Seams Like a Story

September 24, 2025September 24, 2025

It’s Not Autumn in Arizona (yet)

a fake pumpkin in a coffee mug — A little to much pumpkin in the latte?

It’s officially autumn in the northern hemisphere. Judging by social media posts, many of you are wearing sweaters, welcoming fall colors, and drinking all things pumpkin spice. So why am I sitting by the pool in shorts and a tee shirt and drinking iced tea? Because it’s not autumn in my part of Arizona yet. Here’s why:

Six Seasons?

Though some say there are officially 5 seasons here in the Sonoran Desert, others divide our year into six distinct seasons. On a recent trip to the Sabino Canyon visitors’ center near Tucson, I saw an informative display that made perfect sense to me. I used to think that this part of the country was barren, hot and dry all year. Maybe you have that image in mind as well. But having lived her for over a decade, I’ve come to appreciate the beauty of each season in the desert. Here’s the breakdown of a “typical” year.

Winter

December to January: Winter is typically sunny and mild, daytime temps in the 60s, nights may occasionally drop below freezing. The jagged peaks of nearby Mt. Lemmon are often snow covered and, once, I woke to a dusting of snow on our patio. I scooped up a handful and made a little snowman. He was gone by noon. After Christmas, Snowbirds (people who winter here) flock to enjoy sunny days and mild temps. Crisp air and blue sky make for perfect hiking weather.

Spring

February to April: Expect mild temperatures, occasional light rain. This is the main flowering season for winter annuals. Hikers and birdwatchers flock to the trails to observe wildflowers and migrating birds. Palo Verdes (the state tree) sprout golden blossoms from green branches. Bees buzz around crimson blossoms on my pomegranate tree and neighbors share bountiful citrus harvests.

Foresummer Draught/ Dry Summer

May-June : Here it comes–the high temperatures, often pushing into triple digits, and extremely low humidity. Most desert life is in survival mode during this time. Iconic saguaro cacti have adapted to store large amounts of water in their spongy stems that expand and contract like an accordion. They crown themselves with waxy white blossoms during this season, show-offs in the otherwise prickly environment. This is the off-season for tourist attractions in the area. It’s best to stay indoors as much as possible during the day. Hats, sunscreen, and water are the survival tools for those who venture out. Even so, hiking can be dangerous.

Wet Summer/Monsoon

Monsoon rains bring rainbows in the desert — Rain falls in the thirsty desert

July to mid-September: Just when you think you can’t stand the heat anymore, here comes the Monsoon. This season is celebrated! In a good year, more than half the annual rainfall may fall during these months. Temperatures drop, the wind picks up, and billowy dark clouds fill the sky followed by dramatic lighting shows and rumbles of thunder. When storms subside, people rush to see water flowing in the usually dry streams, “rivers”, and washes. This is a major growing season for most plants.

Late Summer

September to mid -October: some include this short season between monsoons and autumn. Don’t put away your shorts and bathing suits just yet. This period can be hot and dry. I pretend it’s autumn by putting up a fall wreath, and going out for a pumpkin spice latte (iced) while waiting for the “real fall” to arrive. On the plus side, the days are getting shorter and the sun is gentler this time of year making sunsets even more spectacular.

Autumn

Late October-November: Autumn finally arrives. Cool, crisp salads make way for soups, stews, and spicy chili. After dinner, you can gather around the tire table or stoke up your mesquite fire pit and make s’mores. My pomegranate tree is heavy with fruit waiting to be harvested and it will soon drop its leaves. Halloween decorations pop up all over the neighborhood and trick-or-treaters will soon be here. You might even need to throw on a light sweater or jacket. Then you will know autumn has finally arrived in Arizona.

Yeah, I know. The desert environment is not for everyone. Those of you who live in other parts of the country will have beautiful leaves, the first snowfall, White Christmas. I miss it sometimes. But come January, February, and March, when Midwestern friends and family members begin to tire of cold, gray, slushy days, my guest room fills up.

Threads of Thought

What is autumn like where you live?

Do you have a favorite season?

Out of the Crayon Box and Until Italy Books

Fall into a good book! Out of the Crayon Box: Thoughts on Teaching, Retirement, and Life and Until Italy: A Traveler’s Memoir are available in paperback, eBook, and Kindle Unlimited

Click here!

September 4, 2025September 3, 2025

Quilting the 52 Hike Challenge

a quilt commemorating my 52 Hike Challenge

The idea came to me on New Year’s Day, 2024 when I saw a social media post for the 52 Hike Challenge: “A challenge where you gain physical fitness, mental well-being, make new friends, explore new places and connect with friends, family, and yourself through nature.“

The program encouraged one hike a week (described as any walk outdoors for a mile or more) for 52 weeks. After conferring with husband Ed, I signed us up. The challenge was on!

