Well, it’s been a minute. Province was unpublished in 2019, when it felt like the days of personal blogging were saturated and exhausted. Lifestyle blogging became less about life and more about advertising and product placement. But Province had always been meant as a teaching tool. By giving glimpse to my day-to-day, maybe someone would feel the spark to try something new.
I didn't give up completely. Province continued to exist on Instagram during the pandemic, with animal rescues, gardening, and obligatory sourdough brags. But by 2021 I began to feel overwhelmed: over-exposed, self-conscious, anxious, and vulnerable. Followers continued to slowly increase, as they’d continued to do since 2010 when I launched this concept in Chicago, but engagement had decreased. Viewers were lurking but not liking. The world was changing. Social media felt angry and toxic. Everything I worked so hard to create started to feel like a colossal joke. Maybe it always had been. Nonetheless, social media wasn’t where I wanted to be. I deleted Facebook entirely. Cleared my tweets. And made Instagram private.
And here I am, four years later, turning the blog back on. Maybe picking up where I left off? Maybe? A few people have told me they miss it. So this is a test of vulnerability. I’ve added a Writing page to give home to the publications of the past three years. I have a committed daily morning writing practice and it has yielded a significant body of work. Well beyond what I’m including here, because I also have several manuscripts in varying stages: fiction, poetry, and a short-story collection.
My creative writing practice is such an integral, constant, and intertwining part of my life, it must be part of this site. By placing it here, it’s a coming out of sorts. Imagine other professionals feeling like they have to reveal their secret career: a dentist, an accountant. I have really done a number on myself by compartmentalizing pieces of my identity and presenting them, piecemeal, to various people in cautious ways. It’s all out of fear, of course. But I think, I hope, as we age we allow the pieces to assemble into a wholeness that represents our self-actualization. And part of that wholeness is the empowerment to share, or not share—to participate or not participate—without the guilt and fear that causes us to fragment and withdraw.
Maybe I’ll return to the Farm Journal posts I gave up in 2018. Looking back, they held meaning and memories. If for nobody else, maybe I’ll do them for myself. They were a day-in-the-life journal of life outside, as AK and I were turning our arid acre into a healthy micro-farm. For today I’ll leave things at maybe. And end with a photo diary:
Poppy: Frosted Salmon
Goldie, now age 7
New to the yard: phainopepla
Oh, the perfume of sweet peas!
Finally, an artichoke. This plant is so old!
Radish (back) was adopted early in the pandemic. We don’t know how old she is, but her breed is Swedish Black. She still lays several eggs a week. Turnip (front) is our oldest duck. We don’t know how old, but OLD. He is sweet and sensitive and shy.
The rains of 2022/23 have helped foliage grow around the aviary. This black walnut shading the coop grew from a squirrel-planted nut since we’ve lived here. This is the view of the aviary looking down the hill from our backyard.
This might just look like a mess, but there’s a lot to it. On the left is an avocado tree that really struggled through the drought. Recent rain has resuscitated foliage, but critters have eaten all the buds. On either side of the avocado is sugarcane. Wow, it grows quickly aided by the overflow water from the duck pond just behind this jungle. We now have enough sugarcane to begin pressing juice. Problem: we need a sugarcane press.
Our bantam Flora was adopted with another bantam, Pearl, during the pandemic. Flora has narcolepsy. No, seriously.
Outside our front door, in the juniper, a fresh hummingbird egg. We expect two to be laid. We find a hummer nest every year.