I guess that’s 2010, folks. I hope it was a good one for you… it was an excellent albeit exhausting one for us.
Tonight, I don’t think we’re going to do much to celebrate the year’s passing. The changes it’s brought upon us–mostly upon me–prevents it. I can’t drink, so oh well. I can’t have sushi, so we won’t do our usual New Year’s Eve dinner. I can’t have brie, so we won’t do my family’s traditional New Year snacks. And I can’t stay up much past ten… so perhaps we’ll celebrate the new year on Greenwich Mean Time and call it a night. Probably the contrast between this and last New Year’s Eve, when we ate sushi and went to a late movie and rung in the new year at a brew pub, with friends and champagne, pretty much defines how our lives are changing.
The year can be broken into three major eras. First, finishing the renovation and moving. Second, planting the gardens, taking long walks in the woods, and collecting wild fruit. Third, the pregnancy.
January: in January the renovation was in high gear. The walls were painted, the floors were put in, and the cabinets were installed. Very shortly after January, if not still in it, we scheduled the move.
February: was all about the move, for me. Sparks had taken so much of the load of the renovation–and was still dealing with so many details of it–that packing the house fell to me. February’s picture of Sparks cuddling the newly-cuddly Pudding in front of a mountain of boxes pretty well sums up the whole month.
March: finally the snow melted and the weather began to warm up. We were starting garden plants in the hot boxes and I was taking four-mile walks; after two long, snowy winters punctuated by one chilly, damp summer, the sunshine and warmth was GLORIOUS. However, that month I was also completely obsessed with J. Crew’s spring collection. I don’t think that very much of that made it on to the blog, but I was. Thus, a picture of me in my duds. I like to think, retroactively, that I was getting some of the last bits of enjoyment out of my pre-pregnancy body.
April: finally some flowers, hooray! We had the house pretty well unpacked and settled by then. I’m looking forward to not moving again for at least a decade, preferably twenty years.
May: we took a break from the gardening to visit my parents, so I could get my annual fill of quilt shops and Sparks could get his annual fill of fly fishing and morel hunting. This picture was taking on our last day there, sitting in lawn chairs in the middle of the trout stream.
June: while the garden grew and ripened, Sparks turned his attention to foraging for wild fruit. He picked black raspberries, blackberries, elderberries, and sumac. And he picked them prolifically. Even now, six months later, after all that jam and all those pies and crumbles, we still have more frozen fruit than we know what to do with.
July: in July we celebrated our first wedding anniversary, and found out that I was pregnant. The garden began to yield some vegetables, though deer damage severely delayed our tomato and pepper crops, and a cucurbitaceae blight killed the zucchini and cucumbers. Thus, a picture of a jar of pickles Sparks made from donated cucumbers. Ah well.
August: finally real yields from the garden. The second round of tomatoes grew and ripened, the eggplant and peppers began to produce, and Sparks dug the potatoes out of pure impatient glee. He has a lot of plans about how to get better yields this coming year… but we had a nice little crop, enough to make a couple of big rostis.
September: in September we went on our “babymoon” to St. Thomas. I couldn’t drink or dive or get in the hot tub, but we got our bobbing-in-the-water on and thoroughly soaked in the sunshine. We visited a lot of beautiful beaches, including Secret Harbor (pictured), Magen’s Bay, and the Soggy Dollar Bar.
October: a month of shutting down the garden and, for me, slowly starting to feel better. The whole month seems to have been overshadowed by the Big Ultrasound, which revealed that we’re having a long-legged baby girl who has inherited my nose. If you haven’t had children yet… the first ultrasound is a huge watershed moment. The baby becomes a person and the whole pregnancy becomes real. It’s an amazing experience.
November: was all about making stuff. I felt so good I was able to give up naps, and there was no longer anything to do outside so we both occupied ourselves inside, I with sewing and Sparks with developing the tube amp project he started in Saint Thomas. It was a cozy, good month.
December: somehow December disappeared into one big getting-ready-for-Christmas rush. It was also snowy, nonstop until yesterday when the temperature soared and all the snow melted. It was perfect for setting the Christmas mood.
And that was our year, folks. Again, we hope it was a happy one for you too, and we look forward to more fun–and so many more changes–in 2011. Happy new year!
