“The best laid plans” – how does that saying go? Of mice and men, or something? The plans go astray, anyway. No matter how well-laid out.

I came through the holiday with the thought, “Once 2013 rolls around I’m going to get back into blogging, big time! I’ll go do interviews in my down time, I’ll edit old interviews, I’ll be so damn productive I’ll amaze myself!”

This wasn’t even a well-laid plan, actually. This was just a sketchy plan; a wish, really.

Well, I’m back to school and it seems there is more work this semester than there was in the last. We have two more courses than before, which isn’t up to the students at all but up to the faculty. They took out the two study periods we had, and put in two extra classes. Thumbs up! Awesome!

(I’m not actually bitter. It just seems a little odd, that’s all.)

Long story short: I will not have time in the next four months to blog like I was blogging this time last year. Between class time and homework, plus the ordinary home tasks like making food to eat and keeping the house tidy, and the necessary little bits of down-time, the time just is not there. With money you can go into overdraft; with time, you can’t.

(Well, I guess you sort of could, if you went without sleep, but that’s a debt with a seriously steep interest rate. And it’s a bitch to repay.)

I’m kind of disappointed. I miss this project, I miss having fun new content on the blog. It’s a lot of fun for me to write content, edit other people’s writing, take photographs, go around meeting people and experiencing the island. Doing this sort of thing full-time, for money, is still a dream of mine.

But at the same time, I know it’s important to focus on the Main Thing and make sure that it’s a success, before worrying about anything else. And school is definitely the Main Thing right now.

I’ll be writing blog posts when (a) the mood strikes AND (b) I have time and energy, but those two circumstances may not coincide often.

This is reality, I suppose! The reality of being a young person, living on Cape Breton, working to make her dreams come true.

So, yeah: back to the title of this post, the Winter Garden. Where that comes in, is that I went out the other day and took some shots of the garden around our home, now, as it is in winter-time.

I remember reading a newspaper article a couple of years ago that was about planning your garden so that it’s interesting even in winter. It talked about looking at the textures and shapes, at the way plants look when they’re dead, basically. It stuck with me, and now I think about that when looking at plants to add to our gardens. Will it make a neat seedpod that will rot in a beautiful way? Will it have berries that last all winter, adding a burst of crimson to the whiteness of the garden in February?

Right now I’m feeling like the winter garden. Productive under the surface. To people outside of my classmates or my boyfriend, it may look like I’m not doing much. The blog is quiet. My other voluntary activities are cut back. It’s just me, my computer and sketchbook, and the office, for hours and hours and hours to come.

I really liked this post on Elise Blaha Cripe’s blog “Enjoy It”, about goals and to-do lists, and how she is so very productive, and creative.

She writes, “If you don’t break big goals up into actionable items they serve as nothing more than wishes and will not be accomplished. It all comes down to scheduling and then following through.”

Sometimes dreams have a waiting part to them. No, scratch that, I think all the time, dreams have a waiting part to them.

Thoughts, as always, are so very welcome.