Chris is on spring break next week. Not only is he off work for ten days, but when he returns, his student teacher takes over full-time for five weeks. Naturally, I plan on putting him to work, because I boss my husband around and brow-beat him into submission on a daily basis. Or he just wants to help me make our house nicer. In celebration, we are attempting long overdue home renovations and garden updates. In addition to at least one new double-dug bed and annual soil and compost hauling, we are planning on painting most of our interior, putting in new flooring in the living room, second bedroom, and hallway, and installing a new front door and storm door. I can see this ending in divorce, or at least a significant increase in passive-aggressive unhealthy behavior. We painted our house when we moved in (we weren’t down with the paisley trim in maroon and hunter green that came with the house), which was before we were even engaged, and it was, how do I put this…dysfunctional. I can only hope that if our marriage disintegrates due to a home-renovations domestic violence incident, that my paint-laden mug shot ends up on The Smoking Gun.

When summer comes, we’ll redo the entire bathroom and *fingerscrossed* get a new stove and new cabinets in the kitchen. My kitchen is ridiculous. Not only do we have an in-counter non-working trash compactor from the 90s that doesn’t work (which, incidentally, I think the trash compactor is the most unnecessary appliance ever created) but our cabinets are falling apart, our ceiling fan/light doesn’t work, and our stove is a crapshoot of temperature approximation. This makes baking really fun times. In any event, we need to class the joint up a bit, particularly if we ever plan to sell it, which we do, plus, hello, I need a functional, efficient kitchen to create my magic. Amiright? Perhaps I’ll be able to…wait for it…HAVE PEOPLE OVER FOR DINNER once I have working lights and floors not embedded with cat fur and stale beer.

When I left my job helping unqualified people become underwhelming teachers (I KID, at least five of them were competent. Ashley, you’re one of them), I went to work with a friend, helping her with the small business she owned. When I started working with her, we set a three-month trial period, at the end of which either of us could withdraw from the arrangement, no hard feelings.  Unfortunately, due to a really crappy economy, she really couldn’t afford to keep me after three and a half months, which I expected. Therefore, as of Friday, I have no substantive incoming coming in regularly.

Which kind of sucks.

The Good News:

I have a fallback: I can teach. However, one generally doesn’t find teaching jobs in February, at least not for current employment. If I decide to go back into the classroom, overwhelming odds are it won’t be until August.

I was reading about this new film Lemonade, about advertising professionals out of work due to the shiteous economy, and how many viewed unemployment as an opportunity to pursue real creative projects. And I thought to myself, I’ve many times dreamt about various aspirations that I continually postponed to “when I have time”.

And now I have time. It’s about all the currency I have right now.

I’m still in school; two classes this semester, as well as snail-like inching towards the start of my dissertation process. This will be my Project #1, my main focus. But in the last two months or so, several opportunities have kind of floated my way that are leading to me inevitably taking tangible steps to make some of my  until-now only hypothetical plans come to fruition.

First, my friends introduced me to their neighbor, who is also in education and was in the beginning stages of starting a charter school here in St Louis.  He and I met for coffee, talked shop, and I decided to join his small team of individuals committed to founding a college preparatory middle/high charter school here in South City. We’ve been busy thinking, planning, and writing applications for both grants and various steps of the approval process. In just a few weeks of work, I’ve already learned so much about how the charter school process works and exactly what goes into each aspect of starting an institution.

I have ideological issues with charter schools, namely that they take resources away from public schools and also allow public officials to ignore the desperate need for public school improvement in cities just like St Louis. Unfortunately, there seems to be no end in sight to the problems plaguing the SLPS, not to mention the fact that their elected board has no power, and kids need good schools now, so this is why I decided to become involved in the project. So, yeah, project #2: I’m starting a school.

I was also asked to join a young professionals (snort…see introductory paragraph where I lose main source of income) board for Safe Connections, an amazing, well-established non-profit here in St Louis that provides various programs and services about and for victims of domestic violence.  We’ll be having a few happy hour-type events here in St Louis and I’ll be blogging about those events, as well as the work Safe Connections does, in the near future. Project #3.

Finally, I recently became friends with a couple our age who’ve turned their modest home into a working farmstead, complete with crops, livestock, and bees, all less than three miles from our house. Because of our shared interest, Justin from Yellow Tree Farm and I have been plotting and scheming, and we’re collaborating on a new venture. We will be putting in kitchen gardens at a few restaurants around town. We’ve got a few people we’re already working with, and we’re in the midst of planting and planning. Truth be told, Justin knows so much more than me about growing food, so I’m over the moon about how much I can learn from working with him and being around what he and Danielle have already done. Chris is excited because I won’t try to get him to talk about seeds and garden planning all the time. Win for everyone. Project #4.

