Category Gardening

Puttering

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I’ve been retired from full-time work since Christmas.  Another retired colleague and I  started a private-practice counseling center in our small town.  We each allocate a couple days a week to the practice. This schedule leaves me a lot of time for spur-of-the-moment and random activities collectively called puttering for the purpose of this essay.

My colleague and I both experienced a steep learning curve in the transition from working at a state college where we had the privilege of not needing to ask students receiving counseling for money, to private practice where are trying to earn some.

We spent a lot of extra hours on our “off” days on the computer taking care of obtaining the correct licenses, insurance, legal status, taxes, etc. As most of that has now been accomplished, we are closer to our plan for this business which is to each work two days a week. I enjoy spending time in our sunny office.  It’s great to set my hours, and not work within an institution’s expectations.

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I’ve puttered with a bit more indoor gardening this year.  My house plants are thriving.

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I admire folks who can work full time and read a lot, but as much as I tried, rarely found time to finish a book when employed full time.  In the past, when my book club moved to a new selection, I used to insert a bookmark in the unfinished book and move on to the next one. In the past few months, I’ve finished four of those set-aside books, and am now keeping pace with my fellow readers.

Reading, gardening and even a bit of quilting all feel like puttering.  I’ve also been writing more and sending poems and essays to journals for publication consideration. I’ve used some of this puttering time to organize my writing submissions.  As soon as one editor rejects my work, I sent it out to another.  There are occasional successes.

Initially, there was a bit of anxiety that I wasn’t accomplishing much, but I’ve decided that puttering, as described in this blog, is an OK use of my time.  It’s refreshing to have time to watch sunrises and sunsets like this one. Peace to all of you who find your way to this blog!

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Nature is steering a rocky path this year

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I started this post nearly a year ago.  Volatile spring weather is a constant each year and has caused havoc from coast to coast in the past year.  After an extremely cold February and early March, we are indeed marching toward the end of April. A sunny, windy, warm Easter weekend had turned into a cool wet Earth Day.  See my blogs between May 2018 and now in 2019 to follow my decision-making process.

May 2018 remained sweatshirt-chilly for the first two weeks, then catapulted to temperatures near or exceeding 100 degrees over Memorial weekend.  The month wrapped up with a week in the nineties that ushered in wind-wrapped rain and tornado warnings.  High winds earlier this spring tore siding from my house, damaged ponderosa pines, and other trees, and downed power lines for many, although my electricity remained steady.  Trying to determine my future mirrors the weather’s ups and downs.  I think I’m all set, then have a complete change of mind every few days as I investigate options.

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Trees, bushes, and flowers experienced a similar rollercoaster.  Bare lilac branches burst from tightly-curled buds to lovely flowers, to dried flower seed-heads to full leaf in a week.  The branches were bare at the beginning of May and flowers were all gone before Memorial Day.  Many early iris did not bloom. Mid-season tall bearded iris bloomed and died in a weekend, but there were enough of them to decorate family graves.  Looking at each turn of nature teaches me that everything does not have to be perfect for one to move ahead, and many beautiful things are fleeting.

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How to be happy in January

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I’ve been thinking about selecting a good topic to discuss this January, but the grey sky, wind chills, and snow are like a blizzard in my brain, obscuring creativity.  Some days, when the sun shines on new snow, however,  my mind clears and I appreciate that nature is  beautiful.

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Many other days are gloomy when the sky is grey, the fields are grey, and even the trees’ brown bark looks grey.  On those days, just a smidge of sunshine through the clouds pinpointing a building is charming. The scene visually and emotionally brightens the day.

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I don’t want to wish away a quarter of my year hiding from cold and waiting for spring.  I venture outside at least twice a day to feed horses, barn cats, and check other critters. The sound of horses snorting as they munch prairie hay improves my mood.

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Sometimes, the very act of walking in crisp January air is invigorating in unexpected ways.  It’s possible to experience beauty in a brief glimmer of the sun at a particular time of day at a specific location. For example,  indoor Christmas lights reflected on this wishing well in late afternoon to create an unusual effect.  I would have missed this moment if I stayed indoors.

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Sunrise is often inspirational in winter, just as finding the photos to create this blog inspires me to spend more time outdoors today, and in the days ahead.  These unexpectedly beautiful moments help me be less worried about cold weather.  Happy January everyone!

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Seasons

llzranch 2 Comments

There’s been a little snow here early this fall after weeks of wet cold, and now late October warm sunshine.  As the season progresses, I’m progressing toward retirement.  I selected a last workday, and turned in a letter to make the retirement official.  It is a really difficult decision to walk away from students and long-term coworkers.  I’m hopeful that it’s the right time to finish this  part of my life and move on to the next stage.

