Summer Garden Review

This has been a very bad year for the summer garden.  The extreme heat and humidity in July caused us to abandon weeding, with predictably disastrous results.  Out of desperation my husband mowed a path through the garden, which instantly turned the mowed area back to lawn: don't ever use a lawnmower in your garden!  Bad storms, one of which found me trapped in a car in the driveway with my son while golf ball-size hail fell, badly damaged the tomato plants because my husband had tied them to multiple stakes (so when the stakes went in different directions, the plant was broken). The bugs, like the weeds, loved the hot, humid climate.

This is what did or are doing relatively well in 2012: onions, early-planted potatoes (we were especially pleased with King Harry), peppers, tomatillos (including some volunteers), roselle, lemon grass, field peas, gourdseed corn, huazontle, sunflowers (volunteers from seed we fed the chickens).

These things were a relative or total failure: late-planted potatoes, tomatoes, pole beans, squashes (although there is some kind of volunteer squash that has taken over the entire lower story of the corn patch), artichokes, melons, gherkins.

These things we don't know about yet, but don't have high hopes for: peanuts, sweet potatoes.

The only thing I have preserved from my garden this year is a chile verde (tomatillo/onion/jalapeño) cooking sauce.

It won't be hard for the fall garden to beat the summer garden this year.

Time's Up (For Me)

If you thought unemployment benefits lasted for 99 weeks, we were both wrong.  I suppose I can't complain about my free money running out after a year, but it would have been really nice to know ahead of time, instead of getting a letter after the final payment had been made.  Alas.  I knew we were living on borrowed time, in more ways than one. What makes it better and worse at the same time is that my mom just helped us buy a second car, and we put all of our savings (which wasn't much) into that, so we're starting off our lower-income lifestyle broke.  But, we have a second car, which I am enjoying more than I'd like to admit, and which will also serve as a backup since our other car is getting pretty old.  And, the "new" car is a minivan, so it is useful in ways the small car is not - I might even drive it to Mexico loaded with my stuff.

So, what now?  We should have some news very soon about my husband's immigration case; I marked 9/11 on the calendar as the date to expect a document in the mail, after which we will meet the lawyer again.  We need to find out how much it will cost, how long it will take (this information was not available before because the procedural changes had not been implemented yet), and whether or not I can go live in Mexico while his case is pending.  My mom is planning on getting me plane tickets to Mexico for Christmas.  That will be the scouting trip.  Then, maybe, comes selling the house (more likely, walking away from it)...the plans necessarily get more vague the farther out I go.  All of this is going to require money, and I don't know where it's going to come from, but hopefully we can scrape together enough to get started.  At this point, reducing our expenses by me moving to Mexico might be the only way we can afford the immigration fees, if we can at all.  There's some desperate number crunching in my future, and I hate that.  Let me enjoy my last moment of peace while I wait for the bad news...except, I can't.  All of this causes me a great deal of anxiety.  The money, and the fact that my move might happen sooner than I thought (because, in my mind, I kept pushing it farther out).  I'm such a settled person nowadays that even spending the night away from home causes me anxiety.  I say it's because of all the things I have to do at home, but I'm not sure that's the whole truth.  Am I really going to be able to pack up my entire household, my entire life, and start from zero again?  It's one thing to do that when you have nothing to lose (as I did years ago); it's another thing to do it preemptively, to give up a comfortable home because you think you'll be better off elsewhere in the future.  It's a huge risk.  I'm terrified.  I'm not quite paralyzed with fear, yet, but I can see that coming.  

But, there is hope too.  Not when I'm lying in bed late at night, but at other times, I feel like a bit of courage will bring great rewards.