse. I’ve left out flowers from this list, though it’s worth mentioning that ‘Electric Blue’ sweetpea started out in the greenhouse and has been absolutely stunning.
Seedstarting in the Cultivation Station (moved to the greenhouse)
HERBS
Lemon balm, lemon grass, ‘Big Leaf’ basil, ‘Trio Scented’ basil,
‘Purple Opal’ basil, ‘Sweet Green’ basil, ‘German’ thyme
VEGETABLES
‘Pumpkin-on-a-Stick’ ornamental eggplant, ‘Chinese lantern’ ornamental tomato, ‘Amsterdam’ celery
Sown in the greenhouse
HERBS
‘Curly’ parsley
‘Italian Giant’ parsley, ‘Moss Curly’ parsley, ‘Slow-bolt’ cilantro, ‘Bouquet’ dill
GREENS
‘Ruffec’ endive, ‘Olesh’ endive, ‘Pinky Pop’ mizuna, ‘Benigoromo’ mizuna, ‘Little Hero’ spinach, ‘True Italian’ arugula, ‘Gala’ mache (corn salad, Mesclun mix, ‘Treviso Scorze’ radicchio, green shiso, ‘Dwarf Curly” kale, ‘Five-Color’ Swiss chard, ‘Red-veined’ sorrel, ‘Cut and Come Again’ baby mustard, ‘Rouge d’Hiver’ red romaine,
‘Ezrilla’ lettuce, ‘Buttercrunch’ lettuce
VEGETABLES
‘Green Jewel’ baby bok choy
Living Mulch Experiment
So I planted a living (“green”) mulch in my raised beds last November to help revitalize them (adding nutrition, improving soil condition, creating in-bed compost).
The cover crop seed mix (from American Meadows) blended winter wheat, field peas, annual rye grass, red clover, and hairy vetch. After a day or two, I noticed birds devouring my new adds so had to place bird mesh over the top of each bed until its final removal in March.
Left column (top to bottom): Green mulch BEFORE, high and lush in April; processed and terminated green mulch in Bed A looking good!
Middle column (top to bottom): ‘Jimmy Nardello’ peppers grown from seed in the garage cultivation station, then hardened off in the greenhouse, then transplanted in the raised beds… already fruiting!; first ‘Amazing’ cauliflower of the year was the size of a volleyball!; fresh blossoms of ‘Cocozelle’ zucchini.
Right column (top to bottom): Green mulch AFTER, fully terminated in the raised beds; Bed A after transplants and seeding in May.
Bottom image: Bed A on July 4, 2026!
I had a lot of anxiety about terminating the crops when they shot up after months of being low or slow to germinate; meanwhile, I literally had to weed “the weeds” in March! I perseverated… How to cut all that green matter back without it being a major pain in the butt? Most farmers simply till it in with a machine, but that wasn’t an option in 30-inch-tall raised beds.
I ended up using a basic electric hedgetrimmer, then did a lot of turning over with a hula hoe to incorporate the green matter into the soil. For the most part it worked!
I won’t do this every year, but I might maybe every five years, just to keep improving the soil.
Finally, here’s what I’ve planted in the raised beds this year (as with the prior list, I’ve left out flowers from this list):
Seedstarting in the Cultivation Station
‘Seiger’ tomato, ‘Jimmy Nardello’ pepper, ‘Ajvarski’ pepper, ‘Pot-O-Peno’ pepper ‘Purple Beauty’ bell pepper (failed), ‘Orange Pop’ bell pepper (failed), ‘Tendercrisp’ celery, ‘D’elne’ celery, ‘Turkish Orange’ eggplant
Seedstarting in the greenhouse
‘Green Jewel’ baby bok choy, ‘Emiko’ cabbage (bolted before harvestable), ‘Purple Xpress’ nappa cabbage (bolted before harvestable), ‘Little Jade’ nappa cabbage
Direct sow
‘Amazing’ cauliflower, ‘Purple Sprouting’ broccoli, ‘Cocozelle’ zucchini, ‘Hestia’ Brussels sprouts, ‘Italia’ romanesco, ‘Castandel’ bush bean, ‘Edamame’ soy bean (failed), ‘Lillian’s Caseload’ shell peas, ‘Gelber Englischer Custard’ pattypan squash, ‘Butter Baby’ winter squash, ‘Green Fingers’ cucumber
Wintered over transplants (I pulled them from the raised beds, last fall, kept them in pots outside the green house; they came back in the spring, so I replanted them
Garlic chives (same plants I’ve had for at least 10 years), Scallions (variety uncertain: started 3 years ago, they just keep coming back), Leeks (variety uncertain: started 2 years ago, they just keep coming back), ‘Florence’ fennel, ‘Finocchio’ fennel
What is my storyteller’s garden growing?
