I've been at a loss for big projects of my own to work on, so sometimes I get home after work and just wonder what I should do with the evening. For a person who places high value on productivity, I've been having a hard time figuring out what to work on. I have a hard time with feeling at loose ends-- no big trips planned, no big events to look forward to, finished with a big round of sewing/crafting projects and now casting around for new ones. I would be planning summer vacations or trips (one of my goals this year is to go to a national park I've never been to before), except that there may be a job transition in my near future, which makes for unpredictability in terms of time off. Although now I'm considering just planning a week-long trip, so that I have plans regardless, and can take unpaid time off if I have to.
The biggest event that I had been looking forward to happened at the end of March, when my niece, Margaret, was born. I was antsy as all get out to meet her, of course, and had the most wonderful nine day vacation in April, as a live-in auntie. It was so great to be there, to know that I was being useful to my brother and sister-in-law by doing dishes and laundry, making dinner, and waking up in the wee hours of the morning to give Maggie a bottle. It's so incredible (and yet totally normal) to see my brother as a parent, and it was amazing just having so much time with that gorgeous baby.
She was asleep when I first got there, so I only saw her at that point, swaddled and passed out in her crib. I truly met her at 2 AM after a shift change with my sister-in-law. Maggie woke up hungry, and as I picked her up for the first time, she locked her big blue eyes on mine, with a deeply furrowed brow (which is precisely my father's), as if working out that although she had never met me before, I was kin. Just me and her in the middle of the night. Pretty magical.
The weather has turned summer-like, and I've been getting back into garden mode. I kind of got out of garden gear over this winter full of surgery and laid-up-ness. Now it's so very nice to spend my lunch breaks in my community garden plot, and to potter around at home with the little starts under the growlights and the herbs and flower in the pots outside my front door. Still, I have been longing for a big garden outside my back door, always with work needing to be done to fill my evenings.
Scapes!
Peas!
Pollinators!
Tonight after work I spent an hour at the garden in 80-degree heat, planting my home-started marigolds, plus beans, lettuce, and another round of radishes. I also cast out some dill. I never plant a patch of dill- I just throw some seeds around the plot, and get lovely stalks coming up here and there. Some self-seeds every year, but I always want to make sure I have enough for canning dilly beans come August.
The neighboring plot is home to this gorgeous (and knee-weakeningly sweet smelling) rugosa rose.
Bill is very busy teaching at the moment (have I mentioned here that he teaches a combination of math and boatbuilding to kids who aren't thriving in traditional math classrooms? It's a job he was born to do), and he's trying to finish his own boat in time for summer sailing, so little progress has been made on my kitchen island. However, we decided we'll get it done in time for my birthday in August, so it will only have taken us 10 months to build!
Otherwise, I've been reading a lot, cycling a lot, job searching, and trying to stave off the itchiness for change. New job, better income (read: pay off student loans and buy a house), bigger projects, traveling, something to feel like I've got a little more forward motion in my life, early in the summer in which I will turn 30.
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