another long absence

I’m sure you’ve all been dying to know what I’ve been doing for the last six months, so here’s the update. I left my job and start­ed my own firm, so that’s cool. I’m doing estate plan­ning, though right now, I’m doing pret­ty much any­thing. In Feb­ru­ary, I start­ed a bunch of seeds, and this year, I decid­ed to do bet­ter than last year, where all my seedlings either died or end­ed up real­ly leg­gy. I got a grow light and some heat­ing pads, and we set up a table in the base­ment as my grow sta­tion. I know what it sounds like, but I promise it’s legit. I’ve plant­ed 5 types of let­tuce, spinach (which did­n’t ger­mi­nate, odd­ly), 5 types of car­rots, kohlra­bi, arugu­la, lots of dif­fer­ent pep­per, dill, pars­ley, cilantro, basil (a bunch of dif­fer­ent kinds), mus­tard, chives, egg­plant (includ­ing an African vari­ety — yum), lots of toma­toes, thyme, lit­tle straw­ber­ries, cucum­ber, a few dif­fer­ent squash­es, and oth­er things. I’m SO excit­ed. Some of them have made it into the gar­den, but a lot of things are still wait­ing down­stairs. I’ve been sur­prised at how much water they need, but con­sid­er­ing the light and the heat­ing pads, I guess I should­n’t be. Out­side, every­thing seems to be doing real­ly well. Our grapes and (female) kiwi came back (we got a new male kiwi yes­ter­day), the agas­tache is real­ly hap­py, we’ve had aspara­gus, com­ing up, the rasp­ber­ries and blue­ber­ries are turn­ing into some­thing rec­og­niz­able, my herb box­es are doing well, and the straw­ber­ry patch is bloom­ing. We built anoth­er raised bed and plant­ed a bunch of flow­ers in it. I think Carl is going to build me a basil box to add on to the raised bed. That will be excit­ing.

I’ve been bak­ing quite a bit as well. I made egg­plant parme­san a few weeks ago, which was deli­cious. And I still make my sour­dough bread about once every oth­er week. I’ve pro­gressed to adding rose­mary and olive oil or cheese to it. I want to try adding lemon thyme to it as well. I think I’m going to make a dou­ble choco­late crumb cake this week, so I’ll keep you all updat­ed.

I have the best hus­band ever, the dogs are great, and I have inde­pen­dence in my career. Things are going well!