My apologies for anyone reading this, but this isn't exactly about gardening per se. More of a reflection. If you're not interested, I don't blame you. I promise this sort of thing won't become a habit in the blog.
I find myself up having been up for a little over an hour after feeding The Girl and watching a show on Netflix that's new to me (Alaska: The Last Frontier). I guess it's the presentation of the homesteading family and, maybe, sleep deprivation that has me thinking a bit inward now.
I was fortunate that I received a few gifts from my wife, a good friend, and my inlaws (another gathering with my parents is still to come). Receipt of gifts was certainly not necessary, but reflecting on what people provided and what they thought I'd like and could use has changed through the years. It both is an indicator that these dear people are attentive to what makes me tick, but also that my tastes have changed as I've aged.
I'm not entirely sure what it means. Ordinarily, I'd label it "maturity" but anyone who's known me for a while would scoff at that notion. Regardless, there's something there that's more.....earthy. In the last few years coinciding with my growing interest in gardening, I've leaned more and more toward trying to simplify my life and that of my family.
Even a few years ago, I was still playing video games with regularity. That's pretty much gone now. My old Mustang is gone now, replaced with my grandfather's Shopsmith which has seen more use in the last few months than the Mustang saw in a number of years combined. I'm much more excited these days about trying to build fires with minimal materials as I once did in my Wilderness Survival Merit Badge coursework in Scouts.
The gifts.
- My friend gave me a package of goji berries. She and I have a common interest in gardening. A recent topic of conversation was my intent to try to grow goji berries this year. Having never had any, she brought a few in to work last week. A gift was even more. Wonderful and I'm happy to report that The Boy loves them!
- My son - what a wonderful boy he is - told his mother that he wanted to get me peat pots. Boy did they ever! I opened a large cardboard box to find three sizes of pots ordered from online just for seed starting. Good thing, too, since our seeds should be arriving from Southern Exposure in another few days.
- Wifey got me a few shirts because, well, I work and need nice shirts for work. Somebody else must be wearing my shirts and getting stains on them..... She also got me a pocket hole jig that I had been eyeing. Should be useful as I gradually experiment with furniture building.
- Lastly and still quite notably, my inlaws provided me with a very nifty gadget/axe called The Chopper. Had I never used one, I would have scoffed and called it gimmicky. Well, I found myself splitting wood on Christmas this year and the wood exploded off the side of this thing like I've never seen before. Simply amazing.
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