The inspiration…

As a writer, I planned to track my hikes through journaling, but wanted a visual record as well. What if I sewed something? A quilt or small wall hanging? I could use a color or pattern for each type of hike, or maybe select a fabric to represent each experience. The pattern would be random, patchwork, but yes! This could work!

The plan…

Full disclosure: I’m a sewist, but not a quilter. I would need some help. I called on a friend , who just happens to be a quilter and a mathematician. Over lunch, she drew a series of squares and measurements on a scrap of paper while we ate our sandwiches:

“Triangles make an interesting pattern. Let’s see… 52 triangles would make 26 squares. If you added two accent squares you could do a small quilt with 7 columns and 4 rows. It would make a nice wall hanging.”

Yikes. Lots of math but I had a plan.

The Fabric

At the Cactus Quilt Shop in Tucson, I spent a glorious morning picking out fabric. With a color scheme in mind—desert hues of rust, gold, umber, sage, with splashes of turquoise—I filled my basket with bits of prints and solids, sunbursts and tiny cacti, abstract lines and dots. I couldn’t resist buying a fat quarter (a pre-cut quarter yard) of whimsical black fabric with wild suns, and lizards. For accent borders and backing material, I purchased two yards of cotton in a rich shade of cinnamon.

Measure twice, cut once

A rule for carpenters, it works for quilters as well. Back at my friends house, I measured and cut the fabric into 4.5 inch squares, then cut them diagonally into triangles. Interior border strips were cut in 1.5 inch widths, outer border in 2.5 inch strips. I also decided to add accent squares in a neutral beige leaf pattern. I cut these in 1.5 inch squares.

Construction

At the completion of every 2 hikes, I used my machine to sew a pair of triangles together (using a quarter-inch seam) to make a square. As our hiking year progressed, it was satisfying to see the patterns of squares and triangles emerge. To make the math come out even, I made two additional squares using the “badge” I’d earned from the 52 Hike Challenge, and a small embroidery piece I stitched up from a kit. Once we had completed all 52 hikes ( no small task, mind you and that’s a story for another day), I laid the squares out in various configurations with the borders and accent squares until I found the design I wanted, then began to stitch the quit top together. With the help of a YouTube video, I assembled the finished top, batting, and backing using the “envelope method.”

Finishing touches

sewing a button on the 52 Hike Challenge Quilt

To finish the quilt, I top-stitched the edges of the border with my sewing machine. Since this was a small project, I decided to “tie” the quilt by sewing a vintage button onto each accent square.

Ta-da!

I’m happy with how the quilt turned out! I have a few ideas on where to display it in my home. We’ll see where it wants to live. But wherever it ends up, it will be a beautiful reminder of the year we hiked.

More to the story?

As I stitched my quilt together, I was also piecing together the stories that each hike had to tell. Like the hikes themselves, this work is taking me to unexpected places. A third book? Hmmm…

Threads of Thought

Let’s get creative! Sewing, knitting, painting, writing? In what ways have you , or could you imagine yourself, interpreting a life event?

author holding two books, Until Italy and Out of the Crayon Box

Read on! My first two books Until Italy: a Traveler’s Memoir and Out of the Crayon Box: Thoughts on Teaching, Retirement, and Life are available in paperback, eBook, and Kindle Unlimited. Click here!

August 18, 2025August 18, 2025

Once Upon a Typewriter

typewriter against a floral wallpaper background

My favorite local bookshop, Stacks in Oro Valley, has a vintage typewriter in a cozy nook. Sometimes people leave a message on it. I wonder who it originally belonged to? What words, reports, stories did it bring to life?

Then…

I’m old enough to remember taking a mandatory typing class in high school. Rows of desks lined up edge to edge facing the front of the room where Mrs. Brown held court. We memorized “home row”–that strip of keys (A to : ) where fingers hovered , eventually learning how to navigate the expanded array of letters and symbols without looking at the keyboard.

“Repetition is the key to success” was our mantra. We trained our eyes on our workbooks and typed ” The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog.” over and over to practice all the letters of the alphabet. Day after day, the fox jumped and the dog remained lazy as a room full of adolescent fingers danced to the rhythm of clacks and dings.

I typed my college papers on a Smith-Corona, a graduation gift from my parents. Oh, the nightmare of having to use the ‘correction tape’ or that bottle of White Out with its tiny paintbrush when I made mistakes. Then there was the impossible task of trying to guess and leave enough space at the bottom of each page for the required footnotes.

Of course, it didn’t help that I had waited until the last minute and was usually typing into the wee morning hours. I filled trash cans with botched and blobbed pages.

Famous Typewriters

I can’t imagine writing a book on a typewriter, though some authors prefer it. Something about the satisfying clacking sounds and the carriage return “ding”. Reportedly Douglas Adams wrote The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on a Hermes Standard 8, Danielle Steele uses a 1946 Olympia Manual, and J K Rowling, lacking access to a computer in the beginning, crafted the first book of the Harry Potter series on a vintage Olympia.

