Independence Days Challenge Week 5: Discombobulated

I have this garden only in my dreams. It's a botanical garden in far-away Bermuda, where I'm sure it's over 42 degrees.

I blame daylight savings time for discombobulating me. This was one of those weeks when, to paraphrase Alice in Wonderland, I’ve been running as fast as I can to stay in place. There were a couple of times when I could have been doing something productive, but my give-a-damnometer needed a battery recharge—for instance, I read instead of writing as I usually do while I sat around waiting for my hair color to set, and one night, I was so tired I curled up with a cat and Jane Eyre, then went to bed early. As a result, It’s not been a bad week, but I feel like I don’t have a lot to show for it as it winds to a close

As I look at the week, though, I realize that’s not precisely true. The weekend didn’t involve much garden activity, but we ran some needed errands and spent some wonderful soul-feeding time socializing. I didn’t get a lot of new words produced, but I did manage to write a decent chunk on the new, barely-started Duals and Donovans. On the writing front, I also reviewed the final ARC for Fox’s Folly, handled some contracts, created promo postcards and dealt with some other promo stuff. And, as you’ll see below I did at least keep up with my sustainability efforts, even if I didn’t move forward much.

We won’t talk about the blog post on the train yesterday that I somehow wrote but accidentally deleted before it was saved. I haven’t done that particular Stupid Computer Trick since about 1988. I was about due.

Plant Something: Nothing. I meant to plant a few flats last night, but by the time I remembered the seeding cells were out in the shed it was dark and rainy and I lost all ambition.

Harvest Something: Arugula, lemon thyme, sprouts, and a few thinned Chinese kale seedlings that ended up in my salad.

Waste not: More stock made and frozen. The usual composting and recycling. Set a date for our yard sale, which should dejunk our house a bit without filling the landfill.

Want not: I almost forgot when I drafted this post that we made an extra payment toward the principal on our mortgage this month. We’re attempting to do that every month from now on, though we’re realistic that some months it won’t be possible. Every extra principal payment will save us a substantial amount of interest down the road and allow us to refinance to a better rate sooner. Hurray! As for other “want not” activities, does stocking up on wine count? I’m going to say it does. We took advantage of a sale and a little spare cash and bought a case. OK, maybe not what Sharon A had in mind, but wine is a staple ‘round here. Oh, and we went in with our friends in Providence on some wholesale spices. The famous “they” always say to buy spices in small quantities, but we all cook enough that a half-pound of paprika is a small quantity, or at least on that makes sense in terms of saving money and packaging.

Eat the food: Eating stored food, including polenta (topped with home-canned tomatoes and local spinach) because it occurred to me that cornmeal doesn’t keep forever. I found a Turkish recipe using spinach (farmer’s market), eggs (Sue the Egg Lady), garlic (mine), and paprika that was so easy and so good it’ll get its own mini-post.

Support local food systems: Farmers’ market shopping (we’re off as soon as I finish eating to do it again). Sunday’s dinner party that turned into an impromptu engagement celebration for our friends was largely local, featuring delicious Rhode Island lamb chops cooked with our own lemon thyme and roasted roots that even my veggie-hating brother-in-law liked. The hard cider was made in Vermont, and one of the wines was homemade by a friend (though the grapes weren’t local). We need to get bread to Sue the Egg Lady, and I’ll see if there’s enough kale to send some of that over as well.

Skill up: Nothing new here.

We’ll see how this weekend goes. I have big productivity plans for both writing and food/gardening, but we’ll see what really happens. And I should, by next week, have a little light when I get home after work. I actually did this week, but the warm nights were otherwise occupied and the free ones were chilly and damp and not conducive to outdoor work.

So how does your garden (real or metaphorical) grow this week? Did the time change leave you as discombobulated as it did me?

And have you ever heard of someone being combobulated?