The sticks are my temporary markers for where I planted garlic. The plan is that I'll have tomatoes inbetween each row of garlic. So far I have four varieties of tomato seeds and I think I'll keep it a that...unless I plant a cherry tomato. I have a beautiful deep red basic tomato, a green tomato, a zebra tomato and a fuzzy peach tomato. See, here's a basic problem I have - starting out with pictures of the alfalfa I'm now talking about tomato seeds. And speaking of ADD, I need to order some more krill oil.
I was reading about some pragmatic and inspired ways to be more productive and less distracted on a site called zen habits (www.zenhabits.net). The ideas I've taken away so far are instilling a morning routine and cutting down to the three essential things you need to do each day (plus one more thing that's related to achieving your goals). I'm also paying attention to all the little things that get in the way of me being effective. This requires the ubiquitous skill of mindfulness, something I've been teaching for years and still learning for years. So in the past 24 hours I've realized that the following things get in my way: there is not a place for everything in the kitchen so it's awfully hard to put away dishes when you don't know where they should go which in turn gets in the way of actually doing the dishes; when I walk around the house on hardwood floors in my socks, I slide around enough that it's uncomfortable and affects my knees and perhaps I should invest in some socks with grips on the bottom because otherwise I find myself reluctant to walk around; trying to remember my morning routine from memory takes time and brainpower I don't have at 7 am, so I wrote it down and taped it to the wall near my bed.
Thanks to zen habits, I rewrote my goals yesterday. Not in a detailed way...yet...but I jotted down the ones I could think of. In no particular order, they include Home (organized, peaceful, light, clean and attractive); Food (eating organic, producing at home, garden); Family (time spent nurturing each relationship, looking into adoption); Work (improving my skills, perhaps ABPP certification); Health (increasing energy and fitness); Finances (ha ha ha); and Not Ignoring Talents (music and writing for instance). I haven't worked backward from each goal, heck I haven't even done a good job of specifying the outcomes! But it's a start. Just like my garden. I'm preparing my own ground and with that I'll stop beating the analogy.
So today the goal-related task I have in front of me is to figure out where to plant the zillion too many fruit bushes I ordered. Here are pictures of the various areas around the house that all need (desperately) improving. Above is the front of the house, forsythia bush on the left. I need something in front that works well in shade and I don't know what yet. Suggestions??
See that little slice of sunshine at the edge? I'm thinking a currant bush can go there and still get enough sun. I think that any further in is too much shade.
Moving right along, here's a beautiful (not) bit of what is supposed to be a two-level planting bed that's under the (dying) maple tree in the backyard. Hmm. Can't even see the retaining wall under all the mishmash.
And a shot of what's to the left of the house. Garden, pear tree, overgrown apple tree, forsythia beyond that. Perhaps I'll take out some of the forsythia hedge and put in highbush cranberries. Perhaps I don't know. Either way, I have to figure out where to put a white imperial currant bush because it's sitting in a cardboard box on my back porch!
