Junuary

Yes, my friends, it is the highly acclaimed season of "Junuary", where Summer meets winter head on and Winter takes summer down.



Winter takes Summer to school.



Summer gets an old-fashioned whuppin' from Winter.



Junuary.



You may have heard on the news the last couple of days that there is snow (aka "the 'S' word around here) in the Cascade Mountains in Oregon and Washington.



This is true.



Junuary.



It makes us sad. It brings us down. We want to stay in bed with the covers pulled over our heads until it is over. It makes our crops fail and the prices of our now spotty, unripe Oregon fruit skyrocket. Here is a picture of our Vegetable Graveyard (other people call these "gardens")


Here lie our soggy lettuce, our ungerminated radishes, tomatillos and peppers.
Our tiny, anemic Brandywine and Beefsteak tomato plants stand silent sentinel over the muddy graveyard.

Our hopes and dreams of harvesting giant ears of Honey -n- Pearl corn and sweet baby pea pods lie moldering here.



Notice the fence and gate that Rod put up to keep the deer out. I swear I heard the deer chuckling together as they strolled away last night, as if they were saying, "Why ever would we want to go in there?" Snooty deer. They better watch it before I get an appetite for Venison Saurbraten.



Has my lamenting of the unseasonable chilly weather and my vegetable graveyard brought you down? Made you sad? Don't you want to come spend an afternoon with me so I can serve you weak and lukewarm coffee and stale cookies lift your spirits? What? You want to run, screaming the other direction? Yeah, me too.



I apologize. I have been unseasonably depressed the last month or so, and not much seems to bring me out of it.(the septic problems we have are not helping and the timing of it is rather ironic, don't you think?)
I have had no energy or heart or joy. Well, very low amounts,anyway. So I have not blogged or invested very much in other activities either.



I think I am moving out of it. At least I hope I am. Rod does, too.
So, tell me what you do to "snap" out of it. What brings you joy when you are down? How do you work through your periods of depression? What helps? What doesn't?



Anyway, that is why I haven't blogged or visited lately, to those of you who have emailed, or just wondered if I fell off the edge of the planet. (It could happen.)



So....Happy Junuary, everyone.