Growing season

Edmundo had been itching to create our own vegetable garden (despite the fact that we live on the second story of an apartment complex, and therefore have no yard).  He had decided that we could make a garden on our balcony.  So, to support another of Edmundo's half-crazy ideas, I found myself walking the aisles at Home Depot looking at a variety of seed packets to determine which were in season to plant.  I was very skeptical at first (which is probably an understatement), but, after a week’s time after buying seeds and planting them in the best organic potting soil money could buy, we had several babies in our living room.  Their little heads had popped out of the soil seemingly overnight, and were doing their morning stretch to the sky after a long hard sleep in their tiny sleeping bags.

Now we have given our children bigger shoes so their toes have plenty of room to grow.  Our cucumber is doing exceptionally well. We also have onions and parsley, basil and bell peppers, mesclun, rosemary, cucumber, and strawberries.  We even planted our garlic from the pantry after he’d sprouted a nice head of hair.  It’s fun watching them grow, and, of course, I make sure to talk to them every day so they get plenty of fresh air.  We are doing everything we can do to make sure they grow healthy and strong, but now I suppose it’s just a matter of thyme.

;)

Wedding Daze

It's only a couple of weeks into the new year, and looking back over all the things we've accomplished this year I feel a little sad and a little overwhelmed but exceptionally proud.  I can remember New Year's Eve last year in Mexico.  I was terribly ill with a throat infection.  Edmundo and I had gone to Amanda's wedding in Zacatecas and had just returned after touring Guanajuato.  I hadn't packed with the colder weather in mind, and by the time we got home I had contracted quite a cold.  It was right before New Year's so it was difficult to find a doctor, but when I was too sick to eat, Edmundo got worried, and we found a doctor who happened to live on our block.  Even after getting meds in my system, it still took some time to recover.  And though my memory is hazy, I do remember struggling to the foot of the stairs where I sat blanket wrapped to take part in the New Year's grape-eating countdown. 12-11-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1...and so the year began.

So much has passed since that night.  I had no idea what lay ahead of me as I sat sniffling on those stairs.  I would soon have my wisdom teeth removed.  Edmundo and I would move to the United States, get our civil union, drive to Boston, start a business, have our wedding, go to St. John and Puerto Rico for our honeymoon, get jobs, fly to Boston, move into an apartment, and start an entirely new style of life.  New years to me, is about looking at what was, and deciding how you can fix it into what you’d like to come.  But as I look back, I can’t help thinking that our year was everything that it could’ve ever been, and I can’t possibly begin to imagine how the year ahead of us could top it.  But maybe this means that the coming year will be one of rest and adjustment to one another; a nice year to prepare for the possible plus one of the year to follow.