I just wrote this long random post, looked back into the archives to see when I planted my tomatoes last year, and realized that it was my blogiversary. How about that! I won’t try to do a retrospective. I’m looking toward the future right now.

Last night I looked at the found object jewelry/sculpture class that I signed up for at Art and Soul, and I changed my mind. It looked totally fascinating, BUT I registered for it when I still thought that I was going to be making paper and books in Italy, and when I hoped that one of the three collage/paper/multimedia workshops I signed up for in Greensboro would make. None of this things panned out, and I realized, damn, I still want to take a class in multimedia techniques and bookmaking, and I’m having a hard time getting excited about making jewelry again right now. So I changed my classes. In that two-day class’s place I’ll take two one-day classes - one in book making, and one in fabric collage techniques. I figure that I’ll learn a lot of new things in the first two classes (the first is carving stamps) and the third will be more familiar and relaxing, and I can use all three classes in my plans to make books and art journals and whatever. I need some focus and putting some limits on my direction will help me. Flying out in all directions is great for some people, but it overwhelms me.

I just wish that there were some book art classes nearby. But it’s kind of nice not to be tied down to a regular time every week. Other than work.

I received an interesting phone call today. Looks like a reporter for the News and Record is going to interview me again - a different reporter who wants to focus on somebody who is on a journey of “going green.” The other article, almost two years ago, focused on the Eat Local Challenge and being a locavore. It didn’t directly address the ecological aspects of what I’m trying to do. So this one will probably focus more on the sustainable lifestyle changes that we have made and since it will be in June instead of next week, thank God, I’ll have the garden going and we can talk about composting, rain barrels, organic methods, recycling cardboard and newspaper as mulch, earthworms and beneficial insects and such. I will try to get in there my efforts to reuse before recycling or buying, and to consider the impact and sources of the stuff that we do buy. I think that it will be a much more interesting article, at least for me! Maybe by that time we’ll have a new fuel-efficient car.

The interview was originally going to be tomorrow, and this house is a wreck, as usual, and one night would not have been enough for me to make it acceptable for company. The thought of what might have been did shame me into cleaning the toilet and washing the dishes. I had to spend some time in the Back Forty putting plastic sheeting over the row tunnels. It’s very windy and the lows are supposed to be in the low 20s tonight. Those little seedlings may have been okay, but why take a chance?

I’ve decided to wait until March 8 to plant my tomatoes. That will be the day after the new moon. My tomato seedlings always get way too big before it’s warm enough to plant them outside. I’m trying to stop making the same mistakes over and over. Last year I planted them (inside) on Feb. 8. Sometimes restraint is needed in gardening.