November 1, a new month, the day after completing all 31 days of the Ultimate Blog Challenge. What do I do now, rest on my laurels? I’ve decided to blog on. I brush my teeth every morning and evening. Writing is another thing in my self care tool box. It is effective. I shall keep it. Besides, someone mentioned that it is NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month. It’s writing a novel of 50,000 words in the month of November. I had high hopes of writing one ever since high school. I gave NaNoWriMo a go or two. The first time I had a few chapters of 7,358 words. The second time 300 words. I still have the files on my desktop.

I didn’t know how hard words are to come by till I tried. I’m not aiming for a novel or 50,000 words. I haven’t lived up to the name of this blog yet – a thousand and two (words) , my daily goal. My goal for this November is to write each day concentrating on the progress of our greenhouse and food growing. But who knows where I will meander. Like Caroline Myss often says, this is an amazing time in history. I have to perk up, pay attention and make notes on EVERYTHING. And maybe, after this month, I can write that novel.

I had aimed to have fresh greens from our raised beds till end of October. I gave up too soon in the 3rd week in a cold snap. Had I left the crop covers on, the spinach and kale would be fine. And maybe the lettuce and Chinese greens, too. I harvested them, not wanting to lose all. But I see that the ends are still green and alive in this bit of warm spell. I shalt cry over spilt greens. I shall grow more. The herb spiral still looks pretty good, too. The basil, of course, bit the dust, but the lavender, thyme and oregano seems ok. I have them in pots inside just in case.

Our greenhouse is almost finished – 4 walls, roof, vents all closed up. Just missing a door. It’s pretty snug and warm on a sunny day. We’re been mostly lucky with the weather building it.There were a few cold days but it’s warmed up for the finishing stretch. I took this opportunity to fill a few planters with top soil to warm up inside to ready for seeding. It looks like we will have 4 days of warm weather before it dips again to daytime minus temperatures. I hope that’s enough time to help them germinate. It’s a grand adventure. Nothing to lose and everything to gain.