Weekend training for weekday work schedule

Good morning world.  It is a cloudy morning with pleasant temperature.  The time is 08:37.  I enjoyed left-over Hawaiian pizza from Jiggy Rays in Elizabethton last night.  We shared an evening with dear friends, had pizza, salad and beer and then on to their house to play cards.  Balance of work and relaxation will continue to be very important after retirement. And the balance can be better achieved, I am certain.

So far this morning, I have mixed sugar water food for the bees, consisting of 1 gallon of water heated, and 1 gallon of white sugar.  This is now cooling on the stove.  I trimmed back a section of our run-away wisteria.  Makes me think of a silly movie from my childhood called The Triffids, about a plant that was taking over the world.  Also trimmed a section of the prolific ivy that grows up our pond side porch and threatens to encroach upon our deck.  Now I am headed out to weed another section of my upper garden bed.  If it does not rain, I will most likely spend a couple of hours on this project.

As I worked on pulling out the entanglement of roots from my soil, I began to be aware that my soil is beautiful, rich, and dark in color.  Once all surface spreading roots of mint and some other prevalent weed were removed my soil was soft and easy to work.  And I felt the satisfaction of this reward of nice soil from sporadic efforts I have made over the last thirty plus years to garden here. Some years I had added collections of fall leaves, pine needles, and manure shoveled from a neighbor's barn. Sometimes I added bags of dirt or mulch purchased from town and one time I bought a tandem load of mulch made from sludge which came from the Bristol Waste Water Plant where I worked as a Waste Water operator for almost 3 years.  Some of this wonderful mulch was added to my garden bed and happily, I still have a pile of that mulch available. I wonder if it is still rich eight years later and how I would determine the answer to that. The result of all that effort is that what was once hard red clay type dirt is now wonderful rich soil.  The new career on which I embark has been developing over many years.

  This is my soil today after I removed lots of weeds and their roots.  The stalks are asparagus.

 Here is the tangle of roots I am working on removing.  

 

The is where our big dog, a Great Pyrenes, dug our a place in the grass to lounge in and keep himself cool.  It is the type of hard clay my garden bed had when I first started to use it, 

I find as I work in at my gardening, my mind is busy enjoying thoughts of the so called past, present, and future.  I think about what I want to include in this blog. I think about why I write this blog and who I write it for.  Obviously, I write it for myself, but perhaps it evolves, I will have readers who share with whom I have common connections.  I think this blog really have two themes that intersect. One is  transitioning from "work" to "retirement".  The other is gardening, simply because it is a huge factor in my own transition.  It gives me purpose and glad anticipation.  I transforms the idea of retirement into the excitement of a new career, a new frontier.  There are most certainly as many ways to prepare for "retirement" as there are people who retire.  Sharing our experiences is uplifting and rewarding.  

Today I researched and printed articles about caring for peonies.  I then clipped the old peony stems and discarded them on my burn pile.  Google searches readily provide answers to probably any gardening question one could imagine, so I will not attempt to link to where I get my information.  I watched a couple of You Tube videos on the subject and found several printable articles.  Most of the information was the same from all sources and all of it was compatible making me feel confident I was getting pretty useful information about caring for what is already growing in my garden spaces. 

My weekend is waning and Monday morning will be here soon where I will go back to my day job for 13 more weeks consisting about 50 more work days.  My old career is waning and my new one has already captured my heart!  And by the way, I have already changed my mind and have made this blog public and available to searches.  

Practicing for and anticipating my new career

So here I am three months from retirement from my last job in the full time work department. Hurrah! I am finally old enough to collect Social Security, collect a pension from Tennessee Consolidated Retirement System and to be on Medicare. I am very grateful to the planners and politicians in government that have made these benefits available and will always champion the cause of the people to have benefits help facilitate personal growth and activity without undue worry about basic needs. I am sure there will be more on this later in my blog. But for now I begin with my heart's greatest retirement desire to pursue gardening year round with the leisure my retirement from work bestows on me at this time. I want to become a Master Gardener of sorts, and during the last few weekends, I have begun to practice in earnest the way my typical work day might proceed, starting in December of this year.

This morning I dug weeds out of my top garden bed where a few asparagus ferns are growing. I approached this task absent a hurried, frantic mentality with which I have been cursed in the past when working in the soil. I never felt like I had enough time to care for our beautiful land as I desired. Now with the promise of no more 40 hour work weeks, I find myself relaxed and happy just pulling weeds from a small section of garden. No deadlines to meet, no kids left to feed, etc. Just do what I see that attracts my love!

Note to any young person who may read this: Slow down and enjoy. Just embrace balance and don't do as I once did. I tried to do everything at once and always felt pulled in what felt like a hundred directions. I am sure that was not the case and that I just needed to lower my standards a little. But on the other hand, we do live in a culture that expects a great deal from each individual and that is often very judgmental about lots of things. I think women are especially vulnerable to trying to live up to many expectations at once.

Gardening notes:
I have weeded around my two pink peonies and around the asparagus in the top bed. Incidentally, I dug up a few crocus corms. I printed three articles from the internet: one about storing bulbs and corms; two about raising asparagus. I made files for these articles and started a Gardening Section in my file cabinet. I also started this blog which I will keep private until at least the end of 2015 to give myself a chance to establish the routine of my new career as caretaker and gardener of 135 Fiddlehead Lane, Hampton, TN. 37658.

Fiddlehead Farm Estates, LLC:
135 Fiddlehead Lane is a part of Fiddlehead Farm. This Farm consists of an LLC with members, plus four individual private properties of about seven acres each. The LLC manages approximately 56 acres which has been designated by the American Tree Farm System as a Certified Tree Farm. There is a whole history of The Fiddlehead Farm which began in 1980. Perhaps more on this later. Right now, suffice it to say that we (the members) were young when we purchased our property, we had houses to build, children to birth and raise, and livings to earn to support these projects. Always alive and well has been a dream of making something beautiful and productive out of our wonderful mountain property. It is a shared dream, now shared by at least 2 generations with a 3rd generation already living and playing here. It is a dream partially accomplished and ever beckoning for more. It is a dream which sparks our imaginations and drives us forward. We know it will never be totally achieved for it is really a journey which can inspire us for a life time and hopefully continue its shimmering call over multiple generations. I have enjoyed visiting Biltmore Estates over the past two years and derive inspiration from the survival of these Estates over several generations in one family, a family that has managed to find a balance of land management which nurtures not only the family and the environment but shares it grandeur with many visitors who enjoy its grace and charm. I think of our Fiddlehead Farm Estates, LLC as a mini-estate of a similar style. Of course, there are many differences. We are obviously much, much smaller and have far less financial resources. Instead of being owned by one family, we enjoy a unique shared ownership by four families of more than 30 years. I am very, very blessed to live here and possess good energy to embrace a new career t as a loving caretaker of our seven acres and 56 common acres of Tennessee Mountain paradise.


I decided just to let my garden spaces grow up in weeds this summer of 2015 and await my retirement to start enjoying my gardening in leisure.  So here are some before pictures I took today of a year of unattended garden spaces.  I picked some of our seedless grapes.  They were very small but tasty.  All of our native grapes just dried up as usual.  I will research that issue.