Retirement

 As it turns out, if you work hard, live in a small house and save your pennies, you get to retire early.  It also helps to marry a man half a generation ahead of you who works hard, saves money and does almost everything himself.  And so it is.  I am retired a good fifteen years ahead of my peers.  After years of planning, the day came on April 16th.  I left behind my nice office job of 20+ years.  If I hadn't had such a good job all these years I would not be in a position to leave it.  But so far I don't miss it.  Taking the plunge was hard, but the adjustment has been easy.

There are some really nice things about retirement.  You get to sleep past 5 a.m. (if you want to, because I really like 5 a.m. in June).  You get to take afternoon naps on rainy days.  Looking at the clock at 4:00 on a Sunday afternoon does not cause a pang of regret that the weekend is almost over.  And you don't have to rush out in the morning to start outdoor work so you don't waste precious hours.  Unless you are trying to get it done before the heat or the rain.  You can wait for it to warm up.  And you can wait until you are in the mood.  Or you can put it off until tomorrow and spend the day reading.

It has been nice to spend time, uninterrupted, on the yard and garden.  The first week was like an extended weekend.  By the middle of the second week I couldn't shake the feeling that I should be somewhere more important doing... something.  On Wednesday afternoon, which I thought was Thursday afternoon, the feeling overtook me and bullied me to distraction. I poured a glass of wine and sat with my feet up watching the bluebirds build their nest until the unsettled feeling finally passed and I could put weeding and watering back on the top of my priority list.

The edging and mulching is almost done

There is another thing about retirement.  You have to develop stamina. For the first solid week I felt a little tired and vaguely achy.  Some of that could be because the Friday I retired I left the office, raced across town to drop my work laptop off at UPS to send it back to Houston headquarters and went straight to my second Covid vaccination.  It is hard to say what part of feeling a bit wiped out was because of working outside 5 hours a day for more than two days in a row and what part was vaccine reaction.  In the first 9 days I lost 4 pounds.

The strawberries are beginning to bloom

Its hard to tell what day it is anymore.  Sunday is the only day you really have to know about because store hours change if you need to run errands and its rude to run noisy equipment before 9 a.m.  I try to remember to turn my cell phone on every few days to check for messages.  This week we plan to head towards town to go to the Amish greenhouse, to Tractor Supply for fertilizer and to the grocery store.

This May is starting out a lot better than last year.  It is still very windy, but warm and dry and mostly sunny.  A few days ago we got two inches of rain over 36 hours.  It was constant but gentle and didn't wash out our mulch as sometimes happens. My cauliflower have been outside for a week under a frost blanket and a 50% shade cloth.  This is my method of hardening them off.  Next week I will switch this out for netting.

The cauliflower plants look good. 
Those darn oak leaves get everywhere!

First and Second planting of Penelope Peas.
There are also tiny lettuce plants that I direct seeded along side.

Nursery raised red and green cabbages

The one downside of retirement is that I can't spend every lunch hour at the four nearby nurseries shopping for plants.  We all know that they get frequent shipments this time of year.  But somehow I think I'll manage.