January 1 2024 - May we all be blessed, protected, and healthy this year. Stop all wars!!

 On New Year's Eve, I drove to Home Depot to buy soil additives for the 2024 organic veg garden. I injured my right knee posteriorly by tearing or pulling a ligament while heaving a bag of humus/compost/manure from the car's trunk into the organic garden to avoid stepping on dormant strawberries and passing through killer blackberry brambles that drain me of a pint of blood when they snag my thinning delicate skin.  I believe I injured a ligament as its' quite painful to walk.  Good thing I didn't make resolutions that a gimping, old woman such as myself could not fulfill hobbling with an old wooden cane I bought my Mother 30 years ago at a Vermont country store, second-hand in 1993.   

I read an old wives' tale on the Bob Vila email page I receive daily that no one should wash dishes or do laundry or sweep on New Year's Day as it's bad luck.  Okay!  Not that I want yesterday's dirty dishes in my 1929 cast iron sink to sit there, but it's too painful to stand that long unsupported washing dishes with my Meyer's Dish soap and some Scrubbies. So thank you for the rationalization to be a lard butt and do nothing.  After all I'm saving myself from a an ambulance trip to the ER at Good Samaritan Hospital to sit in the waiting room with all the patients who may not be sober yet from reckless trips and falls. I don't allow myself to fall and I never saw this coming from heaving 3 bags of soil amendments and twisting my torso to aim them onto cardboard sheet mulch in the area in-between the overwintering kale and the strawberry patch and the Native Tree nursery.  

It's 2:25 PM and it will be dark at 4:55 PM and here I am in bed with the legs up. I've not gotten dressed and haven't eaten as the scale has skyrocketed since September by 9.2  lbs.  Oh Dear.  I've gone and ruined my hopes and dreams to look like I'm a slim 50, again.  

So I'm in bed studying, as I always do about those minor masterpieces that intrigue me; legends, myths, ancient rituals and of course gardening. Right  now I'm reading bout Quince in an article I've been reading. I just so happen to have in my gardens.   

My garden quince on September 13th 2023. I had a bumper crop, and this may have been due to the black locust trees invading the nutrient poor wild hedgerow and providing supplements to the soil nitrogen pools, increasing nitrogen return in litterfall, and enhancing soil nitrogen mineralization rates. My study of companion plantings evermore increases with each year of studying the Phenology of my Lindenhurst, NY property in New York. Maybe I shouldn't cut them down and leave them a little longer to improve the soil. {if their dagger thorns don't dismember my body and cause me to bleed out.} I despise thorns. https://jenncampusauthor.com/late-autumn-old-world.../

Happy New Year!!!