📚 Trust Fall updates
We’re courting a new illustrator🤞🏽, putting together the layout and cover, and doing the rest of the production work, hoping for a July 15 “go to print” date for my upcoming feminist fairy tale, which will be ready for preorder in mid-August and which goes on sale in mid-September.
ARCs (advanced reader’s copies) in PDF will be available to distribute at that time and I’ll be looking for folks who are earnest about reading and reviewing this quirky little bite of womens history wrapped up in a contemporary morality fable.
👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽
🎙️Podcast updates
We are midyear through the second season of the Beneath the Rain Shadow podcast—where does the time go?—and I have completed two new short stories: “Gray Mantid Farm” and “Motherlode.”
Volume Two of Rain Shadows will launch in Spring 2027 and this collection promises to be even better than the first one, due in no small part to the contributions of our newest co-hosts, M. Leigh and Gordon B. White.
Haven’t listened yet? We livestream our episodes on the last Wednesday of every month and they become accessible with show notes a week later in Substack. Learn more here!
📖Anthology updates
I’ve got shortform work out in a bunch of different new anthologies this year, with more to come! Some are horror, some are hopepunk, some are poetry, and some even include original recipes!
Look out for these titles if they’re of any interest to you (links in caption). I recommend asking for them through your local library or purchasing them directly from these small independent publishers to show them your support.
Freedom 250? Poems Addressing the Current Situation
[Moonstone Arts Center, 2026, ed Larry Robin
Interesting Times: A Hopepunk Anthology
[End of the World Publishing, 2026, eds Suzanna Lundale & Mark Tizura]
Let the Right One Simmer, Volume 1
[Campfire Publishing, 2026, ed Aaron Crocker]
Life, Death, and Transmutation: A Charity Anthology of Dark Nature Poetry and Fiction
[Dark Moon Rising Publications, 2026, ed Alison Armstrong]
Yulehide: The Green Book
[Wicked Shadow Press, 2026, ed Parth Sarathi Chakraborty]
SALAD DAYS—Three Recipes for June 2026
Looking for options for enjoying your own kitchen garden? Check out these recipes!
I’ve had great luck with baby bok choy in both the greenhouse (since November) and in the yard (spring to now). I’m into my third harvest this month and am pleased the weather cooled a little so it wouldn’t bolt (go to seed) on me.
I’m always looking for new ways to enjoy using this reliable variety, ‘Green Jewel’ from Renee’s Garden Seeds (I highly recommend this company).
This vegetable often ends up in stir fries or noodles or soups, but I forget how good it is raw so I tried this, and it was delicious.
Bok Choy Slaw
🔗Link to archived Garden to Table recipes since 2024
This has becoming the mainstay of my mornings! I harvest greens (and herbs) once or twice a week, clean them, and store in the fridge.
Every morning, I chop up the greens, then choose from the herbs, making this a super flexible recipe.
It’s not really a recipe but a list of options based on what you have around the house or in your garden.
The flexibility is really great for matching what you have on hand with what you’re hungry for. Use this as a roadmap for discovering your favorite savory breakfast rice bowl!
I’ve done Italian inspired bowls, Asian flavor profiles, and herbaceous ones and haven’t had a bad version yet!
Savory Breakfast Rice Bowl
🔗Link to archived Garden to Table recipes since 2024
Also not technically a recipe, but definitely a solution for using up certain fruits, vegetables, and herbs you have on hand from your garden or picked up at a farmer’s market or roadside stand.
I call this “spa water,” though if you make it with the herbs, it comes out more like sun tea. All of these options can be especially refreshing on hot days.