And, of course, I’ll still be working on the blogs and Novice Foodie.

So while I’ll be incredibly broke, I’ll be incredibly busy doing things I’m passionate about. I’m feeling pretty lucky.

Our expanded gardening was a success on many fronts.  I think, had I been at home over the summer like previous summers, we probably would have had even more success.  As it was, was took on a more laissez-faire approach to the garden.  We could have thinned, pruned, and weeded more.  As the outdoor growing season (for us) comes to a close, here’s a little recap and look forward to next year (Yes, I’m already planning for next year. I like to geek out with a seed catalog).  I would have taken pictures but it’s cold outside, kids, and I’m still in my sweatpants.

The Good

• Tomatoes. From the beginning, I knew that we would use more tomatoes than any other item we could grow, so I made sure to get a variety of seeds and transplant many more seedlings than I thought I would need.  During the height of summer, I felt like we had a better variety of tomatoes than you could buy at any farmers’ market (see photo).  We had  red cherry and grape tomatoes–the grape were our first to come in and we’re still getting a few.  In addition, we had giant orange beefsteak-types, green zebras, purple Russians, black tomatoes, and a few types of paste tomatoes.  I ate tomatoes in salads, on BLTs, in pasta, and raw with just salt and pepper all summer long.  I was able to put away several quarts of tomato sauce, which we will use all winter long on pizza, pasta, and soups.
• Tomatillos.  Good lord, we had a lot of tomatillos.  These things are prolific and hearty.  I’ve put away a few pints of salsa verde and will probably be able to put away a few more.  I will definitely grow these again.
• Cucumbers.  If I learned anything, it’s that I need only one cucumber plant to have more than what we need to eat.  I’ve got lots of pickles put away and we don’t really even like pickles.
• Lettuce.  How great is it to go out and pick your salad for dinner?  We never tired of a quick caesar salad with our summer dinners. The Rocky Top mix from Baker Creek seeds was easy to grow and delicious.  I’m going to try to grow a flat inside under lights over the winter.
• Carrots.  We grew a purple variety that were beautiful and delicious.  I’ll probably grow more next year, and I’m going to try to grow some in a cold frame over the winter.
• Herbs.  I froze more pesto than I think we can use, and parsley, too.  I also dried a ton of mint, which I am already drinking as a tea.  Mint basically grows like a weed; I grew mine from cuttings from a friend’s yard and it’s still going in a few spots.  I had one chamomile plant whose flowers I dried for tea; I’ll grow a few more next year.  We also had plenty of thyme and rosemary.  I’m trying to get some transplants going inside.

The So-So

• Our melons and squash didn’t work out so well.  We only had a few tiny melons, a few small-ish pumpkins, and one massive spaghetti squash that I thought was a watermelon.  Next year, I’ll start these earlier and I’ll need to pay much closer attention to the blossoms and how many are on each vine.
• Potatoes.  We got some potatoes from our tire-planter experiment, but we needed to be more vigilant in the maintenance of the adding of the tires to make it worthwhile.  We will do it again next year, but mind the plants better.
• Edamame.  These actually grew really well; we’ll just grow much more next year.
• Peppers.  Aside from one banana pepper plant and one jalapeno plant, I had trouble even getting pepper seeds to germinate.  Hotness FAIL.
• Spinach.  I’ll grow more and pay more attention to it next year.
• Sunberries.  I liked them, but they’re too small to do anything but eat them out of hand.
• Raspberries.  We actually still have some producing fruit; I ate a handful yesterday.

The Ugly

• Swiss chard and other greens. I think I had maybe two plants that produced anything.  I need to look into what I can do to make this more prolific.  I might do better at this if I had any skill at all at distinguishing between other greens and weeds.
• Garlic.  I totally fucked this up by trimming the plants too much.  Luckily, I went to a garlic-growing workshop at Schlafly and feel as though I can’t possibly not have a great harvest next summer.  If the sun would come out, I might be able to plant the seed bulbs I’ve collected.
• Strawberries.  I think these take up more space than they are worth.
• Broccoli.  Only one plant developed florets, and even that plant only produced a paltry amount.
• Eggplant.  Total failure.

Like I mentioned, we’re going to experiment with a cold frame and indoor growing over the winter–just lettuce, greens, peppers (which will probably not work) and carrots.  I need to spend some more time with my various vegetable gardening books to determine what exactly I could do better with certain plants.  What, me have problem with follow-through on a project?  No!  I’m not losing sleep over it.  We grew a ton of food, and I know I have to approach gardening with patience–it’s something you learn to do well over years.