Introductory post

October may seem like an odd time to start a gardening blog.  Non-gardeners may think that nothing is happening out in the garden, and will continue to not-happen for months yet, so what could there possibly be to write about?  Gardeners know that aside from spring this is the busiest time of year (I have a daunting list of tasks I'd like to accomplish before it gets too cold out there) and may wonder how I'll find the time.  I assure you that I am starting it now because... this is when I got to it.

By the time anyone reads this there will be at least a few more posts in the blog to provide a little context.  Whether that will say anything about its purpose and function is another matter.  I've been blogging for a while over at Grow It Eat It (a University of Maryland Extension multi-author blog which I run as a volunteer Master Gardener), but Rogue Eggplant is my chance to write about matters beyond food gardening (though there will no doubt be some of that).  In this blog I can also take off the UME MG hat for a while (I don't actually have one.  I do have a Grow It Eat It hat) and write stuff that's less... I would say less official, if I hadn't already managed, in a serious university-sponsored blog, to inform everyone of my undying love for William Woys Weaver and to write parodic poetry.  But here I can really let my hair down.  If that doesn't make my neck sweat too much.

So what will you see here?  Possibly more poetry, and other literary efforts.  Not so much in the way of how-to, but quite likely a lot of why-to.  Updates on what's growing in my garden.  Opinions, nuanced and otherwise.  Musings on things and people I feel fannish about.  Photographs, occasionally good.  Book reviews.  Complaints and triumphs.  Other stuff.  Let's see what happens.

Why Rogue Eggplant?  I've used the title before, on a now-defunct journal; it comes from a comment my friend Natasha made once while editing a chapter of one of my novels (yes, okay, novels, four of them, not published; we'll get back to that).  I'd written "charging in like a rogue elephant," and she said she read that first as "rogue eggplant," and before we knew it we were joking about the Aubergine Foreign Legion... so perhaps this blog is my chance to run off and join that organization.  Honor, Fidelity, and Baba Ghanoush.  Salut!