Life: It's what you make of it.

This past week I once again experienced the "single parent" life by taking care of my 11 month old son while my wife was away with our daughter. Some people would be daunted by the task of baby wrangling but this was not my first time. Furthermore I personally believe that my son, our second is much more forgiving and easygoing than his sister.

The key point I gather during prior experiences is that babies like schedules. They like to eat, sleep, and poop at the same time every day. If you avoid this schedule or meander away from it then you may enter uncharted territory. It may surprise some first time parents but babies are easy, especially compared to a 3 year old. I have no idea how my wife kept sane during the 9.5 hour flight back from Europe. Needless to say the child was bouncing off the walls this morning after a 14 hour recovery sleep.

At any rate we both were able to spend some quality time with the kids and I think we were able to bond more with them one on one. While it's great to take the big family trips together sometimes it's equally as rewarding to spend some time with one kid away from the distraction of the others. As life becomes increasingly busy I'm sure that this will become harder to achieve, but the experience is none the less rewarding.

Unfortunately I have not been able to break ground due to the weather. Over the past few days we've received 2½ inches of rain which have helped the regional drought condition but also inundated or soaked most of the backyard. In short it's simply too wet to run any machine through the yard without tearing it up.

However, fortunately my seedlings are developing nicely. Saturday I was able to transplant the first batch including eight peat trays of Arkansas Traveler tomatoes, four Dixie Queen watermelons, and four Queensland Blue pumpkins to their new digs. Thankfully the sun is back after a week of overcast skies and I'm slowly beginning the process of hardening off the plants against natural sunlight.

The timing could not have been better as most of the plants were starting to show their true leaves. This is the gardener's signal to re-pot the plants and to begin to begin the process of acclimating the seedlings to regular sunlight slowly. Too much exposure too quickly will sunburn the plants and cause many to die before maturing enough to plant. It's also a great time to fertilize the peat pots as the plants have consumed most of the nutrients in the germination soil.

As far as the garden is concerned, today I'm headed to the local Ace Hardware to pick up six railroad cross ties which will serve as the boundary for my garden. I tentatively rescheduled the tiller rental for next Saturday and plan to churn the dirt and mix in several bags of gypsum, manure and other composts to soften and condition the soil.

If all goes well I'm hoping to have plants in the ground in several weeks. In the meantime I'll most likely cover the new bed with black plastic to help lock in the moisture and to bake out any unwanted weeds that might try to germinate in the mean time.

This year marks my second full fledged attempt at heritage gardening and as such I've expanded my heirloom seed collection for the season. A month or so ago I experimented with a seed germination technique using an old aquarium and a set of plant bulb lights with much success. Unfortunately several days out of town and a cold snap finished off the early bird seedlings.

I've replanted those seed trays and also added my new acquisitions. For this year I'm starting with a second generation of last year's Arkansas Traveler summer tomatoes along with a batch of Aunt Ruby's German Green. I may plant a few hybrids also but it depends on space and how well my seedlings fare.

While tomatoes are a popular part of the garden I've also acquired a few seed stocks that I'll try to multiply for next year. These include my King of the Garden giant lima beans which bear the most resemblance to the "butter beans" I remember as a kid. I'm also planting the usual suspects of cantaloupe and watermelon however this year I've added a new comer, a pumpkin called a Queensland Blue which should make an excellent and scary Jack-O-Lantern.

The last of my plantings for this season will include various herbs and green peppers. Hopefully I'll be able to find a home for my heirloom golden sweet corn which, if it does as well as last year's Hickory Dent, will produce gobs of corn as well as kernels to save.

Ambitious? You could say that. I have no doubt that a few of the tomato plants will survive. Last year's crop were late bloomers but several produced enough fruit to enjoy and collect seeds. I'm on the fence about the pumpkin crop as it requires a lot of time to develop, but I may get a melon or two out of the deal. At any rate it'll be an adventure and besides the kids love checking in on the "baby plants" as the spring forth from the starter trays.

PSA - I purchased all of my heirloom seeds from Baker Creek

I consider myself a pretty easy going guy and because of that sometimes I feel taken advantaged of. My personality is such that I'd rather put forth something in good faith and risk the possibility of losing it if I feel there is a greater chance that something fruitful will come of the experience. Still it's sometimes necessary to "close the account" and move on to more productive things.

Over the past year I haven't written about my work nearly as much as in seasons past. Simply put there has been little drama or unforeseen turns which have blindsided me from my daily focus on Getting Things Done. Sure there have been ups and downs, lefts and rights and confrontations of egos where I've had to play the nice guy or be the bastard. The truth is those stories aren't really the reason I write things for this site, and I question whether they belong here.

My other main preponderance, which came about only through the redesign of the site template after several botched Joomla Upgrades, is about a site like this one's role in a post-blog world. What do I mean by post-blog? Well it started with sites like Twitter and ended up at facebook. These days the random sort of commentary that was the cornerstone of this site now belongs to Tweets and Status Updates.

These days EVERYONE is on facebook, twitter, etc. The social networking boom is unfortunately taking place after many of the coolest sites have closed up shop. Like blogging in the early days, there is no stopping the juggernaut and to hopelessly flail against the onslaught is fruitless. Instead of decrying the downward spiral in content quality of friends and foe's weblogs I've decided to take up the more noble quest of bringing the two together.

At this point it's an early stage pipe-dream but as I've learned over the years many of the best concepts start this way. I also accept that my particular profession makes me a natural fit for the job and besides I'm also working with a bunch of people who are trying to do the exact same thing for a certain old-school industry. We'll see where this journey takes us, but until then stay tuned to this site for more details as they develop.