Happiness is the Sound of Buzzing Bees

There were at least half a dozen "potato pollinators" in these lupins when I took this picture last night. So that's good news because we love bumblebees. 

The gardens are planted which means we're into evening watering now, and the black flies are vicious this year. I'm afraid to see how big the mosquitoes are! But we're really windy this year so I'm not sure how my raised beds are going to fare; they get lots of sun but it turns out, I forgot to account for the wind tunnel that is our backyard. Fourteen years and I still don't have the hang of this gardening thing. Oh, well, as long as the salsa garden produces the ingredients to make salsa, I can live without the lettuce. 

It's been awhile since I've posted here because since June 2, I've been working full-time providing literacy support to students in Grades Primary through Three. What a great job, although when one of your three part-time job suddenly goes to part-time hours, there's a lot of juggling that happens. My brain has to operate in three different ways. 

Added onto that is editing essays for the book coming out next April, keeping up with my Thanatology course, and planting gardens -- it's been a really busy spring. 

What bothered me most about the past three weeks was that my creative juices dried up. I've been writing poetry this year and I wrote only one poem in all that time, and it was a way of dealing with a friend's family tragedy -- I couldn't have not written that poem if I'd tried. 

So that teaching job has wrapped up and my church work is down to two Sundays -- and now I'm anticipating my summer off. I know the two months of summer will fly by and I won't feel like I'm getting anything done but the plan is for writing, weeding, and reading. I don't want to touch any of my non-fiction books; I just want to enjoy fiction, fiction, fiction for two months. 

Fiction and flowers. 

Bee balm and bumblebees.

My chair in the gazebo. 

Strawberry jam and salsa. 

The perfect plan for summer in Nova Scotia.