It's Not Like I Haven't Thought About It ...

Blogging, I mean ...

I thought about it when I was in Austin at the end of October, enjoying the spectacular views from Mount Bonnell and the balcony of my friend Marcia's amazing home nearby.

I thought about it in mid-November when the Mexican Plum and 'Rising Sun' redbud put on their fall colors at least 6 weeks ahead of their usual time.  

I thought about it on my birthday on November 23rd ... which was one of those milestone birthdays that you can't imagine yourself actually being when you're in your 20s. 

I thought about it in the unseasonably cold days following my birthday, when temperatures dipped almost to freezing on a couple of nights.  Truth be told, I was glad to walk outside when it warmed up and see that the blooms on the coral vines had been zapped by the cold.  I'd been wanting to whack that vine back for a while but I held off so the bees could enjoy it as long as possible.

I thought about it when I saw the first goldfinch of the year at the feeders during that cold spell.

2009 Confinchion

I thought about it when I did whack the coral vine AND the passion vine back the weekend after Thanksgiving. When I stopped in the middle of the process to check my FitBit tracker for my step count, the FitBit wasn't there, necessitating a careful but worried search which took me almost an hour.  I finally found it in the pile of discarded plant material on the patio, caught on one of the vines.  

There was almost this much vine to go through. Picture from 2008.

I thought about it when I built a fire in the firepit I created from what I think is an old sugar kettle found at an antiques shop on Magazine Street in New Orleans, old grates from a Jenn-Air cooktop and a firepit cover plucked from a neighbor's on trash day.  

I thought about when I made my annual pilgrimage to Glenwood Cemetery on December 5th to work at my friend Mary Beth's gravesite.  She always made much of the fact that I was 12 days older than her and affectionately called me an old hag.  Since it was a milestone birthday, I spent some time enlarging the area to include her parents' gravestones, then took a break to go shopping at Wabash Antiques and Feed Store on Washington Avenue. My sincere thanks to the good folks at Wabash who loaned me a watering can so I could water in the herbs I bought from them to plant in MB's bed. Just after I began to dig, the sprinkler system in that part of the cemetery kicked on.  Oh, how MB would have laughed to watch me attempting to dig and plant in between dodging the sprinklers!

Today, though, I didn't just think about blogging ... I did it!