Update

Last evening when my teenage son asked if we had any TV shows to watch, I replied “Tons”.   He then questioned how I could measure TV viewing by weight? I told him that was the relative amount of paperwork I could get done in the length of time it would take to watch all the programs I had recorded on the PVR.

In addition to my regular 55 hour work week I also had meetings and other obligations every evening last week so there was no time to keep up with regular bookkeeping chores let alone ‘down time’ to watch TV.  Add to that the fast approaching deadlines for compiling and editing the next childcare resource calendar, income tax preparations and re-licensing my childcare home the paperwork is daunting.

With that in mind I’m fighting the urge to play Angry Birds or some other equally useless waste of time.  I’ve decided to write a blog entry and, although it may not be high on the paperwork priority list, I have pledged to post at least once a week.

I’ve got several topic ideas that I desperately want to write about – particularly yesterday’s Daily Post suggestion ‘Name a book that changed your life. What influence did it have on your thoughts, attitudes, and actions?’ However, that will take more time than I have right now so I’ll stick with something less intensive.

I want to provide a brief update on our indoor gardening adventure.

All of the herbs we had imported from our outdoor garden and most of our new seedlings succumbed to the white fly devastation.  Only the Bolivian Rainbow Pepper seedlings survived the infestation unscathed.  In fact, they seemed to flourish and had been transplanted into larger pots and were now flowering too!

In January we planted some more seeds to attempt to provide additional plants for our scant little garden.  In a month or two we’ll need to plant some so we have seedlings available for our outdoor garden when (if) the snow ever melts.

Then, yesterday as we were checking out the plants I noticed the markings on some of the leaves of our beautiful pepper plants – white fly eggs!!!  I wanted to cry.  I suspect the newly planted basil is the source of this latest invasion since they have not seemed healthy from the moment they sprouted and they are deteriorating quickly. Can seeds or soil be the infection source?  I don’t know.

It is hard to keep the children interested in gardening with so many setbacks.  Maybe growing our own food isn’t the lesson.  Teaching resiliency, determination and perseverance is.