I'm participating in Project 365, a photo a day for 365 days. I started on January 1. I will occasionally share them here. You can find my Project 365 Flickr set here.

The play closes today. It's been a bittersweet experience that challenged a lot of my ideas and my ability. Still, every play is a learning experience. It's true that you learn more from the challenging ones than the ones that fly off into perfection. The ladies and the crew have been delightful to work with. So many of them so very new to the theatre, their discovery, their anxiety, their dedication reminded me of just how exciting a play can be.

It is time for a break though. Time for me to put my script, my light plots, and the fabric away and rest that part of my brain for awhile. Art is a peculiar thing. Both something that feeds and needs to be fed. I spread it out over a lot of different mediums, picking up one and putting down another. Each one taking up a different part of myself, all of them flowing together in one way or another. A phrase of the play inspires a poem. A photograph inspiring a stage picture I had not previously imagined.

In the end, the bottom line, is that I must be doing something. But it's time to put theatre down for a month or two and pick up something else. So that when I return to the page and the boards, it is with eagerness rather than weariness and with joy rather than obligation.

Oh my, it HAS been a long time. So much has changed here in my corner of the midwest. Grandpas Garden has been in the back of my mind however over a long winter, there didn't seem to be much to write about garden-wise. I've been too busy to cook. It's been an interesting journey, but it's time to come back here and breath life back into the blog.

On the garden front, the news isn't great. The last few months have been filled with play production and home improvement. Joy and sadness. Kids and very little free time. It has come to my attention that there is a lot of things around the house and yard that need some TLC. So after a long winter of meditation I have decided that there will be no garden this year. I will amend the soil and give it a year of rest while I work on a host of other projects that need to be addressed immediately.

So a little sacrifice this year, while the garden waits and projects call and perhaps by next year I can dedicate my full attention to a lush garden. If there was anything my grandpa taught me, it's sometimes you need to sacrifice a little leisure, put your hands to work, so that you can sit down at the end of the day and enjoy everything around you.

The little tomato plants have made it home and are lined up, sweetly, on my porch. They get taller by the day!

Gardeners, plant and nature lovers can join in every Sunday. Visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

Last Friday I got an email from Dave over at the Horticulture Center. He said that the baby tomatoes were ready to be repotted into larger, 4 inch pots. This is the part where I explain how crazy and busy everything has been, but I know you all have heard it so you can fill in the details. Needless to say it was about three days later than I wanted it to be before I could square off a block of time that I thought would be sufficient (how long does it take to report 85 tomato plants?!) and that also fit in his schedule.
When I got over there the above picture was what I found. The were in great shape. We didn't have a 100% germination rate but we got darn close. Most of the plants germinated four of the five seeds. Many did all five. We had one particular variety that only germinated one of the five seeds and I left it with Dave knowing he had a much better chance of success with it.

I got to planting. In an effort to streamline the whole process I decided to go with numbering the pots and working from a key. Of course this only works if you have been diligent about keeping the key in a safe place. So far so good, but it's not my strong suit. I quickly fell into a routine and with the aid of some good music (NeverShoutNever!) it wasn't long before I was cruising through the pots and dirt. I tell you what, large scale potting works best when you have a huge horticulture center and big tables, tons of pots, dirt, portable water sprayer, and rolls of labels. Yeah, I know, I don't normally have that stuff either. I've been found on the front porch with a bag of dirt, a recycled solo cup and a spoon!

I did leave Dave one of each of the plants labeled with their actual names. I would never have space to plant all of them anyway and if I have massive garden failure I still have the chance of having a tomato taste test by the end of the summer.
After about an hour of packing, planting, pressing, and labeling pot after pot I got to the end of my tray of seedlings. I potted even the littlest, sickliest looking ones (especially them). They are remarkably different even at this state. They are going to live on my front porch for another couple of weeks. Then off to wherever they will live out their tomato destinies. I will keep you posted.