Thank Heaven for Recurring Seasons

Another year, and...
what the heck happened to my plants?! Oh yeah. Life happened. Details? Well, I'm not going to bore you with a lot of them, but here are some highlights.

My last post was July 16, 2011. A couple weeks went by where things came up and I just pushed aside the blog. Then I received word that my grandfather was terminally ill. I live in Alabama, and he was in New Mexico. Some of my family had driven there, because they lived closer. I booked a flight, as did my sister. We flew into the same airport, shared a rental car and were able to spend a couple days with him in the nursing home. That was great, because when I first received the phone call, I was convinced that I wouldn't get to see him again. At least not in this life. I'm grateful I was able to tell him 'Goodbye' before he passed.

After that, work really picked up and we have spent the last several months working some long hard hours. It's been great, but hasn't left me much time to even think about blogging. Basically, that's because my priorities are ordered like this:

1. My family
2. My "day job"
3. My family
4. My church responsibilities
5. My family
6. Other stuff (which, for now, includes both gardening and blogging)

So, needless to say, all my "starts" have stopped. My herbs died. My tomatoes didn't die until it got really cold (we had a nice wet year, and they were outside... okay, they still ARE outside), but they stopped growing and never produced any fruit.

The result of my gardening experiment is a lesson reinforced... Don't start any type of a garden unless you are convinced of your ability and desire to care for it properly on a long-term basis!

2012 - Happy New Year!
As the title of this post suggests, I am looking forward to starting my garden anew. However, I will start earlier and plan it out better. I won't be doing a spur-of-the-moment job. However, I will still face the same problem I ran into last year. Namely, how am I going to make sure that whatever life throws at me doesn't become the death of my plants?

As of this writing, I don't have the answer, but I will spend some time this week thinking about it and let you know what I come up with.

Another obstacle I will have is that this year I am planning a few other projects that (at least for now) are completely unrelated to gardening. I hope to be blogging about those projects as well. So, if anyone can get me a Harry Potter-style "time turner" so I can be in two or more places at the same time, I'd sure appreciate it!

Well, that's it for now. Just thought I'd let everyone know what had happened. My goal for 2012: Blog weekly (beginning this Saturday, January 7th) and keep everyone informed of how things go. Thanks for reading!

 - Jim