Garden Plans

I know I said I would post this yesterday, but I kind of got wrapped up in my new release.  (Rumor Has It... for sale now - $2.99.)

Okay... so... gardening.  If you've been following along, I've talked about doing some vegetable gardening here at Sanderson Acres.  (Hey, it's more than an acre here, so it counts as plural.)   You know, to help make us more self-reliant and junk. 

The main reason I haven't ventured into growing my own food is... DEER.  Those buggers will eat anything with leaves.  Sure, I have 'deer resistant' flowers and junk, but resistant isn't a guarantee.  Just because a deer doesn't usually eat something doesn't mean it won't in a pinch.  (Or play with it when they're bored.)  And I have yet to find 'deer resistant' food plants.  

So, how does a gal who invites the pesky critters to her yard grow her own food?  

Well, first I looked into fencing.  What a pain in the buns.  All the work of building the fencing turned this lazy gal right the hell off of the whole gardening idea.  And then there was the need for terracing because we live on a hill.  Umm... no.  Not only no, but hell no.

Then I stumbled across the idea of container gardening.  Everything in pots?  Pots we can put on our deck, safely out of the reach of the deer (if not the squirrels and the birds)?  Okay, there's an idea I can get behind.  And we have a huge deck off the south side of our house.  So, I printed off a bunch of stuff on various container ideas.  

At first, I was totally jazzed about this grow-box thing I found that I could make and then put casters on it so we could roll it around the deck to capture the best sun.  Hubs talked me out of that.  We have tons of regular containers... why re-invent the wheel?  

So, over the weekend, I bought a bag of dirt and three seed packets - beefsteak tomatoes, carrots, and lettuce.  Kind of home grown salad.  Yay.  This week, I will use some old egg cartons and start the germination process.  

We have a perfect spot in the garage.  There's a shelf in front of one of the windows - south facing with loads of sunlight.  Hubs will build me a shelf for the other window.  Put some dirt in the egg cups and a seed in each, set them by the window, and wait for them to grow.  Once I get some growth, I'll transplant them into larger containers.  Once all danger of frost is over, put the containers out on the deck.  Voila.

Note: From what I understand, you can't transplant carrots, so those will have to wait a bit to be planted directly into larger containers for outside growth.  Unless I have room on the shelves for a few larger pots.  Hmm.

I also got the wild idea to plant zucchinis in the front rose bed.  Here's the idea...  I have all this space in there.  Two plants could easily grow and stretch themselves under the two rose plants I have.  Between the roses and the fact that the bed is next to the house and the driveway, the deer should leave them alone.  :fingers crossed:  We'll see whether I do that.  I have to do some more research.  For all I know, zucchini and roses are incompatible growers.  If I can't do zucchini there, I'll figure something else out for them.  I've read that you can train zucchini up a trellis.  And then, I'll plant herbs in the rose bed.  Basil, probably.  Maybe dill.  Maybe I'll just transplant some wild chives.  I already have those growing in my iris bed (and all over the yard... LOL)

I'm also playing with the idea of a container full of strawberry plants.  Time will tell.  Those I can't protect from the birds, so it may be a waste of time.  But I would love me some fresh strawberries.  Or blueberries...  :drool:

Anyway, now that my book is done, I have some time to focus on gardening, so that's the plan.  I'll let you know how it goes.

Do you grow any of your own food?  Have you ever tried growing it in a container?  

Best Laid Plans

To paraphrase Robert Burns*, The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.  Ain't that the truth.  For instance, I made plans for this week and I was all gung ho about them on Sunday.  Unfortunately, yesterday was a bad day.  Not bad-bad in the scheme of things, but just bad enough that it derailed me.  I woke up early from a weird and depressing dream, and it kind of got the whole day off to a wrong start.  I didn't walk.  I didn't read.  I didn't edit. The only thing that got checked off of my to-do list was dishes, and I have to do those or we'll have nothing to eat off of or with**.

I had great plans for this year.  Well, obviously, those got obliterated by the 'rona and the chaos surrounding it. 

Actually, I should say I let my plans for the year get derailed by the chaos.  It was all mental.  Nothing truly stopped me from going ahead with anything, except my brain.

Anyway, sometimes plans go awry.  I could spend this time kicking myself.  Lord knows, it's a popular pastime.  But I'm going to try to go another way.  I mean, kicking myself is useful from time to time, but today doesn't seem like one of those times.  So, I'm going to forgive myself.  I get a pass for yesterday.  As long as I don't let it continue into today.  I have work that needs to be done, regardless of what might be going on in my life or in my head.  I have promises to keep.  And if you'll forgive a foray into another poem, I have miles to go before I sleep.

