Right Before Spring

It's cold outside. Not freezing in a below-zero snow-on-the-ground way, but the kind that just sort of bites at you as you get closer to spring and want the warmer weather.  The kind that makes me want to sit with seed catalogs and a hot cup of something in my hands and plan summer gardens. We had unseasonably warm weather last week and it made me itch to get my hands digging in the dirt.

We have a lot to do. Last year we didn't do much. It just felt like too much. We had a pool for the first summer ever (it came with the house, we wouldn't have voluntarily chosen to have one. In fact, it was on our list of things we DIDN'T want, but here we are.) We had an infant.  I was still trying to kick PPD/A in the face and it was just too much to think about the work and money involved in starting a new garden.

This year it's all feeling better.  I'm still trying to kick PPD/A in the face, but I'm making progress. And Ben is bigger.  And we can manage to wrap our heads around starting new garden areas from scratch.

As I started planning and figuring out how many veggies vs cutting garden flowers I want, I looked back at this post and this post it made me feel hopeful. I cannot believe I grew so many flowers that season!  If I could plan and do that, I can certainly get some seeds in the ground to grow some veggies for our family this year, even if it does still feel like a big task to dig out and start a new garden spot from scratch.  We're using existing space and I'm trying to combine my cutting garden wants with perennials and landscaping to work on our yard a little bit while I still use it as garden space in a few different spots that still don't have permanent landscaping.

None of this includes our whole front yard that needs to be landscaped because when we moved in we had to have everything in the front ripped out to fix a basement water problem.  So that's happening, too.  One step at a time.  I may or may not have much time for blogging this spring and summer!  

As usual, I have no idea what the heck I'm doing, but I'm going to do it anyway...

Frosty

I'm standing in my bedroom alone doing yoga in the middle of the afternoon. I'm laughing at myself and my utter lack of physical grace, just happy to be moving.  I'm awkward and my body feels cumbersome, but I will myself to let go a bit and feel my breath steady itself. My gut is awkward and cumbersome, but I try to just move in each moment in a way that feels good. I feel myself slide into comfort in my own skin for just a moment and it surprises me, it's not something I'm conscious of feeling often.  It happens in movement and it happens in nature.  When I'm walking or dancing or doing yoga or closing my eyes and thinking or when I'm in the woods or when I'm in the backyard for 5 minutes on a frosty morning with a camera, like the photos above, capturing the tiny bits of freezing and colors before they melt with the sun and die with the changing seasons.  

Right Now: Late October

I know I'm jumping the gun, but I'm writing this while I listen to the Peaceful Holidays station on Pandora and I sip Peppermint Bark tea.  Because it feels relaxing and October has been anything but relaxing.  And I sort of consider, for better or for worse, October-December "The Holiday Season."

Right now is:
-school Harvest Party planning
-food poisoning
-Parent-Teacher Conferences
-not enough time with friends
-the earlier darkness making me want to go to bed at 7pm.
-pumpkins everywhere.
-my birthday, soon.
-prep for a month of thankfulness.
-Christmas shopping already to avoid the stress in December. And card-making.
-pumpkin carving
-last tomato picking
-lots of kale picking
-Reading It's Halloween daily
-Getting the Charlie Brown Holiday Trio of Movies ready to start next week
-Also watching Hotel Transylvania, Scooby Doo, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Annie a little too much.  But, ANNIE! I might be the one watching the most:)
-prepping costumes for a Vampire girl and a Fireman (his same choice for the third year running)
-a pumpkin carving party with friends that was so nice and normal and kids-being-kids-running-around-having-fun-together that I could just cry thinking about the awesomeness.  I love where I live and the community we have.

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On the First Day of Fall

I'm drinking pumpkin spice coffee and my toes are chilly in flip flops.  There's a little pile of leaves in the backyard that they raked this weekend and they're already jumping in the pile.  I'm thinking about picking out front porch pumpkins and mums and trying to make myself wait until October 1st, though I'm not really sure why. There's an entire dogwood tree in our backyard (our only official backyard tree right now) that has already turned completely red.

