Happy Saturday to all! Once again, thank you, Natalie, for hosting #WeekendCoffeeShare each weekend.

Can you believe this is the last weekend of 2025? By this time next Saturday, the first weekend of 2026 would’ve arrived. 2025 would be last year, past tense, old news.

I am excited for 2026 to arrive, are you? I am excited for the new garden season. It’ll be my fourth? or fifth garden season. I suppose it’ll be my fourth season where I’ll start my own seeds but it’ll be my fifth season of growing food in the garden. Anyway, I’m excited for seed-starting season. It’s so fun to start seeds in little trays, each seed I sow is a new life waiting to be sprouted into this world. My seed collection has gotten bigger and bigger over the years but somehow, I already remember the seeds I have in my brain.

Speaking of the garden, everything is practically at a standstill at the moment because of the day-length and temperature. According to the forecast, yesterday (December 26) was the probably the last warm day until spring because as if a switch will be flipped, the temperature will turn frigid starting tomorrow. It’ll be so cold that I needed to add a medium-weight frost cloth underneath the nursery plastic to add a few more degrees of protection to the plants. Hopefully, the frost cloth will prevent icicles from forming on the leaves since I’m still depending on the veggies for food.

I managed to pull out a daikon radish (the radish on the right in the photo) that was at least a foot long this week. I am amazed by how well the daikon radish turned out this year. They are long, fat, and straight. No forking at all! I wonder if it has to do with the amount of my homemade compost that was put in. I also wonder if this means I can finally grow carrots in this bed in 2026. I rarely have luck growing carrots. They either turn out so small or they will turn out to be forked. I can’t wait to try to grow carrots.

This week is the start to my Christmas break from work and I won’t return to work until January 5, 2026, when I’ll be racing toward a tight deadline to not only close out the month of December but also to close out the year 2025. I tried to do all that I can in the last week or so, so that when I return, I won’t be overwhelmed.

So far, I’ve kept to my original plan of staying at home. Almost getting side-swiped on the interstate last weekend had me rattled to go drive anywhere. The image of seeing that SUV coming so close and me swerving the car to dodge kept replaying in my head, waking me up at night. I know it’s silly to think the universe is somehow trying to kill me with 2 driving close-calls in a month, I feel like people are somehow driving more recklessly at this time of the year.

My original plan included doing some light reading to look for garden inspirations but so far, I feel like I’m watching more YouTube videos than reading as I’m trying to catch up on all the videos I’ve saved in my “Watch Later” playlist. Somehow, the gardening books and magazines haven’t been very inspiring.

Meanwhile, my aunt has been begging me to take her to Walmart. She wants to buy a new pair of slippers and I am wanting to buy a set of heat-less curlers. After making my hair wavy for the photo-shoot 2 weeks ago, I am now a fan of the wavy hair look but I don’t have the time to do my hair with a curling iron on a daily basis. So I guess I’ll have face my fears and drive.

I appreciate you reading my updates and I wish you a wonderful week ahead and a happy new year. I’ll see you back here in 2026.