And so it continues. Dawn -- up to release the chickens and clean the coop...
(good morning, Scotch!)
... then breakfast.
(zebra stripes!)
I feel like an entrenched farmer. The routines cannot vary. So long as there are chickens at the farmette, they must be tended in this way.
To some, it may seem like a brutal imposition. But of course, if you have a dog, you must walk her. Clean up after her. Feed her. Play with her. Chickens require less of you, but it is imperative that you are there to release them and lock them up again. Small jobs, but jobs they are.
(Oreo, doing his cockadoodledoo)
As Ed continues to work on the poor old disabled Zero-turn mower, I return to the raspberry patch. You will hear a lot of this: work on the raspberry patch. It's probably our biggest project. We've been at it for more than a year and it still has many many weeks of digging, weeding, ripping, chipping to go. The hope is that it wont be a terribly high maintenance area once we have finished our work there.
(the hens in their afternoon snooze mode)
There are, each day, new items that we squeeze in between the big projects: yesterday I sowed the arugula and endive beds. Today we planned the new asparagus patch and began work there. Every day is like this and I have to warn you that we haven't even hit May yet which, for me, is the most intense gardening month of the year.
So what about my writing? Is it on hold?
Not exactly. The beauty of outdoor work is that clears the mind and it requires little effort to come in, sit down and do a review or addition to an ongoing project (for example The Book). Teaching left me depleted at the end of the day. Outdoor work frees my thoughts and dehumidifies my mind. It's very (intellectually) refreshing.
Still, I am a bit stalled on The Book, as I have an interim writing project before me (more on that in mid-May) and so most often I take that out and spend some time musing over the direction it should take.
It's all very leisurely and stress-free and this, of course, is the most beautiful part of retirement. The world around me is a very calm place indeed.
Calm, but not without excitement. Of the type where the chickens have learned to fly out of the pen, for example. But that's tomorrow's issue. Today, as the rain clouds drift in, the world is a quiet place.
(good morning, Scotch!)
... then breakfast.
(zebra stripes!)
I feel like an entrenched farmer. The routines cannot vary. So long as there are chickens at the farmette, they must be tended in this way.
To some, it may seem like a brutal imposition. But of course, if you have a dog, you must walk her. Clean up after her. Feed her. Play with her. Chickens require less of you, but it is imperative that you are there to release them and lock them up again. Small jobs, but jobs they are.
(Oreo, doing his cockadoodledoo)
As Ed continues to work on the poor old disabled Zero-turn mower, I return to the raspberry patch. You will hear a lot of this: work on the raspberry patch. It's probably our biggest project. We've been at it for more than a year and it still has many many weeks of digging, weeding, ripping, chipping to go. The hope is that it wont be a terribly high maintenance area once we have finished our work there.
(the hens in their afternoon snooze mode)
There are, each day, new items that we squeeze in between the big projects: yesterday I sowed the arugula and endive beds. Today we planned the new asparagus patch and began work there. Every day is like this and I have to warn you that we haven't even hit May yet which, for me, is the most intense gardening month of the year.
So what about my writing? Is it on hold?
Not exactly. The beauty of outdoor work is that clears the mind and it requires little effort to come in, sit down and do a review or addition to an ongoing project (for example The Book). Teaching left me depleted at the end of the day. Outdoor work frees my thoughts and dehumidifies my mind. It's very (intellectually) refreshing.
Still, I am a bit stalled on The Book, as I have an interim writing project before me (more on that in mid-May) and so most often I take that out and spend some time musing over the direction it should take.
It's all very leisurely and stress-free and this, of course, is the most beautiful part of retirement. The world around me is a very calm place indeed.
Calm, but not without excitement. Of the type where the chickens have learned to fly out of the pen, for example. But that's tomorrow's issue. Today, as the rain clouds drift in, the world is a quiet place.
