This Perfectly Imperfect Life

For more info and to join in: Grow Write Guild More catching up to do with my Grow Write Guild prompts! Then I will be up to date, though I've just learned that prompt #6 has been posted, so perhaps I will forever be playing catch up with these, as I usually feel in other areas of my life. But, I'm having so much fun writing because of the GWG prompts, I don't mind being behind with posting. Prompt #4: Write about your garden mentor or muse. Written May 13th: Welp, this is the first prompt I've had a little trouble with.  I didn't begin gardening until my 20s and I did so rather accidentally, out of the blue and on my own.  (Click here to learn more).  I've never given much thought to a mentor or muse before. The first place I turned to, the first place I turn to with anything, even now, is books.  I don't recall if I took many out of the library or not, but I did buy a lot of bargain/clearance gardening books at (the now defunct) Borders and B...

My gardening memoir column, Adventures In Gardening, is now known as The Portable Homestead!  For today's post, "Spring Cleaning Inside & Out," on Connect*Share*Grow, click here . You can find an Archive of all of my columns to date here on Diggin' Around by clicking here .

Happy Eve before Christmas Eve! I spent much of yesterday, the first full day of Winter, nursing an awful migraine and drinking copious cuppa's of tea while going between our bed & my favorite chair in the living room (where I can gaze upon all of the Christmas decorations).  But the day wasn't a loss: I posted my 24th Adventures In Gardening column on The#gardenchatBlog ! (Next Saturday is my first anniversary of writing my column for the blog!)  I also caught the first glorious moon-rise & sunset of Winter. This morning, after watching CBS News Sunday, a longtime Sunday morning tradition, we got out for a long walk at one of our favorite local parks.  I was resistant at first, wanting to stay snuggled in as the kitties were under the tree this morning. Feeling the cold air and hearing nothing but the wind, our feet on the ground and at times the river sloshing against the banks was exactly what I needed! Especially with this darn migrain...

For the latest edition of my gardening memoir column, Adventures In Gardening, on The#gardenchatBlog, click here .

Happy first day of Fall everyone!  My favorite, Favorite time of year is upon us and I couldn't be more excited. Even both of us being sick isn't dampening my spirits! (Pesky sinus infection & cold).  All week long I've been catching signs of the season, some of which I'm sharing here with you because they make me happy, and in honor of the day :o) Aren't they the cutest?! Faces only a (vintage) Halloween lover could love perhaps! Autumn sunsets are among my favorites Yes, we're still The Garden State, more visible at this time of year than others Now that's a whole lotta pumpkins! (They stretched outside the frame on both sides!) Speaking of Autumn, in other exciting (and somewhat unrelated yet related) news, after many, many (many!) years of writing, I * FINALLY * have an opening for a novel! A place for it to begin. (cue squeals, jumping up & down and excessive smiling) Whether or not it leads something entirely new ...

For newer friends who don't know: My parents divorced when I was 6 months old in 1976 and my father died before I turned 4 years old in 1979. To say he didn't treat my mother well is an epic understatement. To say he was abusive is an epic understatement. His 'tough' city fire fighter co-workers were afraid of him. He drank heavily, another epic understatement, from a very young age and, for all intensive purposes, drank himself to death. He had his first heart attack at the age of 36. He died shortly after his 3rd heart attack at the age of 44. It was a case of Doctor Jekyl and Mr. Hyde, but Mr. Hyde was in control more often than not, whether he was sober or not. And despite everything he did to her, had she known he was lying in a FL hospital bed dying, she would have gone to see him to say goodbye. But my grandparents didn't want her to know. That's another story for another time. Grandmother eventually told my mother his ashes had been scattered in...

Actually, this is about one of my favorite things in our home: the mantle. Many years ago, when I was a little girl and my hometown was still a wonderful community in which all of yours needs could be met without leaving its' one square mile, one of my mothers many purchases for us from the used furniture store down by the hospital on the river was this fireplace mantle.  Back then it was more off white than yellow and the barn red insert was a faux black & white marble.  It also came with one of those light-up electric log sets that had a tiny fan which blew strips of yellow, red & orange cellophane for that "cracking fire" affect.  I loved it!  I remember lying on the livingroom floor in front of it, in the dark, watching & listening to the "fire." Fast forward to 2004.  I'm 29 and Mom decided to get rid of the mantle.  She told me if we didn't pick it up by the end of that weekend, she'd take it apart and get rid of it herself.  ...

