Mountain Dweller’s Paradise

I’ve been busy since I last posted here… so very busy… so I thought I’d drop by and update this JournalSpace blog by telling you what’s up in my corner of the universe.

I made a commitment to improve my yard this year. The last few years the yard went to waste and weeds because I was working. But since I lost my job last September - I’m home free… with plenty of time for gardening. (Pictures of my garden are at the linked page.)

We live in a cabin type dwelling between two mountain meadows with pine, madrone, and fir on the property. I spent two months intense work clearing garden spaces. One space had been my garden in earlier years. It was overgrown. It had everything in it from compost to junk, and I cleared that land removing weeds, weeds, rocks, grubs, and more weeds. I also cleared a garden area right in front of our house. It was equally time consuming and full of weeds.

The two garden areas are now planted. One contains broccoli, bell peppers, jalapenos, oregano, dill, marigolds, corn, sunflowers, snow peas, spinach, beets, parsley, potatoes, cucumbers, and tomatoes. I have a separate tomato garden with larger plants - one already bearing a couple green tomatoes. Beside that there’s a strawberry garden, and my herb garden which has three varieties of sage, chives, thyme, nasturtiums, rosemary, bacopa, lobelia, three types of mint, lemon balm, yerba buena, and that’s about it. I also have a flower garden on the other side of my porch. Okay, that’s the front of the house.

The garden behind the house has zucchini, crookneck (yellow) squash, scallop squash, tomatoes (more unusual varieties) green beans, watermelon, canteloupe, and a mystery plant that came growing in one of my squash purchases. I’m hoping it is turnips or something like that - but we’ll have to wait and see. Right now I don’t recognize it at all. It is developing little purple flowers. Would be cool if eggplants started growing - or anything I could eat. In other words, I hope it isn’t just a pampered weed!

Yesterday I watched my beloved float downriver on a kayak - that was kind of fun. He’s a gold prospector and manages to do his work most of the time without any help from me - but this time I was there to drive the car from the put-in site to the take-out site downriver. On the way down there we noticed a old truck parked by the side of the road. My S.O. (significant other) was appalled to see that someone had put rocks through the windows — especially since he’d driven by earlier in the day and the windows weren’t broken then. This makes us not want to park our car next to the river anymore, while he’s prospecting. This means I’ll have to take him there, drop him off each day, and then pick him up late in the afternoon hours.

On the work-front I’m getting more organized with my online content writing. I recently made myself a schedule I think will work. I start my day with a walk around town - it takes me about an hour and contains a few semi-challenging uphill climbs. After my walk I water the gardens… I have to keep those plants happy! Then I come inside and eat, drink my morning tea (chai,) and write my three morning pages. (I’m an Artists Way devotee.)

Next I have two hours for blogging, an hour for lunch, an hour for revising novels (or critiquing them for friends,) and then two hours for Squidoo lens building. From four to eight I spend with my S.O. — we go places, or watch movies (almost a nightly occurrence here) and eat dinner. In the evening he goes to sleep and I have a few hours to work on anything I didn’t get done earlier in the day. This seems to be working out fine, so far.

I have so much more to tell you but I know this is getting long… so I’ll leave it for the next posting. I hope to connect with more friends here on JournalSpace. I’ve met wonderful people in the past and know this is a great networking site.