Nine months ago, I retired. "Nine months" seems like a long time when you're thinking of future months, but it does not seem like a long time in retrospect. Time has flown by.
My big plan for my first year of retirement was to raise a fabulously productive vegetable garden and indulge my art/craft yearnings. Some of that has panned out, so far - I've quilted/painted/crafted my head off. The gardening? Not so much.
This year's gardening season started out wet, wet, WET. The tomatoes, peppers, and squash seeds went in the ground during a short dry-ish spell. They almost drowned before it finally quit raining, and despite the fact that I had nourished them and babied them, they never really produced much (except for the butternut squash, which was planted by accident - it went crazy). The first planting of purple hull peas barely sprouted. I re-planted, but those seeds came up thinly, too. The second planting actually made a few peas, but my negligence let them dry up on the vines. The same goes for the first round of peas in the community garden plot, for we were out of town when the peas were ready to be picked, and the brutal heat got to them before I did.
Round 2 in the community garden has done well, so far. The peas are blooming, and the squash is already producing. "Volunteer" cantaloupes and watermelons are spreading through the peas, but everybody seems to be getting along. No sign, yet, of the winecap mushrooms, planted a couple of weeks ago. I have no clue how they're supposed to behave. The cabbages I started from seeds a few weeks ago could be planted now, if I had a place ready for them. The broccoli got a late start, and it's still too wimpy to go to the garden.
Saturday's mail brought some ginseng roots and seeds. Sunday, I went out with a hoe, looking for a place to plant them. Not far from the house, I found a good spot on a north-east-facing slope and started raking leaves and sticks and hacking down poison ivy. I'd barely cleaned two square feet when the end flew off of the hoe. It appeared to be beyond repair. The ginseng didn't get planted. Tomorrow, when I'm in town for my art class, I'll get a new one and plant the ginseng tomorrow afternoon.
I worked on the portraits of The Granddaughters this weekend. #4's portrait was the first of the bunch, and it didn't turn out so well. Tired of looking at it, I set it aside and started on #3. It turned out better. #2 and #1 came out pretty good. On a roll, I started over on #4, and it is much, much better than the first attempt. But they all need finishing/refining, and I'm afraid I'll ruin them if I do more work on them.
It's only paper, right?
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