Category: Hobbies

It’s Saturday and time to garden
Accentuate the Positive! · Cooking · Gardening · Hobbies · just plain fun

It’s Saturday and time to garden

AuntGem1 Comment

I begrudge the time spent indoors on a day like today

The gardening bug bit me

Question: How do you know your green thumb is turning from lime granita to grasshopper green?

Answer: When you start eyeing potted plants your neighbors put on the curb for the yard trash guy, and think, that’s some really good soil. I could use that.

Me, last Monday

This happened this past week, along with another gardening bonus: One day this week I walked my dog at lunch and came across my elderly neighbor raking good, brown dirt off one part of her lawn – onto the street. Just to leave it there, like trash! I hustled back to my house, dropped off the dog and took the wheelbarrow back to Miss Jane’s house to pick up some of that good dirt. It’s going into the base of my latest raised bed, to nourish my new plants. I haven’t yet gotten to the point of picking up dog poop to work into the garden, but if the price of fertilizer goes up any more, I just might. Fortunately, our local zoo sells “comPOOst” – produced by the rhinos, giraffes and zebras.

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Ready, Set, Spring: Let’s Garden!
Accentuate the Positive! · Gardening · Hobbies · just plain fun

Ready, Set, Spring: Let’s Garden!

AuntGem2 Comments

the first of many, many posts about my new favorite hobby, gardening

Hello, longer days and Goodbye, Seasonal Affective Disorder! Now it is time to get my hands grubby and dig into the dirt. I actual begrudge the time away from my garden to do this blog post. Because I feel behind, already. In two weeks my CSA farm in lower SC will deliver its first shipment; and I’m still starting seeds. Every day now I hear “hurry up, hurry up” in my head.

The first thing I planted: one type of spinach – which I started outside, and sadly, I think I started it too early. It has failed, so no picture. I started another packet of seeds a couple of weeks later (after the last frost) and they have LIVED. See how nice:

Back right, spinach. Middle row, carrots. Front left row, buttercrunch lettuce.

I’m so excited to see these grow. Last year, when I was just playing, I grew only two salad bowls’ worth of lettuce. It was nice lettuce, though. Right after the spinach-that-failed, I started spring onions:

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Hello friend; going my way?
Beauty · blogging · Cooking · Gardening · Hobbies · just plain fun · me

Hello friend; going my way?

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Welcome to all the new readers who’ve joined and signed up for updates. For the past six or seven weeks, you’ve been getting a weekly post about my spiritual journey. I hope you all stick around as a pivot to a blog about my hobbies: baking bread *yum*; cooking all sorts of things and sharing recipes; volunteering at my church, reading, reading, reading, and reading some more as I balance two book clubs; writing something besides this blog; and finally, going deep on gardening this summer. I’ve bought so many plants, potting soil, seeds, and more that I can truly relate to this meme:

Seen, felt, heard.
Starting Seeds
Gardening · Hobbies · just plain fun

Starting Seeds

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I’m going to start turning my blog toward a hobby focus – fewer internal ramblings, more hobbies! Today: hoping my thumb can turn Pantone Light Moss Green.

Last fall I set out my first lettuce crop ever – a fall crop I planted in November (I think – I haven’t reached the stage where I actually keep a garden journal.) I harvested enough for two lovely salads in January – success!!! This year – boy, am I bold and adventurous. I’ve already planted two rows of Riverside Baby Leaf Spinach in the raised bed outside. In the interest of experimentation, I’m starting other Riverside Baby Leaf Spinach seeds indoors, in my new Park Seed Bio Dome. My own version of an adult science experiment.

First came setting up all the equipment. I unpacked my beautiful Sunblaster Nano-tech grow light, complete with reflector, so I could shine grow lights on my sweet plants. Then I discovered that the package just had the light. No stand. Super. Back to Park Seed to order the universal light stand. I might just become Park Seed’s new favorite customer.

All the goodies laid out – seeds, Bio Dome and Bio Dome starter. I got the 60-cell model; go big or go home.

After reading the instructions I realized I needed to soak the starter plugs in tepid water for 15 minutes.

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Learning to focus
educational · Hobbies · Introspection · me · Work

Learning to focus

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How do you maximize the time you have to do the things you enjoy?

As part of this ‘work-at-home’ journey I’ve been on for the past nearly two years, I’ve had to learn more about focusing than ever before. As much as I enjoy my job (well, not all the meetings, that is) it is tempting to sometimes let my mind wander. And before I know it, 15 minutes has passed. And then I need to work later, longer hours to make up for it. And that eats into my “me” time – my time for my hobbies, the time for my stuff outside of work.

So today I’m going to share with you one of the tried-and-true methods I’ve found for making it easier to stick to the task at hand…

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Goals Set, Goals Missed, Goals Set Again
blogging · Hobbies · Introspection · me

Goals Set, Goals Missed, Goals Set Again

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I’m only two weeks into restarting my blog and I’ve already missed my first goal: publish at least twice a week. I even have 16 different blog topics started in various drafts. And I set up thrice-weekly reminders on my phone to post. Yet still – offline for a week!

I’m going to treat this blog the way I’m treating my successful (so far) diet: a slip doesn’t mean it’s all over. I just get back up and get back to the goal.

To paraphrase fictional heroine Bridget Jones: if it is true that success is the progressive realization of a worthwhile dream, then that is the definition of a diet. I don’t have the energy to shoehorn that into a blogging metaphor as I’ve been up since before 5, but I like the quote.

(At 9 p.m. my eyelids are falling shut in spite of me. Yes, I need to re-arrange my writing schedule and write when I am fresh, in the morning. I’ll start that Wednesday.)

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to get the last of my “personal” topics out of the way – nine of my 16 remaining drafts are related to personal thoughts. And then, after that’s out of the way (in four and a half weeks if I stick to my twice-a-week schedule, less if I post more) then I’m going to turn this blog to what I really want to focus on: in-depth look at the hobbies that I’ve come to love over the pandemic, and two that’s been with me all my life. I’ll be focusing first on three areas: Books, Gardening, and Writing. I’ve been a bookworm all my life. Growing up, if I loved a book, you could usually tell because either a) the book covers were read to pieces, b) it had a tomato stain on a page from a pizza slice I munched as a read, or c) I read it so much I had it memorized and was quoting parts to you. (Ask my dad about how I recited parts of Erma Bombeck’s “At Wit’s End” from memory.) I’ve loved writing ever since third grade, when our teacher had us write short stories every week. Part of my career was working in journalism, and I’ve saved a few clips from along the way. And thanks to COVID, and the big backyard I have now, I’ve been doing more gardening than ever.

Come along with me for a look at my favorite books, what I’m planting in my gardens and my latest writing. (That’s after I finish emoting in those nine personal posts!) As I’ve learned from my latest diet – you need to bundle a reward with a chore to increase your chances of success. Once I can sustain my regular posting schedule for four weeks, I’m going to treat myself to a new logo for the blog.