Summer Garden Spa Water
🔗Link to archived Garden to Table recipes since 2024
👩🏽🌾Literary Citizen, Green Edition
I now aspire to do something with every edition of the RWC newsletter to ensure I’m doing my part as a literary citizen.
Last time, I shared book reviews and news of a friend’s upcoming title. This time, I share a curated list of excellent reads under the theme of Green Literature.
Some of these titles are speculative, some are literary, some are classics, so it’s not really about the approach/category this time around as much as it’s about the messaging.
It’s also not exhaustive; share your favorites in the comments in Substack!
If you’re looking for a solid “green light” list of books to read this summer which, in some way, examine human beings and their relationship to the environment, gardens, forests, etc… you’ll want to check out this baker’s dozen list of titles.
The Bane Witch by Ava Morgyn (herbalism and foraging)
Cereus Blooms at Night by Shani Mootoo (rare flower)
Daughters of the Wild by Natalka Burian (magic vines)
Garden by the Sea by Merce Rodereda (the fall of Eden to capitalism, essentially)
The Garden of Small Beginnings by Abbi Waxman (“grief gardening”)
The Greening of Ben Brown by Michael Strelow (rewilding of toxic land)
The Milagro Beanfield War by John Nichols (magic beans vs land-water rights)
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (migrant workers during the Great Depression)
The Red Garden by Alice B. Hoffman (lifecycle of a haunted garden)
The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert (plant curation as metaphor for colonialism)
Soil by Jamie Kornegay (haunted acreage)
The Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle (migrant work in contemporary America)
Through the Arc of the Rainforest by Karen Tei Yamashita (environmental exploitation)
Because protest is patriotic…
My next newsletter drops July 6, in the shadow of the US sesquicentennial.
I remember a day when Fourth of July festivities were something I got emotional about. Civic pride was a thing, and I felt gratitude and joy over the grand luck of being an American.
One of my favorite Independence Days took place in the early 1990s at Wrigley Field in Chicago during a 2pm Cubs baseball game with Harry Caray on the sports commentator’s mic. I had a beer and a Chicago-style hot dog in hand and my eyes teared up during the National Anthem. Couldn’t have felt more ubiquitously American—and proud of it—in that moment.
Now I bristle at the sight of the US flag mounted on the back of a pickup truck, and the idea that anyone can truly celebrate with a predatory pedophile dictator at the helm makes me sick.
I was glad to see Vjaybombs transposing “Trumpstein” images on the curtains now hiding the removal of Trump’s name from the Kennedy Center. Now that is patriotism.
So is the bold act by Major Jason Watson to speak out against Trump and risk courtmartial. Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti are other heroes who did nothing wrong but the fascists decided to unalive them anyway.
My neighbor has a US flag dipped in the colors of the rainbow, and that, too, is patriotism. It may be the only way I will ever hang out the stars and stripes again… unless we band together and fix our “fascist problem.”
So this year, I’m not going to be celebrating Independence Day, not while there is so much damage being done to the environment, to people’s lives, to the collective’s Constitutional rights.
Honestly, I cringe to think of friends and neighbors suffering at the hands of our intolerant government while so many others invest in parade floats, star-spangled ‘fits, and rah-rah flag-waving without thinking about what they stand for.
Instead, I’ll be gardening (no surprise there), then chilling with my anti-fascist neighbors on the 4th, and then participating in a virtual reception on Sunday July 5th to celebrate the launch of the Moonstone Arts Center’s Freedom 250? anthology (you’re invited to attend; see link below to register), which features a reprint of my still-relevant political poem from 2001, “American Blackshirt.”
Next Monday, my first July INSIDE OUT post will drop. It’ll be shorter but will include an overview of First Amendment protections and news on that front as well as a spotlight on the people working hard to preserve our free speech liberties. Not gonna lie, it might mention a certain Major Watson.
Stay safe out there… see you on the 6th!
⸙ Tamara
🔗Women Writing the West
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🔗Seattle Chapter, Horror Writers Association
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🔗Pacific Northwest Writers Association
🔗Authors Against Book Bans WA branch
🔗Northwest Film Forum
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