Fall is always such a strange time.  It's my favorite season for the weather and the fun and my birthday, but it always feels like such a whirlwind that starts in September and ends with a snowy January and you look back and wonder how the heck it all flew by so quickly.  So I kind of don't want to do much. Is it weird to acknowledge out loud that I'm a lot better at doing seasonal projects than I am at just keeping up with the day-to-day stuff that needs to happen in our house?  John is a million times better than me on most days, especially when it comes to dishes and laundry.  So this year, I want to focus more on just keeping more basic holiday sanity by keeping up with the normal, everyday stuff.  I've already decided that there's only one thing we (John and I) "need" to get for Christmas: a dishwasher.  ("Need" obviously being completely relative since we don't truly NEED one at all. ) And there's not any sort of great space in our kitchen, so we're thinking about one of the small versions on a counter.  We have a perfect corner that's basically unused space that would work well for a counter top version and I keep reading that they rate a ton better than the portable options.  Anyone want to give any input or share experience?

In the meantime: I'm getting some mums and pumpkins to place outside my door and if I can be patient, I'm making myself wait a few more weeks for them.  Nick is being the same thing for Halloween that he's been the past 2 years (a firefighter) and Mia just needs a cape and vampire teeth to be Dracula.  Throw in a day of pumpkin carving with friends and the possibility of a Libby's pumpkin bread kit and I think we're completely set for fall.  If we feel really crazy, we might pick apples.  But we probably won't and I'm kind of happy about that.  I'm feeling the same about Christmas. (Am I annoying you by talking about Christmas already?) Usually I make a million lists and plans and all sorts of stuff, all in the name of trying to keep it simple.  So I think I'm going to skip the lists and if I feel motivated for a holiday craft for the kids, get out the red and green construction paper to make chains.  Maybe slice and bake some oranges.  I'm not wrapping books, I'm giving them to the kids in a big basket to go nuts.  After all, she can read now.  And he's trying  Which means she can read all of the Christmas books! And I wouldn't want to deprive them of any reading time by having the books wrapped;)

Does someone want to remind me that I said all of this in the next few months when I start thinking about making lists??  All they really care about is the time with family and putting up a tree.  A few presents are the icing on the cake and the rest is just gravy if we have it in us to make it happen.  I need to remember that.

A Season of Flowers

Every year for the past few years, at the end of the growing season I told myself that I was going to grow more flowers the next year.  Then spring would come around and I'd try to plan all of the veggies to plant and throw flowers in here and there and forget about it until the season was over.  So this past spring I decided that this year would be the year I'd grow more flowers.  And then I started planning.

Do you have a garden?  If you do, you know how it goes.  You make a list of things you "need" in your garden, but then you order seeds and get a few extra for fun and you find plants here and there and suddenly, the garden is a lot more full than your original "plan."  I looked at my maps of where things would go and started to figure out where I could add extra growing space and realized just how many flowers I'd actually be growing and I had an idea: What if I asked around to see if anyone wanted some of my flowers?  I wasn't sure how it would all play out, so I started with a Facebook post asking if anyone would be interested in a subscription to a flower CSA for the summer.  And I got way more response than I expected.  I had 14 people sign up for the season for either weekly or bi-weekly flower shares from June-September.

Honestly, I was terrified.  I was looking at a big patch of grass in my backyard and crossing all of my fingers and toes that I could turn it into a patch of land that would grow enough flowers for my subscriptions for the summer.

The learning curve was crazy (to say the least) but I did it.  I made at least a million mistakes that will help me to plan better for next year, but here's the thing: I loved it even more than I thought I would.

I had no idea how it would all turn out when I started in the spring, I just knew that I wanted to grow a whole lot of flowers this year, and I wanted to be able to share them, and that really did happen.  Everything you see above was either grown in my garden or foraged nearby from the roadside or generous neighbors.    It didn't seem like so much at the time, but now that I look at those photos, I'm blown away by how much actually grew.  And I can't wait to get planning and growing for next season!

For now, I need to get some of dying plants out and get some fall crops and cover crops in there to keep the soil healthy and hopefully make it even better for next year.