Hello dear readers,
I write to you from my kitchen desk; sun shines through the window and, outside, wind batters the cedar hedges. It’s a second cup of coffee kind of day, partly because we turned the clocks forward in the night¹, and partly because I drank coffee far too late in the day yesterday to go to bed at a reasonable hour.
But today, I wanted to give you a little garden update. Right now gardening looks like a lot of little things, but that’s how it always looks at this time of year.
First, my grandma and I have planted a number of seeds, including tomatoes, peppers², lupins, delphiniums, and hollyhock. The flowers I’m especially excited about, because there are a lot of of them. The lupins and delphiniums will live in a new bed I’m digging in our back garden; the hollyhocks will lives along the back fence in my grandparents’ garden.
Not entirely garden-related, but in the garden: I cleared out the spot by the back door that always seems to turn into a dumping ground for pots that need to be put away and other garden-related detritus. All the pots are now back in the shed, and everything else has found a home, too.
In the process, I uncovered the beautiful little wood table³ my grandpa gave us last year; I’m now very much pining for warm summer mornings spent reading and drinking my coffee there. In fact, I’m just looking forward to being outside more at all! I’ve never been one to shy away from cold and wet weather⁴, but I do tend to spend much more time indoors in autumn and winter, simply because I’m up to my eyeballs in writing.
Another garden note: wildflowers have begun to spring up in last year’s bed, though the dirt situation is looking quite bleak. I’m going to need to find a way to top up the dirt without burying the new wildflowers in the process. By the looks of it, I don’t even need to plant any more seeds—last year’s flowers took care of that for me.
Another not entirely garden related note, but my grandma gave me two wood plant stands I’ve coveted since I was a kid⁵. They now sit in the living room and my office, holding two very large Christmas cacti that, thankfully, Theo and Franklin do not want to eat⁶.
Today⁷ I should go out and weed, namely because the forecast tells me we’re going to get a mix of rain-snow all through the week. Frankly, I already don’t want to weed, and so leaving it until that sort of weather sounds like a bad idea.
And so that’s all for today! Wish me luck battling the weeds. And I hope you’re having a good week!
—Catherine
A friendly reminder that I’ve restarted my patreon, where I share weekly writing updates, (among other goodies). In these posts, I go in-depth on my writing process and progress—much deeper than what I post on this blog. It would mean a lot to me if you’d give it a look 💜
footnotes
¹ And it was the last time we’ll ever do it! British Columbia, where I live, has finally done away with Daylight Savings time.
² Green peppers, purple peppers, and some mystery peppers.. Most are already up! The mystery peppers appear to be taking their time, though.
³ It’s actually the table C and I signed our marriage papers on, which makes it even more special.
⁴ I mean, I live in British Columbia. I don’t really have a choice when it comes to cold and wet weather, but luckily I’m the kind of person who loves a good storm.
⁵ I’m not kidding. I’ve had my eye on these things for a good twenty years. Imagine my joy when my grandma said she was getting rid of them, and would I like them? Obviously!!
⁶ Theo has developed a taste for spider plants. Yes, I know they’re mildly poisonous to cats. Yes, I have done all I can to keep him away from them.
⁷ I often write my blog posts on Sunday and schedule them for Wednesday. I’m a do-ahead kind of guy, and it makes me feel better to have something ready to go, rather than trying to type it all up and format it the night before. Scheduling is also helpful because I have migraine disorder, which means I never know when I’ll be knocked out for a few hours (or days).
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