Updates

Featured Image: First Morning Glory of 2015, by Heather Lee

It’s time for a collection of updates that didn’t fit in elsewhere. What’s been going on?

Work
The new job is fun so far. I’ve been training for the first two weeks and am about to be turned loose on my own documents (yay). These things require a lot of attention to detail, but I feel like I’m picking it all up pretty quickly. Being an editor, rather than a writer/editor/designer/all-the-hats-wearer, feels good. Focus is lovely. Also, the people are nice and the office is generally quiet. I like it there.

The routine change has gone better than expected, too. Thanks to the practice waking up at 5:00 a.m., I haven’t had any trouble booting up in the morning. Brian gets up with me to make my coffee, keep me company, and see me off. He is a god. And I’ve been able to build housekeeping into my evening list of stuff to do; now I just need to get the exercise back in. Working in an office has zapped my step count (sorry, Fitbit).

Garden
We’ve had metric butt-ton of rain over the past few weeks. Our garden has responded accordingly and gone utterly gonzo. In addition to this year’s planned crop, we had some happy surprise reappearances from last year’s crowd. All of the dianthus overwintered and was still blooming in January. It never stopped and has been riotous since the temperatures rose.

Our little pink lemonade calibrachoa also made it through the winter and has been blooming since the beginning of April. So did our mountain phlox. I didn’t get a picture of it in bloom this cycle, but it’s still pretty.

We discovered the first of the happy surprises a few weeks ago while weeding the south bed. Four of our wax-leaf begonias were beginning to poke their way out of the mulch and are now blooming merrily.

And up front, completely unbeknownst to us, last year’s marigolds had re-seeded themselves. They started coming up a little after the begonias did and one is even forming a bloom.

The birds have even pitched in, planting an extensive sunflower patch where our strawberry bed used to be.

Hair
The hair is growing out surprisingly fast. It’s gone from crew cut to Grace Jones to Gozer, and it’s even easier to fix in the morning. I’m still thrilled with it being short, and it’s about reached the Carol length. More entertaining bedhead pics will appear soon.

All said, we’re doing well these days. The rain has stopped, my Firebird is almost completely fixed (future post on that soon), and the flowers are blooming. I’m happy as a grig. How are you guys doing? Anything special going on? Let us know in the comments!