Is anybody still there? My, but I have neglected the poor blog. Sorry about that. It's been a rough few months. I've had the "paid-for-a-roof-on-an-unsellable-condo, ants-crawling-in-the-current-home's-kitchen, oh-my-God-I'm-still-uninsured" blues.
But now it's spring! Except for one dark day of snow in April (on which I had difficulty in forcing myself out of the bed, let alone the house), it's been fairly nice, at least by the standards of the Midwest. The husband and I have taken advantage of the weather by starting a vegetable garden. We were hesitant at first. We rent, and we go back and forth about whether we want to move this summer. Finally, though, we decided that there is always an excuse not to do it, and besides, even if we do move it won't be till August.
You may recall that last year at this time, we were still bandying about the idea of buying a farm. I have a confession to make about that. I was never quite as excited about the plant side of things as I was about animals. I am in love with the idea of owning farm animals. I want sheep and chickens and a goat. Maybe even a cow one day. I have read books about livestock, in particular sheep, with accounts of what to do if a sheep expells her uterus during birth (basically, push it back in) and illustrations of swinging a lamb over your head to expel birthing fluids if it's born not breathing, and I still want to experience sheep birth. (Which is particularly odd given that even reading about heartburn during human pregnancy makes me want to pop an extra birth control pill.)
Plants, though? I don't know. They just didn't seem that interesting. They just, like, sprout and then... I don't know, grow some more, right? So I'm a little surprised to say that I have been totally loving it. We started some seedlings inside, along with some garlic and peas that we started in containers outside. The husband has done most of the work of getting the beds ready, and I am in charge of the compost pile. I never thought I could love a pile of rotting vegetable matter quite so much. I still can't bring myself to go near the Spider Corners of our basement and centipedes still make me scream, but I love poking the pile and watching the spiders and beetles and worms scatter. The neighbors probably think I'm insane. They may have a point.
I was not an outdoorsy kind of child. I did not have outdoor chores or play outdoor games. I certainly did not dig in the dirt for fun. But I kind of wish that at some point I had been forced to do some dirt-digging. Maybe I would have found my green thumb sooner.
