Cover Crops are Awesome!

Happy Longest Night of the Year Everybody!
Wow that makes me feel a little depressed. Where I live, the sun goes down at 4 PM this time of year and when it is actually up in the sky, people attempt to soak up as many rays as they can. We barely get eight hours of daylight -- not enough to really grow anything substantial. True, our long summer days make up for these dark winter ones, but it's still hard. I have a tough time motivating myself to get moving when my alarm goes off and it's still dark.

Fortunately, there is a solution. Three solutions, actually. I'm not really overwintering any crops unless you count the carrots and onions I forgot to pull up at the end of the summer. I'm kinda curious to see what happens to my onions -- it looks like the old onions are breaking down and giving birth to new onions. We'll see. I did plant a cover crop in the fall. It's so nice to look outside and see little green shoots coming out of my garden. Cover crops are great -- they're good for soil health. And who doesn't like little green shoots?

OK -- so solution #1 is overwintering (which I didn't really do). Solution #2 is a cover crop. And solution #3? My roommate's AeroGarden! He's got it set up on top of the refrigerator. It's timed so the lights are on at night -- making it once again look like we're growing pot in our house. It's not as bad as it was when I started my plants in February -- then my entire living room was glowing. But the backyard glows in the dark because of the direction of the light. It's funny. But nice to have green things in the house, too.

It's almost time to select my seeds for next season. I've got seed catalogs stashed all over the place. Can't wait for it to be planting time again.

As for life? It's good. I survived my first quarter of the UW Bothell teaching program! I passed my classes with flying colors, and was actually surprised by my high grade in one class. Wasn't so sure how I was doing, but I guess it wasn't that bad. (My UW Bothell peeps will know which class this was.) I'm enjoying my stay-cation quite a bit, and have been hanging out at home, working on Xmas presents, watching House, reading fun books, and just relaxing. Next quarter will be busy with outdoorsy classes and my own classes. But it will be fun.

I turn 29 in a week. Yikes! I will write a post about that milestone later, but I should go to bed now. Where did all the time go?