Fork in the Road

"Approaching midnight here in Alabama and wondering with all of the great traditions of the South, what has become of the family Bible." tweet by drewrobinsonIII

I don't know Drew and have nothing to say about the above quotation, I just saw it and liked it. Perhaps because in my family we still have those enormous family bibles that include births, deaths, christenings as well as the Old & New Testaments. My brother has the one from my mom's side and my cousin has the one from my dad's.

Well, maybe there is a connection to my recent thoughts. I'm applying for jobs that would take me away from my family here in Florida and back to North Carolina and that is really making me think. It's a bit agonizing. Thinking, I mean, deciding on a new job/career path. I feel like I've been living in limbo for several years, decades because I'm not fully settled one place or another. One of the reasons I bought 'my little green acres' was because I wanted to be rooted in North Carolina. But really, for me, being rooted is completely dependent on economics.

So, all that to note that I've been doing a lot of deliberative thinking this week. I assume it's a by-product of walking to and from work. No ipod--need to hear people or cars approaching, so just me, walking with my thoughts. Walking to work has been really good, except that I can't do it on days when it's pouring rain in the morning. This week that was 2 days.



But with all the uncertainties my micro garden is growing, not dying. I have teeny tiny baby cucumbers forming and some teeny tiny baby yellow crook neck squash forming too. The bought tomato plants in the big pot have over two dozen (!) tomatoes on them. I picked off several tomato hornworms this week. They were munching up the leaves and taking bites out of some of the green tomatoes. And the borlotto bean pods are looking like borlotto bean pods. The broad beans are history but I'm leaving them in hoping the bad bugs will knaw on them instead of some of my growing plants.



To my cousin's great confusion, I've been saving small yogurt containers, lots of them. Cut holes in the bottom and they are great seed starter pots. It has occurred to me that the best gardening is recycling, re-using & cooperative. Even though I bought it, the mushroom compost I'm using in the big pots is re-purposed soil originally used to grow mushrooms. My neighbor brought me some old metal trellis things that she no longer needs. I'm using them for some of the bean plants and the cucumbers. On another day, her husband helped me to cut up some wood I'd gotten from a dumpster. I'm going to use that wood to brace the legs of the growing table.
And of course, there's the compost.
Recycle. Re-use. Regenerate.