Life that felt like it was going at breakneck speed has suddenly slowed to a more familiar and comfortable trot. I believe I like this. I left my job at the Department of Social Services and retired with the intent of starting my next career as a writer. I thought I would race right into it, but have found that I need to find a pace that suits me.
As a new blogger, I’ve been studying what I should do—how to approach this whole new arena. Two people who seem to really have some good things to say are Carol Tice and Linda Formicelli. I’ve been listening in on phone calls that they make available occasionally. They also offer webinars. They focus on freelancing for magazines and being reporters, finding a niche. If you blog, they say, write about your passion.
The problem with passions is what do you do if you have more than one and you hope to get people to follow you on facebook and on your website blog? A huge passion and I don’t mean just interest, for me is writing, but not necessarily writing about writing. So I’m going to write about the things, the passions, that fill my well so that I feel like writing.
I planted seeds this spring—flowers and vegetables both. Once I had them started they became like babies for me. I watched them push out of the soil, I checked to keep them properly moist, I turned my planters so they would get even sunlight, and when it was warm enough took them out for their daily outing. I couldn’t leave them to go on vacation, not even when I retired from my day job. I wanted to go to Ohio to visit family, but I had to get my growing plants into the ground before I could even think of leaving them. Because I had so many baby plants, I filled a huge garden with them, not wanting any to die without the proper chance to thrive. My homegrown annuals have been interspersed in my perennial beds, and along with a few newly started perennials. I probably have three dozen peppers, four of celery, four to five dozen tomatoes, more than that of a mix of cabbage, broccoli and Brussel sprouts, a row of onions and leeks, and two rows from sets. Oh yes, I bought one half dozen eggplants. The rest of my vegetable garden are seeds planted directly into the garden. These direct seeded plants include lettuce, peas, bush beans, beets, swiss chard, corn planted in a more or less Three Sisters style, with pole beans and squashes and pumpkins.
As soon as I anticipated all this would be finished, then we scheduled a train trip to Toledo, Ohio, for a ten-day family visit. I thought my seedlings would emerge and perhaps the weeds would not have overtaken the garden. The seeds emerged, the transplanted plants took hold, but so did the weeds in this wetter than usual year. Lawn grass was exceedingly high.
But somewhat to my surprise, as we drove into the driveway on our return, three woodchucks dispersed in three different directions, the biggest one going into our woodpile where they had apparently taken up residence. No one was there to disturb them for a few days so it looked inviting and so did my garden apparently. Somebody had been enjoying munching on the cabbages, broccoli, and Brussel sprouts primarily. However, the corn had proven tempting as well. I can’t say who was enjoying the meals the most, the woodchucks or the deer who had been leaving their share of tracks throughout the garden space. All our cherries had been eaten by the birds before they even ripened so we had not even one cherry to eat ourselves.
Since our return, and after a liberal spreading of Irish Spring soap about the area, I’m not seeing new deer tracks, nor newly eaten sections. But the weeds! Three hours daily of hoeing and weed pulling daily are barely making a dent. So why do I do this! Only passion can explain.