Ramblings of an Unsettled Mind

I don't know what this post is going to be about.  I just feel the need to post something.  I am bursting.  Bursting with emotions, feelings, joy, desires, goals, wants, needs, ideas, dreams.

24 hours in a day and a good 8 of them being spent in darkness so that we can sleep and re-charge our body and soul is simply not enough.  Not enough for me to spend the amount of time that I have to spend at my job, the amount of time I want to spend on my art, the amount of time I want to spend in my veggie gardens, the amount of time I want to spend in my flower beds, the amount of time I want to spend making delicious homemade foods of all varieties and not enough time to spend being a loving and giving person to those I love the most.

There are so many things that are filling my tank right now and I am overflowing and don't seem to have an emergency tank to fill with the overflow.  I am so high on life right now and it is a feeling I have not had for so long, that I am not quite sure how to manage it.  I feel as if at some point it is all going to come crashing down around me if I don't get a grasp on all that I have going on.  I am famous for getting myself into too much and then not being able to control the situation any more and let it all crumble around me.  I don't want that to happen anymore.  I want to rein in this energy and get it under control so that I can retain some control.  I feel as if I am moving at warped speed and I am going to crash head first into a cement wall if I don't watch my step.

I haven't felt this alive and filled with energy in such a long time.  Life is great but it can become stagnant and everyday is routine and the in and outs of my day can feel as if I am on auto-pilot and have no real control.  I am surrounded by so much beauty and simple pleasures, I really want to just take the time to enjoy it all.  I feel like I have been given a specified amount of time to enjoy this freedom and I am just trying to squeeze every bit of life, freedom and carefree living out of it that I can.  For I know, the shoe will drop at some point and this all will come spiraling down and I will start again from ground zero, yet one more time.

But in the mean time, I am going to keep hoping for more than 24 hours in a day and live life to the fullest, finding the beauty in the simplicity of it all.

Living Life and Loving It!!!!

So, I have been away for quite a bit, but no need to worry..... I have just been living life.
After reading so many wonderful blogs and wishing my life was a certain way or different, I realized I needed to get off my butt and go live it.  And so, that is what I have been doing.  Working towards living my life they way I want to and love to.  And then, in the late hours of the evening, when I am worn out from living, I sit back and look at a few photos and blogs of my favorites and say, "Wow, my life is just as awesome, yay for me!"

One of my all time favorite blogs has been Amanda Soule's, SouleMama.  Amanda is the editor of Taproot  magazine, my all time favorite publication.  Every year, she does a series on her blog that is a follow-along of her family's veggie garden and shows the projects and progress their garden is making thru the growing season.  I LOVE seeing people's gardens, real people's gardens.  People who do the work themselves, make mistakes, learn from mistakes and are happy and willing to share with other like minded souls.  Amanda also encourages all of us to join in her little project and share photos of our own gardens, our trials and errors, our successes and ideas.  So, this year, I have decided to take part.  My little garden takes care of my family just fine and in time, when I have more time, I hope to enlarge it and garden on an even larger scale.  A scale that is big enough to possibly take care of more than just our family, but that is a future dream, not the reality of this growing season.

We are adding honey bees to our property this year.  At this time, the hives are ready to go, we are just waiting on our bees to show up.  We don't have the hives in our vegetable garden, but I am thinking it may not be such a bad idea to put them there.  I have noticed in Amanda's posts and photos, their bees are in their garden area.  I may have to follow suit and move our hives into the garden.

So without further ado, here are photos of our 2014 Growing Season so far.  Please join this fun thread if you would like and check out Amanda's beautiful and oh so inspiring garden, life and everything over at her blog, SouleMama.  But remember, just read a little and then, GO OUT AND LIVE LIFE!!!!!!!!!

Beauties that I got for Mother's Day to adorn my gardens and help the plants.  Companion gardening is a great way to fight off unwanted insects and other larger animals from you garden.  Here I have Marigolds, which keep the deer out, Calendula and Borage which help with tomato hornworms and other garden pests.  The borage also attracts thousands, I hope, of honeybees and I am all about that this season!

A second story window view of my veggie garden.  Each year it gets bigger and better :) The raised beds on the right are my cooler weather crops and my asparagus bed.  I experiment a lot here and sometimes grow things a little less familiar to me.

One of my raised beds where I grow, beets, spinach, Swiss chard, carrots, and garlic.  We will see how it all grows, carrots always give me trouble.  

Our asparagus bed which is now going to seed.  It's in it's 4th year and we were able to pick a lot this year.

Beets, carrots, spinach, Swiss chard and garlic grow at one end and at the other end is a variety of lettuces that we pick for salads.....Mesclun Mix, Arugula, Simpson, Red Leaf, varieties of Kale, Freckles and Romaine.  I also have Sunflowers planted in here to honor my mom, who i lost 2 1/2 years ago and love and miss so dearly.

A view of the garden where the magic happens.  This garden is 50ft. x 60ft. approx.  We plant our tomatoes, cukes, squash, onions, potatoes, peppers, beans, basil, parsley, cilantro, onions and many other herbs in here.

Nasturtiums that I panted from seed to grow in the veggie garden where we plant most of our veggies for eating and preserving.  We use the leaves and flowers in our salads.

Those little green things?  Those are potato plants bursting up out of the ground.

For Mother's Day, my youngest son Trevor helped me plant 43 tomato plants of different varieties.

Every year I try a different vegetable from the usual.  This year will be my first year to plant Kohlrabi.  The plant is beautiful when it is growing and I look forward to trying it out in my garden :)  Also trying a perennial vegetable called Mashua, a tuberous plant very similar to nasturtiums.

Close up of my beautiful Calendula.  So very pretty, bright and cheery.

Beans are breaking thru the soil.

 View of the garden from the far corner, looking up towards the house. We are enclosing the whole thing in fencing so that the chickens will stay out of it and we can expand a little more over time.

 As with most of what we do around here, post holes are dug the old fashion way, with a post hole digger.  Fun work indeed.

No, these aren't groundhog holes, just a few of the many that need to be dug.

So there you go, a little glimpse at what we have so far.  I will update once a week or so as things grow and progress.  Please feel free to join in and check out Amanda's blog for more links.
Happy gardening.