Month: June 2014

Remember Dungeons and Dragons? When my big brother discovered it and taught it to me back in school, it was the best game ever. I’d liked rummy until I got too good at making my short-tempered little brother furious. I liked Trivial Pursuit but I could never win—I’d get all the pie pieces, then wander the board trying to get in the middle until someone passed me by to win. Monopoly always ended in my big brother owning EVERYTHING. Hey, if you had my brothers, you’d have a real problem with losing too. But D&D? We all played on the same team, working together to create something awesome—a campaign full of joy and anguish, excitement and satisfaction. It was like writing, only with people!

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This is an odd one because you’d typically think that there’s no fear involved in gratitude or a positive attitude, but I’m here to tell you that there is. If you have clinical depression.  If life always seems to kick you in the teeth.  There’s a real fear there that things won’t ever change, so why bother torturing yourself with good, positive, grateful thoughts?

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So last year I told you all about my adventures in starting my first real vegetable garden. This year? Not only are the vegetables back, but I’m madly researching flowers, shrubs, and trees. I have to admit I didn’t anticipate this when the subject of buying a house first came up between my life partner and me. At the time we were living in a generic high-rise apartment building. I envisioned purchasing a lovely old house with history and personality, with enough space for us each to claim a separate office room. Location was important. Public transit was important. A garden didn’t really enter into our priorities, or even our thoughts, beyond “oh yeah, we’ll have to mow our lawn.” We ended up with all those things, PLUS a large urban yard with nothing in it. 1250 square feet of fertile soil, almost twice the size of the one-bedroom apartment we’d lived in for years. Blank slate, wheeeeeee! Now, two years into home-ownership, we’ve become devoted plant-growers, enthusiastic and slightly less clueless than when we started. (Home-grown carrots? Best thing ever. Even when they’re shaped funny. Same for tomatoes, but I hadn’t realized how much I missed the taste of real carrots….) Honestly, I don’t quite know what hit me.

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