The view from my hammock circa March 2026
It’s not just a gimmick for my author bio–I really do live in a historic house on the East Coast of the United States. She likely looks a little different than the kind of house you’re picturing, but she’s (well) over fifty years old and extremely crotchety. Crotchety isn’t a pre-requisite for being listed on the National Register for Historic Places, but having character is, and I think being crotchety definitely adds character to the place.
So why am I talking about my crotchety old house on my author blog?
Well, right now she’s taking up a significant amount of my time. Time I should be spending writing, according to some. But I’m not, because I’m:
(a) battling chronic illness/chronic exhaustion
(b) adjusting medications and am thus dealing with brain fog that leaves me unable to focus long enough to write
(c) trying to convince this crotchety old house that she wants to be the place I write again
What do I mean by that last one?
T.M. Kuta writing with Da Bois
Well, it’s a long story. Too long for this blog post about my yard. Maybe one day I’ll tell you the whole thing. But for right now, all you need to know is that I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words in this house. I finished BSG while listening to the soft whine and pump of my grandmother’s oxygen machine. I wrote, edited, and published the entirety of A COMMON BOND from the desk space I crammed into the waist-deep piles of grandparent-hoarded paper boxes, then did the same thing with CHARGED AND READY. I wrote two full-length novels and countless smutty short stories curled up in her various corners; at the kitchen table, on the couch, in the spots I finally mucked out enough to make a sort of office, and from the three (yes, three) rooms I’ve called bedrooms since I moved in.
2025 was the year I prioritized building and maintaining my community in the wake of the 2024 election. I already knew that 2026 was going to be the year I prioritized myself, but the sudden turn in my health gave me little say in the matter. I was already an anxious person. Long COVID and MCAS turned that up to eleven and has held it there. I knew that creating a space for me to unwind, for me to relax, was going to be crucial to my recovery. (Along with getting all of the mold out of the house, but that’s a story for another day.)
My yard at the beginning of my clean up efforts.
Enter my long-neglected yard, with its rotting furniture and vast collection of weeds, and a little drug called Rhapsido. I waxed excitedly poetic about Rhapsido in my last newsletter, but basically combined with some steroids and a benzo, it gave me my life back*. So as my health strengthened in the early spring, I turned my attention to transforming the backyard into my own private oasis.
(*I got my life back for approximately two weeks until the doctors decided I had had enough happiness and it was time to taper me off the steroids. But that, like the mold, is a story for another blog post.)
We are, of course, doing this on a budget. I raked and weeded and made my first trip to Starbies since I got sick… for trash bags full of coffee grounds I poured into my compost heap. I drilled leftover construction screws into weather-greyed furniture to shore up their rickety joints, then brushed an oil-based mahogany stain across the surface to help protect it from the elements. I rolled yards and yards of dead geotech fabric up and stuffed it into sacks, and spread clover seed into the newly-revealed soil. I set up my hammock, and collapse into it when I get too dizzy or tachychardic to keep going.
My compost heap after some much needed love (a good turning and injection of nitrogen-heavy coffee grounds)!
Now that the summer heat is here, I have to be more careful, and time my work accordingly. I am still very chronically ill. I’ve given myself migraines and bedridden myself the next day with PEMS by overdoing it. I do short bursts of work, then have to sit for long periods of time. I spend a lot of time in the hammock, with my feet elevated, recovering. Like most things with this old house, the yard keeps bringing me tricks. The return of the bamboo I thought I killed ten years ago, now nefariously sprouting under my grandmother’s beloved camellias so I can’t just poison the ground with salt water. Branches that have fallen that will require a chainsaw to cut. Random swaths of poison ivy–which I’m highly allergic to–sprouting from god knows where.
Every day is a new adventure, a new problem to solve, but the work is grounding. I get to move my body in a low-impact way, and I get to be alone in nature. I listen to my stories (mostly audiobooks), and get my hands dirty. There is measurable progress at the end of each session. I have hopes and dreams beyond just survive. I’m slowly turning my yard into the place I want it to be, instead of the place I dread seeing out the kitchen window in the morning.
The construction butch patio furniture operating suite (and my hammock set up!)
This year is just about cleaning her up and fixing the furniture so my friends have some place to sit. Maybe buying a fire pit to extend the office hours into the autumn months. Perhaps next year I’ll plant a plum tree, and buy some patio furniture I can write at. That, however, is for future!Ty. Today I pull some weeds, and put out a bin of sticks for yard waste day, then get in the hammock to dream about the stories I’m going to write.
Also, don't tell anyone, but hosting Book Club from the hammock is pretty damn sweet.
