On a lighter note.

At some point during the winter season I start to get a little stir crazy. I grew up in the sunshine, and I haven't fully adapted to life in places that actually have winter. Thankfully, winter is much shorter and milder where I live now than in Boston, but it is still an actual season here (unlike Mesa). Things die. Lots of brown. Not the bright brown of Arizona, but the dead gray-brown of things that used to be green.

I'm starting to get the itch to see things fully alive again. When I was reading this book last fall (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver) I laughed out loud when I got to this passage, because this is me:

"I have seen women looking at jewelry ads with a misty eye and one hand resting on the heart, and I only know what they're feeling because that's how I read the seed catalogs in January."

I love to grow things. I wish my living setup right now was better for gardening. In the past I have made due:

(This is only part, and early in the summer. You should have seen the jungle on our deck in August.  And ask some of my old roommates about the baby tomato plants that started their lives under a desk lamp on top of the refrigerator. )

I think right now I'm just going to bide my time until I live somewhere different than my current apartment. Maybe in the meantime I'll order a seed catalog or two.