Actor/author Tom Hanks collects typewriters. In his collection of short stories Uncommon Type, a typewriter appears in each of the tales.

a picture of a laptop showing a picture of the author — A laptop named Dash

And now….

Though I complained about it, I’m glad I had the keyboarding experience in high school. It made the transition to computers much easier for me. No more White Out. With the click of a button I can delete letters, words, even whole sections of work. I can save, file, print, and send copies to my critique group, editor, and formatter. My computer files are a mess, but my trash can is empty.

Interestingly enough, the keyboard on my cellphone is a miniature version of the typewriter keyboard I learned on. Now I’m texting, answering emails, and composing facebook and instagram posts on my phone. Of course, I can’t fit all ten fingers on my tiny device. I used to do the ‘index-finger pecking’ technique. These days I’ve (almost) mastered thumb-typing, but I’m still a bit clumsy. Please excuse any typooos or autocorrrrrects you may receive from me.

I’ll close with this words, forever embedded in my memory. I imagine the clacks as my fingers fly over silent computer keys.

The quick brown fox jumped over a lazy dog.

Try it someday. (the typing, not the dog jumping)

Threads of Thought

Your turn! Share your typewriter tales in the comments!

Lots of words were typed into these titles!: OUT OF THE CRAYON BOX and UNTIL ITALY are available here!

August 4, 2025August 4, 2025

What is Your Creative DNA?

a three picture collage of creative outlets, writing, sewing, crafting

Creative DNA

I first came across this term in Twyla Tharp’s book “The creative Habit”. She says each of us has a creative DNA–our creative hardwiring, the way we see the world and express ourselves. She imagines that we have strands of creative code that govern our creative impulses. Tharp goes on to say that though she can’t scientifically prove it, you might sense this when you try to understand, why you’re a photographer, or a writer, or a dancer, or a singer or…any combination of these. Why you are drawn to express yourself in some ways, but not others.

And even in a specific creative field, one can narrow it down. For example: a writer might prefer a particular genre…poetry let’s say. Then within that genre does the poet compose beautiful nature poems with flowing stanzas, or deep introspective pieces using sharp, crisp language?

Your Creative DNA makes you unique

For me, this is the key. Just as our genetic make up makes us unique individuals, our creative “dna”, how we view the world and express ourselves, makes us uniquely creative.

In describing my creative DNA, I would say that I see life through a positive lense, finding moments and turning them into words, stories, and images that others can relate to. I express myself through a blend of writing, sewing, and photography, with a few threads of music and art tossed in.

No one else has my exact creative code so whatever I create–a book, a story, a garment, a photograph–it will be unique. And here’s the exciting part: whatever you create with your unique mix of creativity is unique as well! With this in mind, we can celebrate each other without envy. We should no longer say “I want to write like you, or cook like you, or sew like you, or sing like you, or….”

You be you. I’ll be me. And together we will fill the world with amazing, glorious things!

Threads of Thought

Describe your creative DNA. What types of creative expression are your drawn to? What is something you would like to try?

I recently had a chance to meet authors and readers at a book event in the presence of an entire bookstore of creativity!

You can find my titles here!

July 21, 2025July 20, 2025

Creative Non fiction Explained

An Author’s Perspective

Debra VanDeventer, author, moments bloom into words

What do you write? This is the first question I’m asked when I tell someone I’m a writer. sure, I can rattle off the titles of my books, but it goes deeper than that. Writing is part of my creative DNA, and within that realm my overarching genre is Creative Nonfiction. What’s that you ask?

Creative nonfiction is a form of writing that uses the creative techniques of literature to tell a true story. A CNF writer incorporates figurative language and storytelling elements such as dialog, character development, theme, pacing, plot, foreshadowing, setting, conflict and resolution. The goal is to communicate a bit of the real world in a way that will sing on the page, creating a piece of writing that will inform or change the reader, make an impact, bring a smile, a tear, or an ah-ha moment.

When I mentioned this to someone recently, she said that she’d attended a creative nonfiction writing group meeting that was all about trauma and self-indulgence. I get it, the genre can be trauma laden and many best selling titles lean this way. I tend to stick to the lighter side of life in my writing. I’ve found that you don’t have to have lived an extraordinary life or write about traumatic experiences to pull in an audience. I think within the CNF genre there’s a place for everyday experiences and honest emotions that connect us as humans, stories that people can relate to, or think about, or laugh along with. (Like transitioning out of a lifelong career, or experiencing a not-so-perfect vacation.)

So what do I write? The short answer is…I write true stories, well told.

Moments bloom into words.

Thanks for asking….( you can find my words here! )

Threads of Thought

If you’re a writer, what genre(s) do you work in?

If you are a reader, what genre(s) do you read