Now that my husband is working from home full-time and he's moved his stuff to his man cave downstairs, I asked him the other day if he was going to empty the bottom drawer of one of the two filing cabinets that makes up my desk.  He replied, "Oh, that's not my stuff.  That's a bunch of your old grad school stuff."

He was right.

Obviously, I don't need it if I never knew I had it, right? I'd recycled almost everything related to my dissertation a few years ago. So I sorted through the drawer of folders and notebooks and tossed everything I didn't want or that brought back bad memories. But I was surprised how much I wanted to keep. It was a time of growth and exploration. I especially loved my Milton class and I had great fun with a project I did for a Renaissance Lyric Poetry class. I was also surprised that I wrote with such liveliness. My academic papers rarely sounded academic. I'm surprised my professors let me get away with that! I'm also surprised how much I trusted them - I looked through notes and things and found I was very open with them about my intellectual struggles.

Looking through drafts of seminar papers and pages of notes felt like meeting someone I used to know, only the someone was me.

Summer = Strawberries

Summer has officially arrived! This morning I went out and gathered enough strawberries for my oatmeal.

And so it begins....

 I have big plans this year!  We are starting a lot more under grow lights so we can do more mulching.  Currently under grow lights: leeks, lettuce, peas, kohlrabi, beets, and tomatoes.

Garden Total by Crop

In pounds... 

beans = 17.8 

cherry tomatoes = 4.3 

tomatoes = 126.5 

okra = 18.4 

garlic = 5 

broccoli = 1.1 

carrots = 10.4 

zucchini = 43.3 

kholrabi = .4 

bell peppers = 1.5 

beets = 3.4 

radishes = 1.5 

peas = .5 

cucumbers = 39.3 

snake melon = 18.5 

Total 292.1 

Not weighed: chives, lettuce, oregano, basil, thyme, kale, and mint. We got LOTS of kale. 

Total cost for the garden this year = $503.82. 

Wow - that is WAY more than we usually spend! But we had a bunch of what I call capital improvements, including a new arrangement for our grow lights, PVC and plastic for hoop tunnels, fresh strawberry plants (cultivar = Sparkle), a new trellis (fence panel + T-posts), and, most expensive of all, $150 worth of goumi berry bushes. Despite this sky-high cost, we still came out with a total of $1.73 per pound of fresh, organic produce. That is actually not too bad. Next year we might add more hoops. Or we might not. The original plan was to add some each year until every bed has an option of hoops, if we want them, but I'm not sure we made very good use of them. In any event, next year's costs should be much lower.

Don't Throw Away... Old Calendars

 You can use old calendars as wrapping paper for small gifts.  I like to find a theme and chose a month that matches the recipient.

2022 Garden Total....

We harvested 292 pounds this year! Not bad, but last year's was 365. However, we bought a new scale this summer, so we're not sure how much is the scale and how much is just less of a harvest, and how much of it is me confusing the "fluid ounces" and the "grams" on said scale..... More details coming soon!

Probably our last harvest

We harvested this today. It's just a little above freezing, and boy are my hands cold!

We still have some kohlrabi and some peas in the garden under shelter, but I'm not optimistic.... We should have Garden totals soon!