*The original poem in its original Old English. Which I think is kind of neat.
**For times of extreme laziness, illness, or water outage, I have backup dishes and silverware, but I hate to break those out of storage.

Sunday Update - Week 52

It's the last Update of the year. End of week, end of month, end of year.  Ugh.

Not much went on.  Not much ever goes on in the last week of the year.  Maybe some frantic dashes to get the year wrapped up, but I was pretty on the ball earlier in the month, so no frenzy for me.  Just coasting.

I did have a sale this past week.  It ends tonight at midnight.  Dying Embers, Fertile Ground, and Early Grave all went on sale.  Between the paid ads and the FB group posts, I've had some good movement.  The ads haven't paid for themselves yet, but I expect page reads to take care of that over the next week or so.  Suffice it to say, the sale made this the best December I've had yet for sales.

I've written wrap-up posts for both The Writing Spectacle and Outside the Box for tomorrow.

I only finished one book before the wrap-up and finished another book on Saturday. They were both kind of long. Interesting but not fast reads.

There was, of course, Christmas.  Which was pretty much like any other day here.  Except for the Christmas music/movies and the food.  The London Broil turned out okay.  It was much better as leftovers.  The twice-baked potatoes were awesome.  As was the Black Forest cake.

I made a pork roast on Friday that was to die for.  And Saturday was vat of spaghetti day.  Always a fan favorite.  Today, we eat leftovers.

Plans for the week ahead?  I have some spreadsheet work to do.  And some more wrap-up stuff.  And I really need to sit down and make some goals for 2019 - both personally and professionally.  I know I plan to get back on track with my exercise/activity goal.  Maybe lose some more poundage.

And hey, yesterday, Dying Embers went over 1000 copies sold!   That's over 4 years, but it's still a win.

See ya next week for the first Update of 2019.

What was going on in your life for the last week of 2018?

Sunday Update - Week 19 (I Think)

May, glorious May, wonderful May... 

Okay, so you may have seen where I finished reading through Sleeping Ugly and was stuck at a crossroads as to what to do now.  I'm still working on the plan, but what will probably happen is I will send Sleeping Ugly off to the editor on June 1st and then write like a madwoman for the month of June on the next book, tentatively called either Ugly and the Beast or Cinder Ugly, so that I can have it ready to send to the editor in August when she finishes the edits for SU.

As you can see, I did some brainstorming this week and that's what I came up with.  I still have no idea what the next book will be about, but I did write the first paragraph in my handy dandy notebook.  So I got that going for me.

I finished the read-through, note-taking thing for SU and started to input edits.  If I keep my head down and work, I can do this.

Other than that, I did some reading.  I finished a book I can't review yet, so I'm not going to talk about that until next week (after it releases).  I also read a book I picked up on a whim that was loads of fun and a checkmark in my 'new-to-me, underappreciated author' goal.  Yesterday, I started a John D. MacDonald crime novel.  It's really good so far. 

And I did a boatload of weeding and gardening this week.  Well, it was kind of more prep than actual gardening.  I pulled my dead/dying azaleas and then dug up those two beds in anticipation of the arrival of my new hydrangeas.  Let me tell ya, there were a lot of rocks in those beds.  I don't remember there being that many rocks when I transplanted the azaleas there five years ago.  I pulled all the big rocks out and left them in a pile because I have a plan for them.  Which I'm supposed to start today but I'm so darned sore I may put that off 'til tomorrow.

I also went fishing once.  Caught about a half dozen little bluegills.  It was fun, but it don't put fish in the freezer.  Ya know?

Other work was light last week.  Only one spreadsheet and some computer support stuff.  Which is why I had so much time for gardening.

Thanks to the gardening and its general workout, I lost another half a pound.  And I got active 6/7 days last week.

Oh, and Happy Mothers' Day to all them what has kids.  I don't expect anything celebratory will happen today.  The Kid might call.  I'll call my mom.  Hubs will call his mom. 

This coming week holds both my birthday and our anniversary.  Hubs wanted to bake me a birthday cake, but I told him not to.  I've been doing so well on my 'get healthier' thing, I don't want a cake to ruin it.  Which it would.  I'll probably make an applesauce-walnut coffee cake instead, which is chock full of health and goodness.  If the heat lets up enough to make me want to turn on the oven, that is. 

Ugh, what is it with the early heatwave crap this year?  We went from having the furnace on to having the AC on.  So much for the two weeks of low electric bills we usually get this time of year.  Bleh.

Okay, I think that's it for me.  What've you been up to?