Hello everyone! Apologies for being a week late—the end of the month quietly snuck up on me once again!
June was a bit of a quiet month for us…which was nice after the craziness that was May!
We got out garden established—this year we’re growing cherry tomatoes, a couple varieties of bigger tomatoes, snow peas, cucumbers, watermelon, pumpkins, green beans, jalapenos, serranos, bell peppers, cantaloupe, honeydew melon, and of course my summer favorite—berries! We’ve had a couple of beds of strawberry plants for several years now, and they’re nicely established now, giving me a handful of berries every 2-3 days. This year we bought blueberries, black raspberries, and blackberries, and got a little berry patch started in our smaller field. I’m so excited to make the berry patch my project for the next few years—I love berries so much!
READING
Fiction: I’m attempting the Rabbit Room Reading Challenge for the rest of the year! We’ll see if I make it—that’s a lot of books, even for me! But I’ve been very much enjoying the stories I’ve read so far—I just finished The Fiddler’s Gun and am working through Fiddler’s Green—somewhat fantastical, adventurous historical fiction set around the time of the Revolutionary War and following the adventures of Phinea Button, a young woman who runs away to sea to both battle pirates and her own inner demons. I think Fin may very well be another favorite female main character, much like Eowyn!
WRITING
This month was a little quieter on this front as well, as I struggled with some writers block. Over the last few years, as I’ve struggled with burnout and coming to understand my chronic illnesses (yes…I now know I have two, both PCOS and PMDD), I’m beginning to understand how my body works and how I need to take care of it. I know my writers’ block was caused by pushing hard earlier in the year and writing without breaks, though I should have known better.
I made a little more progress on Knights of the Faerie Queens and The Serpent King’s Castle. As odd as it may sound, part of my ‘writing’ care is now going to making sure I exercise and eat properly every day. It might not sound like it fits in this part of the email, but if I take the time for it now, and work on establishing those habits instead of pushing them off to ‘someday’, I’ll better be able to continue writing.
This doesn’t really change anything about my projects I’m working on for the rest of the year, but I felt like I wanted to explain why I hadn’t made much progress recently with my two WIPs, or even worked on editing Thief By Trade much either. I’m hoping that with taking time to establish better habits now, that means that I’ll soon be back to making more progress.
Thank you all for your patience! <3