Today  was a good day to scurry around finishing fall chores.  My son built a horse feeder that will make it easy for me to feed the horses this winter.  He is also sawing and splitting enough wood for me to make it through the coldest part of winter.

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The summer garden produced potatoes, onions, carrots, beets, and turnips.  Tomato cages are cleaned and stacked in the garden shed.  I hauled dead tomato vines, pruned branches, and frosted pepper plants to a compost pile. The warm-season part of the garden is finished for the year.

However, the fall lettuce crop is doing great.  Chard keeps its brilliant color through cold nights. There are also volunteer cilantro and dill plants that survived the early snow.

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Harvesting fall veggies made all the summer work worthwhile.  I expect retirement to give me more days to play in the garden.  Gosh, maybe I’ll have time to start garden plants from seed next year. https://www.seedsavers.org/starting-seeds

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onions & potatoes

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carrots

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turnips

 

 

Hail Storm to Heat Wave

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A severe thunderstorm with hail swept though eastern Nebraska  and into Iowa on Father’s Day.  I drove from a family reunion 70 miles west of my house, back toward home late afternoon.  It was sunny and 75 degrees at the family gathering.  As I drove east, the temperature dropped and a rain front became visible on the eastern horizon.  The storm was moving east.  I followed it, believing the edge of the front was far ahead, but as I neared the last turn east toward  home, I caught up with the storm.  There was heavy rain intermixed with hail, beating a tattoo on the car’s roof, hood and  trunk.  At times I could not see to drive and pulled to the side of the road until it cleared a bit.  There was no place to pull completely off the highway as there are no shoulders.  I was a bit shook up after the drive, but neither the car or me suffered any serious damage.

My dog was home alone. She hates thunder and was happy to see me return.

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A week later, another big storm swept the area, dropping five inches of rain in one day, but no hail this time. It’s a wet year here, but I am fortunate to live on a hill and don’t have to worry about floods, unlike many people who live along the swollen creeks and rivers that feed the Missouri.

The low pressure systems behind all the rain storms turned into a high pressure front that ushered in, and continues to bring, excessive heat and humidity.  I’m not a fan of this part of summer, but my plants and flowers are thriving as well as all the area crops.

As summer marches on, I’m taking steps toward the goal of retiring this fall, along with baby-steps toward beginning a part-time business.  It feels good to see the end of the road.

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Featured

High Summer

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It’s late July, high summer season for garden  harvests, flowers and mosquitos.  It’s also the general timeline I gave myself to make a retirement decision.  I can busy myself picking green beans,  husking sweet corn and pruning flower beds to avoid difficult decisions.  It’s been a great year for green beans.  This is an early harvest.

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Plentiful rain results in beautiful flowers.

IMG_20180708_211918_073 The flowers are pretty even when shared with another of Mother Nature’s creatures.

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Tending to nature’s bounty is a peaceful way to consider options.  Time on the lake fishing is another kind of peace.  My pole’s in the water on a foggy morning.

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This view and the cover photo are of Lake Oahe in South Dakota. http://sdmissouririver.com/follow-the-river/the-four-lakes-and-dams/lake-oahe/

Windmills

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I purchased a photograph of a windmill in Holland from a Dutch photographer, Adrie Nab several years ago.  It is a beautiful photograph, and reminds me that windmills are changing.  “The iconic Dutch windmills were once state-of-the-art flood control technology. They pumped water from uninhabitable marshes and turned it into farmland, redefining the landscape of the Netherlands. Today, the Dutch have implemented other flood prevention methods, but working vintage windmills still exist.”

NOVA – Official Website | Dutch Windmills

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/dutch-windmills.html
The photo below is an example of a Dutch windmill.
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Photo by Skitterphoto on Pexels.com

Wind farms, with modern wind towers,  are springing up in my part of Nebraska like summer crabgrass.  Some wind farms are up and running,  some are in development with windmill blades delivered via truck nearly every day, and some are in the planning stages.  It requires four vehicles to deliver one blade.  The front vehicle has a sign stretching across the top, “WIDE LOAD”, the second one has a rotating radar system, the third is the semi with one blade, and the forth, usually a pickup, has another rotating radar system.

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Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Windmills of my youth pumped water for our house, livestalk, and for the garden. There is a boarded-up well on my current farmsite with a tower above it that lacks blades.  The blades blew away in one of the many wind storms buffeting this land.  A tree has  grown up inside the tower, rendering it merely decorative.

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