Summer Slow-Down

We're in the full throes of summer here at our house and between camps, swimming lessons and entertaining two boisterous, inquisitive little boys everyday, I'm finding that I have a little less time to linger over blog entries than I did during the school year.


Let's not forget that this is mainly a gardening blog and my garden is downright soupy (and dead) right now, which isn't helping. Please don't take this as an announcement of a blogging break, because blogging is one of the few things I actually do for me and I have no intention of giving it up for the summer. I think many stay-at-home-moms get so wrapped up in the kids and the home that they go days without doing anything just for themselves. I am guilty of that, for sure. That's one of the reasons I started this blog - it's my thing that I do just for me and I have no intentions of walking away from it for the summer.

However, I'm currently blogging six days a week and now that it's the summer, I'm going to slow down a little bit. I don't know if that means I'll have entries three days a week or five days a week, but it will be a little less than what I've been doing.

I've got to regroup on the garden and I know I can't plant any vegetables this summer. I made that mistake last year and have been told time and again that only very skilled gardeners dare plant in the summer in Florida. And as the name of my blog suggests, I'm short on gardening skills so summer planting is not in the cards for me. I think I'll focus on sunflowers this summer so I can do my part for the Great Sunflower Project. Sunflowers are something I've had success growing in the past, so hopefully that can be my summer gardening project.


Also, I need to get serious about my kid crafts and activities. Two boys. One long summer. It's too darned hot for mere mortals to go outside for most of the summer, so we spend a lot of time inside. As captivating as I might feel I am, the boys get sick of staring at me pretty quickly and resort to daring each other to jump off the back of the couch onto the tiled floor, so I know I'll need to get creative with some fun kid activities…many of which will need to be thought-up and put together at night while the boys are sleeping since their patience is thin for my prep time. I'm also hell-bent on teaching my 5 1/2 year old to read before he starts kindergarten because he's expressing such an interest in it, but can't quite put it together. So yes, my focus will have to drift away from the blog a little to accomplish that.


Finally, by the end of the summer I should have three mature hens popping out eggs like the lottery machine on the 11 o'clock news. They should be mature and of egg-laying age by about mid-August, so I've got that to look forward to. Plus I still want to build them an attached run to their chicken coop, but have to figure out how to do that on a very modest budget.


So there's my summer in a nutshell. If you see a day or three go by without an entry, just know I'm hard at work playing pirates or sculpting a masterpiece out of dried-out Play Doh or sounding out the word c-a-t for the 100th time. Or maybe like last night, I sat down to watch TV after an afternoon of swimming and fell asleep on the couch. I am sure I'll pick up again on the blog at full speed in the Fall once school starts and the new planting season arrives. But for now it's got to come second to my two favorite little guys because as any parent will tell you, they just grow up too fast.