April comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

“Spring,” a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Sorry about my over-long absence – it’s been so long that the interface WordPress shows me is unfamiliar, and I’m distracted by its novelty and the maintenance backlog —and more ideas of things to do on this blog.

Last year and the year before, I had the intention to write much more, but I couldn’t bring myself to. I’d log in, do the routine maintenance, and then a strong bout of snooziness would overtake me. And the longer I failed to post something new and different here, the more guilty I felt. Not posting when-I-could-have is a lost opportunity to show at least several hundred people the fun/beneficial things I’d done that they could try, too.

Like what? Well, in this time – started even earlier — I set up my home with bird strike-proofing. And I continued to garden flowers and native plants, though last summer I got a grand total of 6 apple-sized tomatoes and maybe a pint basket of autumn-green, kitchen-ripened cherry tomatoes.

These activities are as quotidian to me as the motions of private daily life. So writing about them isn’t a constant source of inspiration like they were when I was first adopting new, green practices. They feel more like empty bragging: look what I have; hope you can do the same! and I’m the kind of person that would rather just do than be seen doing.

In 2020, everyone had to shut down activities in the face of uncertainty about human interaction. Now, it’s true: blogs are kinda passive; they don’t require much human interaction. But even with the niggling intention to do something for the blog, I just needed, wanted, couldn’t help but redirect my attention to things where, having put them away while pursuing other work, I was finally allowed to catch up.

And thank God we all were forced to stop busy-work, stop socializing, and stop “networking” last year. It finally enabled our latent and long-desired-but-not-permitted ability to Work From Home and travel less (and therefore reduce congestion, pollution, and unnecessary energy use). It made me realize how much our every day sociability and FOMO was literally killing time, preventing reflection, and obscuring focus. Turning my back on public and equivalent digital life did me a world of good.