How gardens get overgrown

When the first warm breath of Spring air hits, I, like many others, am drawn back into the garden to clean up, to plant and to dream of a bloom and fruit or vegetable filled summer.
All too often, the best laid plans of home gardeners go awry.
This happens for a number of reasons. Some people truly do not realize the workload they are setting themselves up for, and their enthusiasm overcomes good judgment as far as how much to plant.
Others are just too easily distracted, especially since gardening can be serious physical labor.

Myself, the heat is what gets to me here in Oklahoma. I have no problem doing the weeding and deadheading necessary to keep a garden happy if only I had time to do it when the average temperature was below 90 and the humidity at less than jungle strength. I try to break the weeding down into smaller bits, but this is our busy time at work, and I come home too worn out to want to work out in the hot, oppressive air. (And it usually works out that I have other obligations when the temperature might be less daunting.)

This year, so far, I am doing better. I remind myself that slaving away in the flower beds and vegetable beds counts as exercise on my NutriMirror diet/exercise/weightloss tracking website.
Right now, I do have a list of things that need to be done sometime in the next few days. There are the dianthus that need to be dead-headed, there are numerous weeds in the front flower beds that need to be evicted, the vegetables and roses will need to be fed and insect-sprayed again on Monday or Tuesday. There's a branch on the Pin Oak that hangs too low, it needs to be removed.
I do have some nice plants going so far.

The photo shows my metal bunny statue in the herb bed. He has parsley and thyme and oregano and a volunteer pansy to keep him company.
The best part of gardening is being able to enjoy the beauty (and the fresh veggies and herbs!) that your work creates. I often dread the work, but it is surely worth it.

Of Winter and Weight Gain

I have discovered that there is no way I will reach even my amended weight goal by my birthday. I have managed to keep at least 10 pounds off from what I was when I started.
The problem comes in that winter makes me hungry and keeps me from exercising. There have been several days already this year that we have been snowed in, and I couldn't do much of anything but sit around and eat. I also bake and cook and eat. Too icy to walk outside with the dog, and the treadmill gets really old after awhile.
Then I do things like make this fabulous chocolate cake I have in the works tonight just because I feel like it. At least I did my workout this morning!
The gray skies and unending precipitation are really getting me down . I could do with a little less ice and snow, thank you. At least dog and I can walk even if it's cold, IF the sidewalks are clear!

A Good Project for Someone, Not Me.

Since watching Julie and Julia, I have wondered if anyone ever tackled The Joy of Cooking in the same way Julie tackled Mastering the Art of French Cooking. It would be a pretty big task, to cook your way through that one. I have two editions of it, and I know there are likely a couple before and a couple between the two I have. It is a project I wouldn't have the patience for. These days my mind wanders off in search of new amusements more quickly than it used to. Some things get picked up again later, others not so much.
There is the knitting project I have been working on for more than two years now. It is a shawl, but I just can't seem to finish it. It goes on, and on, and on.
There is a cross-stitch project that is partway done, and I have taken it off the frame because it was getting dusty sitting there. There are nine or ten finished projects on the walls of the house. I CAN finish things, I just don't get there as easily the older I get.
So, cooking my way through an 849 page cookbook doesn't sound like something I could keep up with. Anybody else trying it? I'll have to Google search and find out. On the other hand, there is an entire section on cocktails. THAT might be interesting! (Most of the time the only alcohol I use for drinking is wine and the occasional dram of Scotch. The rest is for cooking with!)

If anyone reads this and has tried the challenge, let me know. I'd love to hear about it.
On other topics: I am currently reading My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor. It is fascinating to read her own observations of what happened, how people treated her, how she determined the best way to work her way back, and the insight she gained in the process. I am still less than halfway through the book. The other reading project I have undertaken is Secret Ingredients, a collection of writings on food from the New Yorker. Only barely started on that one.
As always, other obligations are calling me away from this blog. Hope to be a more consistent blogger in the future.

Another year has sped away

Here I am again, trying to keep an old journal alive.
This year has really disappeared quickly. Seems like we just got done with New Year's and it's time for it again already.

I do spend most of my online time with Facebook these days. There aren't enough hours in the day to do all the things I'd like to do.
This year had a lot of exciting things going on. I lost some weight, gained a little back, survived a record breaking summer at the library, and survived a Christmas Eve blizzard!
I hope next year is less exciting weather wise. Boring is not so bad, especially as regards weather!
In the mean time, I have read some books, made a lot of good meals, and caught up with friends and family. All in all a pretty good year.

