The View From Here/Up For This Week

The View From Here

Happy Solstice, everyone! The sun is out today! We now have a camera, so internet connections permitting, I'm hoping to illustrate my posts more liberally at least some of the time.

We got our first harvest from our garden yesterday! It's still astonishing to me how quickly stuff grows here considering what a late start it has to get. 

So lovely to curl fingers in the dirt in the raised beds and feel that it's warm in there!

And there I was hoping that the rest of this post would be a bunch of photos of our garden, etc. But whereas with every other camera that I've played with, I've just plugged it into the computer and downloaded the pictures, the computer doesn't seem to recognize this one at all. It did come with a software cd but I was really hoping to be able to use the native Mac software and not clutter up the hard drive with more software. The camera we got is a Canon PowerShot SD 1200 - a slightly older model because Phil felt that having a viewfinder was absolutely necessary and the newer ones don't. Plus, his brother is a professional photographer and won't use anything except Canons or Nikons.  I was pretty sold on the Panasonic Lumix for about the same price - would have adored that 8x zoom - but have to agree that the viewfinder is important. What do other folks have as a camera? Powershot owners: is there something about them that necessitates the special software? 

At any rate, I hope to have pictures up soon.

Up For This Week

Like many people whose blogs I follow, I'm reconciling myself to the realization that I probably can't blog every day at the moment. Not having an internet connection means that even if I do write a post, it doesn't mean that I can automatically get online and put it up. 

My desire to make more room for writing and to take that whole part of life seriously and make it important means that I'm going to have to sacrifice some trips to town, and other things. The garden has an endless amount of work that it would like to have done. 

The State of Alaska is providing an incentive for homeowners to insulate their homes and make them more energy-efficient, by offering to pay for the materials and labor. There is a limited time-window in which this needs to be done. Phil set this in motion for our cabin some time ago and we're coming down toward the deadline. So yesterday, I spent the morning caulking windows. I carved out a little time to work on poetry and felt so much better as a result, but checking email and blogging had to be postponed. 

And it's pretty clear that I need to get a more regular income stream going, so I need to put some time and effort into identifying and securing that.

That said, I want to make sure that I'm posting here at least three times a week. This week, I'll do some more photo posts of all the amazing plants that jump up when they get the chance. Another wordstalk. Possibly another book review. And another 'theme and variations' post, although I may have covered most of the possibilities by now. A product review, and maybe something on our new camera. Ok, I might not get all of this done!

I'm putting my request out there to the universe for any tips on keeping the relationship 'ship' afloat when there's a lot of changes underway and a lot of work to be done. It's one of the most important things in my life and at the moment my heart is very heavy - things are not going well. I would also love and gratefully accept any advice and input on activating income streams, whether it's using the internet for passive income or bringing my special (writing/editing/translating) skills to the notice of the right person. Please - I'd be so grateful. And I wish for everyone a beautiful, sun-filled week.