Sowing, Sewing, and So-Soing

   This past week has been light on writing but packed with happy activity. It feels like a prelude for good things to come, with the first true days of spring so near us and really so many beautiful blessings to enjoy until then. 

   I have spent some time transplanting four ridiculously early and equally thrilling tomato plants gifted to me from my incredibly funny Grandpa Rex. Those are worth talking about. For starters, one of the varieties is "Mortgage Lifter" because the man who originally grew and sold these produced enough to pay off his house! Awesome. I've sprouted lettuces, basil, allysum, and cosmos flowers. I've collected manure for friends and family and have made some progress filling my own raised beds. I have been eating fresh eggs a lot and washing them down with orange juice, all the while watching our 2012 egg count rise steadily. Last Sunday we had enough big, colorful eggs in the fridge to share a dozen each with three different families, and still our own shelves are overflowing. This is how I envision our vegetable and herb production going this year, too. Think positively with me, friends!

   Clean for approximately seven and a half hours one day this past month, on a day when I anticipated a crafty guest, my sewing room has been warmed up with activity, too. I've cranked out a handful of cute cottony things and have been mostly successful in not starting too many new projects before finishing others. That is a challenge. Sketching and combining fabrics is easy; pushing all the way to the hemming and thread knotting is the mark of industry. Like, seriously. Especially on these blessedly cold, rainy days we've been enjoying.

   Speaking of rain, what a gift! There's just no underestimating how good this is. More on that tomorrow.

   This week, thanks to a brief escape with Handsome, I was lucky to have several extra hours set aside just for reading, and read I did. Thanks to my casual education from reading, if all goes as planned and imagined, this year will bring us healthier diets, a more localized take on food ecnomony, and stronger ties to our community via small production farming. This three day weekend, I am starting bean sprouts and homemade cheese and bread.

   As for the so-soing, well, all of these worthwhile jobs, hobbies, and seasonal goings-on have pushed me to the edge of my fitness wagon if not completely off of it. It's partly a matter of inertia, just settling for quick energy at the end of an extremely busy day, but the not working out is a time management mistake. So hopefully I have caught myself before slipping too far backwards. 

   Right now Handsome and I are luxuriating in one of the sweetest, happiest Saturdays in recent memory. The perfect mix of productivity, rest, and affection. Tonight we have plans to watch an OKC Barons hockey game with two other couples, so I'm hoping for big ice fights!! I don't know what the rest of our long weekend holds yet, but it is a welcome pause in a heavy month. Next week and the week after will be at least as busy as the last two, packed with business travel and an overloaded office schedule, house guests, book club, horse training, snow pea and carrot planting, and a bloggers' conference, so we're really carpe-ing our diem.

   I am so thankful for my husband, for our life together, for his job and his success there. I am so thankful for my children, for their health and beauty and love. Even if they aren't here in this house right now, I feel them and hope desperately that they feel me. I am so thankful for our parents, our friends, our community. This might be the loveliest life a woman has ever lived.

"My actions are my only true belongings."

I stole that from a fellow Oklahoma blogger,

her name is Lisa, and she was quoting Thich Nhat Hanh.

He's a Vietnamese Buddhist monk.

XOXOXO