Gardening, traveling, and New Year’s

A search on my blog posts for New Year’s brought a number of musings about winter vegetables,  traveling, and other thoughts. I’ve been writing posts since 2007, so I’ve had a lot of time to comment over the years.

This has been an unusual year, in a new pattern, as we’ve stepped up our traveling, and my vegetable gardening has become more focused, as a volunteer at a local community garden, in addition to my own raised beds. Juggling vegetables, and seasonal change-outs in my four-season beds is a bit more challenging, when we’re away for 3-4 weeks at a time.

Our natural landscape is flourishing. My gardening companion is a brilliant gardener, and we keep adding native plants to the forest below the house, the side areas that we garden with neighbors, and to the pollinator meadow in front. (I do garden in the front and side of the house! Pollinator plantings and vegetable/herb beds are my purview, and I’m consulted on everything else...)

Full moon festival in Hoi An, Vietnam

In the year ahead, we’ll be traveling, too, quite a bit. We embrace being citizens of the world, and are glad to be ambassadors for America and Americans, regardless of what our government is like at any point in time.

I love this image from the Full Moon Festival, taken in Hoi An, Vietnam, in January, some years ago.   

It seems to me to embody hope for the New Year.  Wishing everyone a good year ahead.