A week ago this past Friday, I stopped in Bog Lots with Mom.  I love browsing in that store! I don't always buy something, but I do more often than not. I think my original intention before we got there was to look for books (most are $2 & $3) but I'm easily distracted upon walking through those sliding glass doors!  I love Patriotic decor in our home from May through September 11th (some stays year round as it does in our northern home) and I immediately set out to get a closer look at what they had on display in the center of the store.  (Told ya, easily distracted!) Large glass candles for $8!  Now that caught my attention.  Sniffing candles is dangerous business for me - one bad sniff and I've got a migraine!  But that bright red one... "Apple Cobbler."  Hm...  I chose to live dangerously, pulled the lid off and took a tentative sniff. Instantly I was walking into my husband's family cabin again, in the summer, and greeted by the mu...

Finally! Accumulating snow arrived here on the coast in the wee hours of yesterday morning, but (isn't there always a but?!) unfortunately it turned to sleet the rest of the day and we've iced up something awful! (Temps are headed back up into the 50s early this week so we won't be frozen for long). Turned into a cozy day at home with the Hubbs filled with cooking & baking thanks to our well stocked pantry & freezer, writing my latest gardenchat column, reading for this week's evening bookclub, knitting with new yarn picked up this week, taking photos (of course) during a garden walk etc., dreaming of my garden in Spring thanks to stacks of gardening catalogs & dreaming of France again (because that just happens from time to time). One of those good days that helps you through the bad! Hope you've been enjoying your weekend too, no matter the weather, and enjoy the slideshow! (If the slideshow goes too quickly for you, you can click on it and this ...

A week ago today, Mom and I took a walk around the town we were both born & raised in. I've been battling an upper-respiratory infection for a couple of weeks and decided getting some fresh Autumn air would do me good, or if nothing else, get me out of the house for a bit. Why I wanted to take a walk around our hometown instead of where we're living, I don't know but I'm very glad I did. I wasn't surprised that it's changed. All places do with the passage of time and despite not having lived there since 1993, I did work in town off & on into 2003, and by then it had already changed a lot, but what a transformation it has apparently gone through in the last 8 years! Aside from my Church, grammar school and 2 shops, it literally doesn't resemble the place of my childhood & teen years, nor does it Feel like that place. As a matter of fact, I felt nothing as we walked! It's That different now. As you look at the buildings, their architecture and ...

To read my first (ever!) guest blog post entitled, "Sharing Through 'Chatting' & 'Walking' Leads To Community" on #gardenchat's new official blog, please click here .

Bitter cold, quiet, dark, beautiful, dangerous. Winter. Feeling even more appreciative of our warm home as an frigid air mass has settled over the region dropping our temps into the single digits (or just above) and wind chills well below zero. Our coldest temps since 2005 says the weatherman. I don't mind honestly. (And I know few feel as I do!) I'm enjoying being present in this Winter season and don't have the desire to look ahead for Spring. I'm happy where I am. While Hubby was out with one of the nephews, I spent a cozy day at home. I looked at one thing that needed to be done & did it instead of looking at All that needs to be done and getting overwhelmed so I purged and re-organized the kitchen cabinets this morning along with texting with two of my girlfriends. I accepted my limitations and went to rest on the couch early this afternoon. I had hoped to do a little reading (the novel is pictured above) but I didn't get very far before falling...

(non-fiction) We Have A Ghost And right now it likes to play with my slippers during the night. There can’t be any other explanation. I don’t sleep walk and my slippers aren’t in a spot where Hubby could accidentally kick them when he gets up in the middle of the night. They’re on my side of the bed. Where only I walk. (Or so I thought). It’s happened quite often over time but I never paid more attention to it than to “Huh!” to myself, get my slippers on and get going. Recently I’ve become more conscious of it though because it’s becoming a nuisance. I sit in bed and leave my slippers on the floor where I can just slip right into them when I have to get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom or “Shush!” a kitty crying at our bedroom door. Our floors are cold in the Winter thanks to the unfinished dirt basement we have below us (not a crawl space because I can stand up strait in it, Hubby though not so much but he’s 6’3”) and the bathroom...

I've been writing again in addition to journaling, thanks to bff G & I resuming our weekly writing exchange this month and my kicking my arse into gear with the private online writing group I moderate. (I can't tell you how good it feels to be writing again!) Here are two pieces from this week. Prompt (from private online writing group): Write a piece (fiction, non, poem, essay, etc) in which you use the following words: frozen, shaded, frustrated, feather, animated, distant. (fiction) The day after a snow storm usually consists of a brilliant blue and cloudless sky, wind and bitter cold temperatures, and abundant sunshine. Today was no exception. Sophie found herself shading her eyes against the glare with her hand when she looked out on the frozen lake. It, like everything else, was blanketed with fresh snow that had stopped in the early hours before dawn. She smiled when she saw prints in the snow going across the lake from their front yard where the boat and canoe w...

