Sunday afternoons

I'm really wondering what is up with me. The last 2 Sundays I have been sluggish and mopey. It's like I'm 12 again and dreading school on Monday. I hated Sundays as a kid.

Some days I feel the need to DO something. Clean, cook, de-clutter. If things weren't frozen solid I could be making up garden beds. I guess, based on this little exercise, that my problem is cabin fever. I'm between projects and feeling restless. I'm not getting enough exercise.

Next month I'm going to visit my friend Sharon. Hopefully I'll get some inspiration from her. She doesn't get everything done but she seems content to let the little stuff go. She is way busier than I am. Every now and again I need to get reinvigorated and inspired about the things I feel are important (my child, growing food, wasting less, our health).

I usually fizzle

Every year I start out in January with big plans. I want to expand my fruit production. Last year I had raspberries and they were very successful. This year I want to do blueberries. Plants are expensive but the county will have them for the plant sale.

I try to draw out where things are going to go in the garden. Then a nice day appears in March or April and I plant lettuce and peas. Then I totally forget about my plan. I try and squeeze in one more tomato plant. I plant kale and never eat it or freeze it. The rabbits eat it. I SHOULD plant kale. It's easy to grow. I SHOULD eat kale. It's really good for me.

This year the goal is to not over do. I'll use my space efficiently. I'll do succession planting and I won't expand by more than one bed.

Watch me fizzle!

2007

I don't make resolutions but, I do start planning for the garden. The seed catalogs are arriving and the vegetables are all sounding so good. The trick is to actually eat what you sow, and keep the rabbits away. I am all about good intentions and eating more vegetables. I really look forward to tomatoes and corn (I buy it, don't grow it). Lettuce and snow peas are the first veggies we have and they are a great treat. I'm liking summer squash more and more.

If the winter stays mild I might even start the landscaping around the house.

We are the proud owners of a paid-for John Deere tractor. Unfortunately it is not a real tractor, it's a garden tractor, but, it's all ours and we do a lot of different stuff with it. We mow the lawn(weekly), the pasture(annually) and the loop around the pasture(quarterly). We haul wood in from the woods. We scrape the horse paddock and push all the manure into a great big compost pile. We move the compost to the garden. The driveway gets plowed. I'm sure there is other stuff we do with it but it's enough to say that it's a pretty useful tool. In a perfect world I would be doing stuff with fewer steps and with horse power. However the tractor only needs a little bit of gas run through it in the winter to keep it in good working order. A horse eats a lot even when not doing anything.

Otto has moved on

Otto has moved on to a new life on Long Island.

A woman named Donna and her friend Barbara came to visit him on Saturday. On Sunday, Shanna (former owner) drove and I navigated while we trailered him down to the island.

He has a new Quarter Horse girlfriend named Smoochey.

Making progress slowly

2 weeks to Thanksgiving and I have finally pruned the raspberry bushes. I've got more cleaning to do in the garden.

Sleep issues for my son seem to be done. We've established a routine and an earlier bedtime (8pm). He did have what seemed like a nightmare one morning, but that's to be expected I think.

Otto is for sale. He's just sitting around here eating. He needs something to do. I'll miss him if he goes.

It's cold now.

It's fun to bundle up and hibernate in the house. By February that will be really old but for now it's fun to snuggle with the baby and plan for the holidays.

We saw snow this week. It wasn't enough to amount to even a dusting but it was flying about in the air. At this time last year we had a snowfall of about 8 inches. It didn't last long. I think that was the most snow we had all winter.

If any old wive's tales are to be believed we are in for a doozy of a winter. There are lots of acorns and mountain ash berries. It was a banner year for blackberries.

It's been awhile.

A month just blew by me. I've been thinking a lot about what I could be doing. I'm just running out of time. I just got my son sleeping well. To maximise his sleep he should probably go down around 7:00. At 7:00 I've been home for just an hour and I'm cooking dinner and doing other chores. We settle for a bedtime of 9:00. Not ideal but it seems to be working for the time being.

On another note, my friend Sharon is a Peak Oil activist. She has a blog that makes me think that we (meaning my family) are not doing enough to live simply and reduce our footprint on the Earth. I encourage everyone to read what she has to say (it's very thoughtful and well written). www.casaubonsbook.blogspot.com