This Afternoon

March So Far

Daylight savings, lots of citrus, pi day, St. Patrick's Day, so many hours spent playing in the front window looking for dogs, a big snow storm to round out winter, almost an 8th birthday, climbing on everythign, way too much fighting, I started a new part-time job again...March is flying by!

Late Winter Stuff

Reading: Everything on the Floret site.  I've read a million books, blog posts, magazine articles...Erin's posts are the most helpful I've read anywhere and I can't wait to get her new book ! If you have any interest in flower farming or even just your own cutting garden, it's going to be such a gorgeous and useful resource.

Eating: Girl Scout cookies and this Stew

Drinking: Iced Earl Grey Lattes. My friend Chrissy shared these on Instagram and ever since I cannot get enough!

Making:  Embroidery flowers.  Since I can't plant and grow them yet, I've been stitching them.  It started as a distraction for me when I was feeling a lot of anxiety during the day, but I quickly finished my first project, then my second and I just want to do more!

Writing:  I'm trying.  It's feeling better to write a bit regularly again, but I still don't feel like I'm in a groove.  I'm trying, though, and right now that counts for a lot!

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...

From Spring 2016

From last spring, written and never posted:

I feel self-conscious about my writing.  Like I'm going to come back later and cringe at what I've written like I do when I look at old photos.  But something funny happened.  My almost 9 year old requested a rainbow cake for her birthday, the same as she had on her 3rd birthday.  When Pinterest was only a fledgling.  But as I went back to look at my blog post from that birthday party and read the words, the only thing I felt was grateful.

It was the first thing that has made me feel like blogging or writing again in a really long time.  Being able to look back on her birthday, and the others, I fell down the rabbit hole to see more birthdays after that one.  Hearing my own voice about my kids when they were so much smaller made me cry.

And it makes me want to write a little more again.  At least about Ben.  Because this time when they're so tiny passes in such a flash and even though you know you were there and in it, it all just disappears.  But then I remember that I can come back and read what I wrote before and that I don't at all care if the photos were good or bad, I just care that they exist.  That's where blogging started, isn't it? The form that's basically dead now? I write bits and pieces on Instagram and that has to be enough for now, but there really is something about just sitting down to write out thoughts for the sake of thoughts that doesn't happen for me on my phone.