A new sun rises

It's January, 2008, and I'm not sure I'm ready. It's cold outside, and the rainy season is finally kicking in with full force. It's great for my watering schedule, but terrible for the weeds. It's also nice to sit inside and listen to the rain with a nice bowl of soup - winter cooking and baking bread are favorites this time of year.

The garden is doing well. Today I harvested a bag of lettuce, a huge head of broccoli, a rather sad little head of cauliflower, and some turnips. The second batch of turnips I planted is coming along, and the beets finally seem to be doing something as well. It looks like it will be a while before we really have spinach, carrots or leeks, but the red cabbage heads are getting a bit bigger. I'm looking forward to cooking and eating those. I also planted some last-minute broccoli and kale before a few big storms start sweeping through tomorrow.

Cooking has been a bit spotty lately. Some nights I cook up some wonderful dishes and we experiment, other nights we have salad, cheese, and bread. Our local Co-op is undergoing a renovation, which is wonderful in terms of the new varieties of cheese and various other products that are available. I suppose like everything in life, though, it will take some getting used to.

Since we have so many rainy days to come, I have to think of things to do to keep myself from being frustrated by not being in the garden. One thing I've been planning is to make a quilt out of my old college T-shirts. I also have to clean out some closets and make some tough decisions on what to do with some things that I've been putting off for a while. There's my old KitchenAid mixer sitting in a box, in desperate need of repair. And it's taking up a lot of space, too!

In short, I'm trying to look at this time as a way of working on the inside things. The inside of my closets, the inside of my house, and perhaps the inside of myself. I'd like to spend some time writing, some time sitting by the fire with some art or craft, some time standing over a warm stove stirring something that takes a while to cook, and some time nurturing a slow-rising loaf of bread. And in general, as perhaps my most important resolution of the new year, now that the sun has reached its lowest point and the days will gradually start growing longer, I'd like to spend less time in front of the computer as a virtual me and start spending more time as the real me. I guess we'll see how it goes.

And yes, the title comes from LOTR.