Pardon the Garden

Confessions of a lazy wannabe homesteader

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Rambling ahead.

September 6, 2015 Marie Leave a Comment

Here I sit on another Sunday. Another day wasted away at the computer. Working. And working. And some procrastinating. But, mostly, working.

Years and years ago I thought the internet was the Best Thing Ever. I loved working as a web designer. I loved going home to my very first apartment to sit on the internet more and chat with all my friends. I loved sitting there for hours on end listening to music and playing with different blog designs. It was the internet and it was full of possibilities and I couldn’t get enough of it.

But holy shit am I tired of it now. 8 hours a day, 4 days a week I spend at a job attached to a computer. If I’m not working on paying bills, or auditing something, I’m scanning and trolling the internet trying to make the hours go by faster. Going home isn’t the break you’d think, because home is really just the beginning of job #2, the design business, and that work needs done, too. And honestly, most nights I put it off. I come home, make dinner, play with my kid, and then sit on the couch with a beer and knitting, or I hide upstairs with my sewing machine. Which means weekends have to become work days. Might as well not even call it a weekend when you consider that the Mr is also working constantly on his laptop.

The internet used to be fun. Now I dread it. I dread the clickbait. The comments. The insane nutjob social media posts by people who clearly don’t understand how the world works or, at the very least, lack any kind of empathy to understand anyone outside of their own head. The hipsters who post photos up of their lives expecting us to believe they’re not meticulously crafting their image and that, yes, they really do hike to the top of Mt Whatever on a whim to have the most precious of picnics ever. Everything feels so fake, and it’s hard to determine anything that’s actually real anymore. Or at least it feels like that because there’s so much fake that gets more attention than the real – pretty much like the entire Republican party here in the US. There’s some real, reasonable ones I’m sure but they’re being drowned out by the idiots who are talking the loudest.

Anyway, I’m starting to ramble too much.

My point is… I don’t even know. That I’m tired of how much the Internet consumes my life, I guess?

I want a different life. I want the time and energy to focus on my garden. I don’t need a whole farm, though that would be lots of fun. I just want something else. Something more than hours and hours sitting at the computer. I want more baking, more crafting, more time traveling to meet internet friends in real life. More of a job that actually means something to me instead of just trying to get through my 8 hours and go home. I know, I know – there’s plenty of people out there who have done that. They’ve quit their jobs, bought their dream, etc. I don’t even begin to pretend to believe it’s all as shiny happy as they make it. You can voluntarily cut back on a lot of living expenses, and you can sell off a lot of your stuff, but that doesn’t mean you’ve magically found happiness or that what you tell the internet is actually real. For all we know, you could be eating out of a dumpster and begging friends to borrow their shower. I don’t want the drastic announcement that shocks the world around me and makes everyone what kind of drugs I’m on. I just want something more simple. To cut back on the bullshit, I guess, and get back to the dreams I had a few years ago. Before this baby came along, and with it the depression and the loneliness and the stress and lack of time. Back to my garden, my canning, my farm(ish) dreams.

 

 

Featured, Posts farm dreaming, less, Me

Goat! Reading! Purging! Oh my!

June 1, 2015 Marie Leave a Comment

goat-zoo

I can’t believe we’re in June already!

There’s not a lot to report around here. Friday the munchkin and I had a day out to the zoo with Nana which was very tiring for us all. He’s very much all about animals lately and wanting to pet everything – the dog, the neighbor’s sweet cat Callie (I need to get a picture of her, she’s seriously the prettiest), the wild bunnies in my parents’ yard when I drop him off in the mornings while I go to work, the the goats at the Zoo’s petting area… if it’s furry and moves, he wants to touch it.

The husband and I took some time Saturday to clean off the back patio and try to finish more of the garden. All the straw we lay down as mulch gets blown up onto our patio, making such a horrible mess. I’m not sure what a better option is – wood mulch is significantly pricier and lasts just about as long. Perhaps I’ll forever be sweeping straw off the patio? Anyway, it feels really great to have it cleaned off and now I can go back to using it in the evenings to knit, watch the birds, and have a beer. It’s something I’ve really missed this spring. Our clematis didn’t make it through the winter, along with several of our other flowers, so it’s not quite so cozy, but it’s home.

I downloaded Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things from my library’s online system and have been reading it every chance I get. I hate e-books, and very much prefer the real thing, but my local library didn’t have it available and I didn’t want to buy a book and bring something else into the house. It’s fascinating, mostly in that I can see a lot of myself in some of these chapters. I’m not nearly (ok, the husband would say not even close) to the level of hoarder, but I have a lot of tendencies to hold onto things longer than I need to and sometimes I find it impossible to part with things if there’s sentimental value. It’s interesting to see the feelings expressed by some of these people reflected in my own life. And it certainly has me thinking hard about my attachment to certain things and why I can’t seem to get rid of them. It has really helped me with learning to recognize why I’m holding onto something and then give myself enough of a push to just let it go.

