Good morning! Welcome to #weekendcoffeeshare, hosted by Natalie of Natalie the Explorer, who is taking a break this week (so no link-up) but please still feel free to come on in and have a drink and a chat.
Strangely, this has been a good week.
I don’t know whether it’s because I was awarded Employee of the Quarter at work or that I finally got a few of the garden beds cleaned out, but the week itself has been good.
Personally, even though it was great to be recognized and getting the congratulatory messages from co-workers, not to mention a $50 award, I don’t think it’s anything to brag or sneeze about. After all, I am just doing my job.
Of course, you can guess who I did not get a praise from.
Ding ding ding!
It’s my mom. For as long as I’ve lives, I don’t think she’s praised me once. Is that why I get subpar grades when I was in school? Because I don’t get a reaction from my parent when I do well? Is that why I do well at my job? Because I get praises from my manager and co-workers? Perhaps, I look at praises as a form of support and motivation?
After so many years, I don’t know why I still bother to try to please that woman. Optimism, I guess, even though we barely talk these days, unless the topic is about the stock market, or maybe I kept hoping that she would change.
The temperature plummeted this week – from 80-Fahrenheit (26.6-Celsius) to the 40’s and 50’s (4-10-Celsius) between Wednesday night and Thursday morning. I felt like it was garden apocalypse and spent the first half of the week pulling out the remaining sweet potatoes plants and and harvesting all the peppers before moving all the temperature sensitive plants into the garage, where the temperature is about 20-degrees (Fahrenheit) warmer.
The sweet potato harvest in the front yard was a disappointment. There were hardly any sweet potatoes there. The roots were enlarged but the potatoes just never got formed. My mom actually wanted to push the harvest to Thursday, when it’s rainy and cold but I put my foot down, and said I wasn’t going to dig around the raised bed for sweet potatoes when it’s cold and wet outside. She wasn’t happy and threw a tantrum.
Unbelievable, right?
I also harvested some Granny-Smith and Golden Delicious apples from my aunt and uncle’s tree next door. The tree is a multi-branch grafted tree, planted by my mom back in 2010 when we were residents of the house. This kind of tree was popular back then, where one tree has 3 to 4 varieties of apples on it.
I also harvested some Fuji apples from the tree in my front yard. I am not really a fan of eating apples raw because of my teeth but they are pretty good cooked in oatmeal with a bit of cinnamon.
I felt an urgency to clean out the garden so I could throw some 6-mm nursery plastic over the raised bed to protect the pepper plants from the cold. Pepper plants don’t do well when temperature falls below 50-degrees-Fahrenheit (10-degree-Celsius) and if it fell below 40, then there’s a chance that it’d die and I can’t have that.
Speaking of harvest, I cleaned out my potato bed last weekend and dug up about 5 pounds of potatoes. I am definitely going to savor these over the winter.
I appreciate you stopping by. Until next we chat. 🙂
This is Another Story 
Congratulations on receiving the recognition and award Yinglan
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Thank you. 😊
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You’re welcome
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Grand award! Yay! Congratulations! Fabulous harvest! Sorry about sweet potatoes.
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Thank you.
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Nice post and congratulations on the award! I was always in my sister’s shadow at school and because I wasn’t good at the same subjects she was, I was considered stupid. Didn’t matter what I was good at.
Ho hum. At least at home both of us were encouraged in different things that made up our interests and personality.
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Thank you.
Being in anyone’s shadow is never easy. I don’t have siblings but I feel like I’m constantly in my mom’s shadow as she’s always comparing herself to me, no matter what the subject is.
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I was always in my sister’s shadow, and the best thing I ever did was move away from the parental COUNTY, let alone house, after my divorce. Luckily though my parents treated me as an individual and the shadow bit was my 5 years at grammar school.
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That’s great that your parents treat you as an individual.
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There were always comparisons but we weren’t expected to be mirror images of each other and had our own strengths and weaknesses. Grammar school didn’t see it like that though.
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So lovely to catch up with you, Yinlan. I haven’t been blogging as much, and of course, just the weekend I decided to do a coffee share post and stayed up way too late, Natalie took a blogging break. So, it was good to see you and Trent had popped by anyway.
Wow! All your fruit and vegetable growing is impressive and very inspiring. I have a worm farm out the back because I really believe in reducing household waste and returning what we can to the soil. We currently have quite a healthy looking tomato plant growing there and I get a few cherry tomatoes from there occasionally but nothing close to resembling your efforts or a “harvest”.
Congratulations on your award. There might be the odd person who doesn’t want to be acknowledged for doing a good job and anybody who doesn’t want a cash bonus has to be a tad mad in my book. You self-esteem seems in a healthy zone of having some doubts but well aware from becoming a narcissist. I am a parent now myself and it’s hard to know quite how to juggle expectations, encouragement and also wielding the stick and having to play tough cop. I always hope my kids will automatically do the right thing and simply follow the yellow brick road to independence. They are now 20 and 18. However, that vision of smooth effortless travel is quite unrealistic, especially for school leavers trying to find their calling in life. For some it is easy, but more difficult for others. My kids had so much put on hold with the extended covid lockdowns we had here. They also get anxious and are baulking at getting their driver’s licenses. So many people take a few goes to pass and so they don’t sit the test. Getting jobs has also proved challenging. I don’t want to be lacking in compassion as they navigate these challenging waters, but there are times I truly feel like putting my foot down. Anyway, on that note, I need to head off and help our son make dinner to take out tonight.
Hope you have a great week and it’s been great catching up.
Best wishes,
Rowena
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