It's all about Donna

Several years ago my father passed. It’s coming up on 3 years in August. Fifteen months later, my mother passed, and 5 days after that my sister passed. You may wonder what this has to do with gardening. Everything. It has everything to do with the garden. How? I’ll tell ya. My folks loved gardening, especially when we lived in New England. Mom had what she called a rock garden with portulaca and the last time looked up the property online, it appeared to still be there. They had a vegetable garden in the back that produced well. So many fond memories! The garden has become my place of solace and reflection. It’s taught me patience and gratitude.

I’ve been left in charge of the family trust and as such their house maintenance is on the list of my many tasks. Bear with me. I’m getting to the point. A year ago, I had the house yard cleaned up. A massive accumulation of leaves, pine needles, pinecones, and so much more, including having a 50+ foot dead tree taken down and chipped. My ‘guys’ gave me a truckload of all this that is now a beautiful compost pile that I am using in my garden! I love that each bed has a little of my parents’ property to help nurture my plantings much the way they nurtured me. I am forever grateful for their unconditional love, grace, and understanding.

Having said all this, I am entering year number three of the garden and have grown from three raised beds to eight along with a dozen or so repurposed cattle tubs. Last year the garden gifted me with an assortment of beets, carrots, and radishes, along with okra, eggplants, lettuce and spinach. But wait! There’s more! It gifted me with a wonderful variety of tomatoes. Not just at the beginning of season, but a true bumper crop at the end of the season. From this experience, I learned to narrow down my tomato choices, so this year, I have 4 varieties instead of 10. I just harvested my first batch of spinach with more on the way as this year, I have a greens-dedicated bed that is nothing but lettuce, spinach, arugula, and kale.

In the beet bed, I’ve been pulling what I thought was weeds because what was breaking through the dirt didn’t look like baby beet leaves. Then I got to thinking, well, what if it is baby beet greens? I decided to leave the ones that were peeking out alone to see exactly what they were. Turns out, they are neither beets or weeds. They are Violas! …and that’s life in my day!

Where did all these wrinkles come from? I have no clue. I wash my face. I put cream on it. I don’t smoke. I did used to spend a lot of time in the sun. But still… where did they come from? I knew I had them. They are inevitable. It just seems too soon to have them though. Looking at my self portraits… ewe! I recently had to look closely in the mirror. Had those darn reading glasses on. YIKES! I found wrinkles I didn’t even know I had!

Note to self: Do NOT wear glasses when looking at self in mirror.

Childhood memories include the silly song about the old woman who swallowed a fly. Sure… you remember it. You just don’t know you remember it. It goes something like this: Read the rest of this entry »

Had to work in the office today. No big deal. I have to go into the office on the first Wednesday of each month, and then on an as needed basis. Since I work a shortened week (only 32 hours), and with gasoline being so expensive, this seems to be working for the most part. I am so grateful that my employer is pro-remote employee. In fact, they expect all employees to work at least 2 days each from home. They have shared seating and flex seating. I have flex seating. That means when I go into the office, I have to fend for myself to get a work station. Most of the time this works out pretty well, and even though I got into the office before 9am today, there were no work stations open near my team. i ended up sitting on the opposite side of the building from them. And that was OK. I really liked the station I found. It was very open and I didn’t feel like I was swimming in a fish pond. I could even see out the windows. Pretty slick. Read the rest of this entry »

A topic near and dear to my heart, and almost all about me, is what do you do when you find yourself in a job that just doesn’t seem to be as fulfilling as it once was? I stumbled onto this question when reading a fellow colleague’s blog. It seems he is in this quandry now. I can say it’s all about me because I’ve been there. Read the rest of this entry »