I’ve been trying to keep track of my numbers of things I’ve removed (or have put in a pile to remove) from the house, and right now I’m over 100. I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep up my 5 things posts horribly long when I’ve got this kind of motivation to purge all at once. Though, to be fair, right now I’m getting rid of the “easy” stuff – the stuff that I’ve held onto for too long, the stuff I’ve decided I won’t use and – if I do need it later – I can re-buy. Once I get this initial clear-out done, though, it’ll be much harder and that’s when a whole lot more of the soul-searching comes in.

Featured, Posts less, out & about, spring

Weekending in Yellow Springs

September 23, 2013 Marie Leave a Comment

sunflower_cottage2 sunflower_cottage sunflower_cottage3 mitts happyfuzzyyarn danceswithwool ghp16 ghp1 ghp2 ghp3 ghp4 ghp5 ghp6 ghp7 ghp8 ghp9 ghp10 ghp11 ghp12 ghp13 ghp14 ghp15

 

Oh, how I do love that man I married! ♥ This weekend we celebrated our 6th anniversary and we spent our weekend in Yellow Springs. I have to admit, our weekend was less-than-stellar. And by that I mean that I was off-and-on sick all weekend. Bummer :( But it was still a weekend away, so I can’t complain too much!

Friday we checked into our rental, the Sunflower Cottage. It’s such an adorable little house and decorated in my favorite colors (my whole house is some combination of blue/green). There may have been a bit of day-dreaming about moving into a house exactly like it. I could just curl right up on that window seat on a rainy day and just read or knit the day away. I may also be drawn to how uncluttered the place is. Much like most cabins we’ve rented, the kitchen cabinets are lightly furnished, the refrigerator is empty for us, and the decor on the bookshelves is minimal. Coming from the chaos of my house (where I need to work on some serious organizing and de-cluttering), it was like a weekend in my dream home.

Saturday was Wool Gathering day, so we ventured north a bit to the dairy farm for yarn shopping. I only came home with one braid of roving, and two skeins of yarn. The roving is going to be spun up for a scarf for the Mr, and the two skeins were going to be gloves for my niece and nephew but now I’m not sure if I’m going to go through with it. Honestly, I wanted to shop for more. I had more money set aside than what I bought. I guess I just wasn’t feeling very… inspired? Don’t get me wrong, there were gorgeous yarns and fibers there. But nothing really jumped out at me screaming “BUY ME!” like yarn usually does. Oh well, I guess that’s what Etsy is for!

After Wool Gathering we stopped in town for food and then walked around the shops a bit. The shops were nice and fun to look through, but nothing there said “buy me” either. The downtown is beautiful, however, so it was a nice way to spend the afternoon.

Sunday found us up and out early, checking out the Glen Helen Nature Preserve. GHNP is home to the “yellow springs” for which the town got its name. The water coming out of the rock is beautifully clear and cold and tastes like well water (if you’ve never had well water then just imagine the taste of water with a very slight sulfur taste). It’s not the same as standing in front of the waterfalls at Hocking Hills, but it’s still lovely. And I still hold to my belief that nature is, to me, what religion/church is to others. As silly as it might sound, I wish I could have sat there for a bit by myself to close my eyes and just be.

So now we’re home and it’s time to ease back into the regular routine. I have a laundry list of things to do (including laundry, of course) so here’s hoping a weekend of relaxation results in a week of productivity.

Featured, Posts fall, knitting, less, nature, out & about, spinning, travels

Sublime socks for a Sunday

February 24, 2013 Marie 2 Comments

weepingangelsocks

 

Another project crossed off my list (read the background on my goal here). They would look far better if I had a set of sock blockers, but alas I have none. I would rarely use them, anyway, because generally any freshly-knit socks tend to go on my feet right away (this pair is no exception). The pattern is Weeping Angel, and the yarn is Classic Elite Alpaca Sox. The yarn is dreamy. I have a feeling that this pair is going to become my ‘special’ socks that I wear after a bad day. The kind of bad day that requires a hot bath with a glass of wine, and then snuggling into bed with a good book and these socks. They’re hand wash, anyway, so they’re just not going to get regular wear like my other pairs do that can go in the washer.

Posts knitting, less

Hooking it.

February 4, 2013 Marie Leave a Comment

Crochet PlacematI crocheted a thing! It was supposed to be the Purl Bee Granny Circle Placemat but… it came out much larger than expected. And that was with ending the cream portion early when I ran out of yarn – I can’t imagine how big this would have turned out if I had a 2nd ball of yarn to use. I have no idea what I’ll do with it. It was one of the projects on my list, though I believe I had intentions of making more than one. I’m not so inclined lately. But I’m happy to have one less project lingering around here.

 

Posts crochet, less

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