Tuesday, May 10, 2011

For Maddie- My Newest Blog

I have just created a new blog entitled For Maddie. This blog is for my 3 year and 9 month old grand-daughter. Some of you may be interested in checking it out. I am not allowing comments on For Maddie, but encourage you to make comments about it on this blog. I will let you know when I publish a new post.

My first post is about the plants and flowers that I recently planted. This is my first foray into gardening. It began with boredom. I had accompanied my daughter, Rachael, and her significant other, James, on a trip to Costco. As it turned out, this was an unwise decision; they took f-o-r-e-v-e-r with their shopping. I started wandering around the store by myself. For a while I entertained myself by snarfing up the goodies from the food samples until awkwardness set in after I'd accepted the "hospitality" from the same people after the second or third time. Then I checked out the books for sale until I tired of that. Ditto playing with my iPhone. As time lay heavily on me along with the claustrophobic feeling of being trapped in the wide wide world of Costco, the gardening supplies caught my eye. I ended up purchasing a couple trays of flowers and two bags of bulbs, each bag with 24 bulbs each. I planted the flowers about a week later; after that, a purchase of veggies seemed fitting. Today, I finished planting veggies. The bulbs, all 48 of them, are still in their bags. I intend to plant them in the next five or seven days.

It occurs to me that my emergence as a gardener parallels my entrance into the world of technology. A year ago, I only had a stupid phone. Shortly before my trip with Rachael to China last August, I purchased a Kindle. That ignited my interest (and yes my bravery) to decide to order an iPhone and a portable Bose speaker. At Christmas, about four months later, I acquired a GPS; a couple of months ago, an iPad.

Until these purchases, technological purchases were Matt's purview. I had no interest in acquiring any of the constantly improved offerings of the techno geniuses; if anything, I preferred remaining with the comfortable stuff that I'd finally learned to use. The exception was that I knew I wanted to get a Kindle after Matt's an my trip to Spain in April 2006. With my purchase of one last June or July, I exited the cave where I'd felt (relatively) safe. I was on the path of the New and the Exciting.


This is the link to my newest blog, For Maddie. It's spare on words and rich in pictures. It's written for a (highly cute) preschooler.

7 comments:

Kathy said...

Gardening in California must be such a joy. Here in Indiana, the Spring weather is so enticing that we go out and buy plants and assure ourselves that this year we will still be glad that we have them to care for as the hot and humid months roll around! Good for me that Harold will go out there and do what needs to be done so we have tomatoes fresh from the vine anytime we want. And a cucumber or two. I hope you enjoy the gardening. It is wonderful exercise and gets you out into the fresh air even when you'd rather lie in the cool and darkened house. My kids make it easier for me to venture into the newer technologies. I don't know how people live without at least a basic computer.

Kathy said...

What a sweet little blog! You are so special! I'm sure she will love it!

Pearl said...

Gardening! Minneapolis is finally warm enough -- and of course we've shot straight to "too warm", going from 62 to 84 in a day -- and I can't wait to get my flower boxes in. THere's something about having flowers on the front of the house that just makes me happy...

Pearl

ArleneWKW said...

Kathy: I'm surprising myself with how much I enjoy it. I was at it for about 4 or 5 hours on Sunday; I'd planned on only on spending a couple of hours. It's hard on my knees and back though. It's exciting to see how much some of the veggies have grow since I planted them a couple of weeks ago.

Pearl: Welcome to my blog. Do you live in Minneapolis? I'm new at gardening. I live in Northern California. Most of the veggies I planted 3 or 4 weeks ago didn't make it in the cold weather. The hearty veggie was the cabbage. It grew well while the other veggies shriveled.

Nola said...

I love just being out in my yard....I don't really care if I don't get anything achieved. It is the "being" with nature that does it I think:) You are just coming into your summer months and here we are with snow on the mountain!! I love your grand daughters blog also:)

Lorraine said...

you could have told me Arlene I miss you, or maybe I'm the one who forget, I'll catch up tomorrow

Lorraine said...

it's so pretty she must be thrilled