And has yet to leave. Rain and wind have joined in. ( Twin Lights of Navesink , Highlands, NJ) Fog drifted past our windows yesterday like thick, white billowing smoke from a fire coming to the end of its’ burn. I could see it rolling in, whiting out the hills, then the highway and then I couldn’t see out of the window to the sidewalk. Fog is an incredible mood-setter for me. It peaks my interest. Awakens my imagination. I could watch it for hours and not get bored. I’ve lived inland from here and mostly the fog seemed to hang low to the ground much of the time when we got it at all. Not here. Here it’s down low in the valley and up high in the hills. It swirls along the road and blanks out the horizon. And it’s foggy here nearly every day, at least in the early mornings. There is something very different about the fog on the coast (or in the mountains). It's unlike fog I've experienced elsewhere (except in the mountains). Mesmer...

Happy First of March everyone! For those of you counting down the days, Daylight Savings Time begins on March 14th, St. Patrick's Day is on March 17th and it's officially 19 days until Spring arrives on March 20th ! ( Brenda , that's for you!) It is a Gorgeous, albeit very gusty, morning here at the Jersey Coast, which leads me to wonder if that means March is coming in like a Lion (gusty winds) or like a Lamb (stunning blue skies & sun)? Perhaps both! At 9am this morning, it was 65 degrees in the sun on our patio! (38 degrees elsewhere). Windows are cracked open all over the house. Either way, faster than Spring will arrive, the Ides of March will be here; March 15th, the anniversary of Julius Caesar's murder. In Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar," Caesar was warned to "Beware the Ides of March". We all know how Brutus made that warning an omen. I've got some fun and not so fun things on today's to-do list like laundry, writin...

Sore muscles Cramped hands Chapped lips Windblown cheeks Knotted hair Sleepyheads Damp clothes Wet boots Broken shovels Tired snowblowers Joyful children Weary adults Stunning beauty

Written at 4:28pm It's been snowing about half an hour. Cardinals are out back, along with other dark brown House Wrens & Finches, eating up the seed which was replenished yesterday, their Red and Taupe bodies standing out against the tan frozen dirt now touched with white. Snowflakes are racing past the windows. Occasionally one hovers for a few moments to look in on us, as curious to catch a glimpse of our lives indoors as we are of it. The wind Roars, reminding of an angry ocean rolling in and crashing against the rocky shore during a storm. How Do the trees hold up against such force? The light is starting to turn blue, signaling the end of another Winter's day is fast approaching. Our first Sunday of this new year has come and gone. Where did this day find you?

What am I doing? WHAT AM I DOING?! I'm talking writing here. Why am I stalling? Why do I just keep dreaming instead of acting on those dreams? What's stopping me? WHY AM I STOPPING ME?! I'm actually scared. Apparently I can't just write whenever the hell I want to because I don't write often enough. And I suck with discipline. But I love to write. So where does this leave me? Changes and upheaval are abound. I feel myself heading into a tail spin. A bit of a crisis. An identity crisis? A writing crisis? More than one crisis is on the horizon here, I'm pretty sure of that much. And this whole Sister-in-law thing isn't helping me right now. Or is that why I'm feeling like this in the first place? I feel like I'm counting down my days until her arrival in the back of my mind. I was looking forward to going down to Philly for the day, because, as you all know by now that I love Philly and any excuse to get me down there. But now even that idea i...

Written 10/23/09 Nothing makes me think of Fall & the coming of cooler weather like the scent of woodsmoke in the air and the scent of cinnamon apple candles . As soon as I catch a whiff of either one, I think of the first time Hubby took me up to his family cabin in The Endless Mountains Region of North Eastern Pennsylvania. It was October 2004, the first weekend of the month and we headed up on Friday evening when he got home from work. I hadn't been away for a weekend in Years and I couldn't wait to get out into the country, especially after hearing so many of his tales. I was enthralled for the entire ride, through parts of NJ I'd never been to and into PA. It was all so pretty with the changing colors. On 81N the reds were just Popping out on either side of the highway. I had the feeling somewhere along the way that I was home. There's a wood burning stove in the cabin, the only heat source and so most of the time when we were there we had a fire going. (The ne...