Basix by Staub Enameled Cast Iron Cookware

Do I really have to put a caption on this? :)

This isn't even one hundred foot gardening; it's more like 20 foot gardening. How's that for food miles?

(Actually the big on in the picture is the biggest one yet. And I'm planning to put them on my granola tomorrow morning for breakfast. There were four today--the biggest crop yet (second biggest was three)--but I ate one, of course.)

Last year I planted a dozen strawberry plants. Six in the front flowerbed, six in the back flowerbed. One in the front died almost immediately, thanks to my moles, and five in the back died due to drought. One in the back lived, and it's doing quite nicely, although it has no strawberries. The five remaining plants in the front are now about nine plants and counting, since they are sending runners everywhere. And I've been picking strawberries--one or two or three, and now four--for a week, almost every day.

It's garden browsing. A taste of this, a taste of that, a nibble of one thing, a bunch of another. Yum.


Also, I realized something today. We're being forced to work 8 hours every day, so that means no more 10 hour days and no more day off during the week. I liked the day off, but I hated the 10 hour days (my last one is tomorrow, since next week's a holiday weekend) and I never could decide which would be better. But now we have no choice, so I have decided to work 8am-4:30pm three weeks out of four, and 8am-5pm the fourth week (due to rotation coverage issues.)

Starting work at 8am means that I have all that time in the morning that I'm usually either commuting to work or already at work. And here's what I've decided to do:

I'll sleep in a bit and get up at 5:15am instead of 4:45am. That gives me two hours until I have to leave the house. It takes me an hour to get ready (due to the fact that I check my email, etc., in the mornings, not that it takes me that long to actually get ready to leave) so for that extra hour I'll have, Mabel and I will--weather permitting--take a nice walk around the block. Obviously that won't take the whole hour, but that's okay. Even a twenty minute walk will help both of us. A longer one will do more, of course, but I think just a nice walk around the block might be the ticket. Early morning's best for walking in the summertime anyway. And maybe we'll both lose some weight and I will strengthen my muscles a bit.

Part of my writing problem is worry, I think, because I've been a bit anxious about things that are happening economy-wise and work-wise, not that anything is more than rumor and probably nothing will happen anyway. But it worries me, because I'm the head of my household, and if something happens to my job, I'm sunk. I have nothing to fall back on, like a spouse's paycheck. It's just me. And I really don't like that feeling.

Once my sister and nephew move out, I'm really going to start with the auctions again. I need to build up my emergency fund and pay off a credit card, and then perhaps I'll feel a bit more secure. Either that or find a spouse, which isn't very likely. ;)