OK, So Maybe I Don't HaveTime For All This Stuff...

I now have a Facebook account. Like I needed even more things to waste my time online!
Oh, well. I have this neglected blog, a whole batch of neglected journals, and lots of reading to do.
The Facebook account is nice, though, because it lets me get caught up with friends old and new. Some of them I only see in passing at work or at church.
I finally had enough dry weather to go out and weed the front flower beds and trim up the spent blooms on things. I dread the next lawn mowing, because by the time it is dry enough to mow, the lawn's going to be a foot high! What the heck happened to our drought?
The other frustration all this dampness brings is mold. I am allergic to mold, and the spore counts are rising amid all this rain. Drat. I was so looking forward to getting full use of my singing voice back. I guess I'll have to share it with the phlegm a bit longer. The antihistamines help, but only a little, and I can't take them for weeks on end, they dry up some things too much, and my throat not enough.
Ah, well. This, too, shall pass.

Always Trying to Get Caught Up

I think maybe I keep too many journals. I am always trying to get one or the other of them caught up. The poetry journal, the "daily" journal or diary, the weight loss journal, and this blog.

I have project, now that I have survived the annual Staff Day of our library system, and my week off for my birthday. (On Ash Wednesday, yet again.) I am out to lose all the weight I have gained over my 40s before the big five-o hits next year. So far, it's five pounds down, 15 or 20 to go.
I keep track of what I eat and what activities I do on a website I found out about at Staff Day.
It's called NutriMirror.com, and it is free. It is a most excellent way to keep yourself mindful of what you are doing as regards nutrition, exercise and general health.

Right now I face the daily dilemma of what to fix for dinner. I have some meat thawed out, but that isn't what I want right now. Oh, well, I'll think of something.

Today at church, we did a choral mass. We also had to go down to the chancel to sing our offertory anthem. I managed somehow to turn two pages at once on my anthem. Thank God the notes are the same, and I had the first few words down, because I suddenly looked at my music and noticed it was wrong! Nobody but my fellow first soprano noticed, thank God!
I must be a better actress than I think if my face didn't give me away. For once my voice was more or less clear of allergy induced gunk. A blessing all around.
Biggest problem with having my voice more clear is that my voice coach then decides that I can sing things with a higher tessitura. She now has me looking at the Doll Song from Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann. Not exactly an easy bit. I do hope I can reach most of the notes, but I think she is dreaming as regards the highest ones. Just because I can do the little bitty screechy exercises way, way up high doesn't mean my throat will ever allow me to grow that sound up to the point I could sing that high. (She knows that, but she likes to see how far she can stretch each student, and besides, working the higher stuff sometimes helps polish the lower stuff, too.)

Well, I've avoided the subject of dinner long enough. I guess I'd better go get creative.

New Year, Yet Another Neglected Journal

I am just one of those people who like the idea of journals, but can't seem to keep up with all of them. This blog suffers more than my print journals do. At least the poetry journal I can just write a word or two if I want, this one and my diaries seem to demand more.

It isn't that writing is not a natural thing for me, but rather that I think of too many things to write, and think of them at times when I cannot get to the computer or to my notebooks.
Some random things that have popped into my head:
While walking the dog in the cold weather, I think how the woodsmoke smell fills our neighborhood this time of year, and how I used to love it, but now it makes my eyes burn and makes it hard to breathe. (I have always been smoke sensitive, but wood smoke never used to bother me.)

I ponder on how this country has been building a financial house of cards for years, and I wonder why people are surprised that it is collapsing. What did they think would happen?

All the technology that has sprung up that threatens to take away cherished institutions, like personal letters and real birthday cards, and writing things by hand the hard way. I am one of those almost-Luddites who love fountain pens and leather bound journals. I also would rather get an actual postcard rather than an electronic one. Actual greeting cards or letters are even better. One thing I will never warm up to is books read on the screen. Even if it is a small portable screen, it will not be visceral enough for me. Books have texture, substance, scent, heft, and presence. You cannot hide behind a small electronic screen like you can behind a good big novel. Some books are very old, and you wonder who has read this book before you. Sometimes you find things left in books, things like dried flowers, or old cards, maybe even a page of a letter. Books connect us with the humanity that has come before in ways that words on a screen never will.
And yet, here I am, sending words out to live on a screen, perhaps for some intrepid soul to read. If you do read them, thank you. I hope you found something worthwhile here, or something perhaps for your brain to chew on for awhile. Feel free to comment.