Welcome to my monthly wrap-up for May & June 2025! I never got around to writing a wrap-up for May for no reason other than I just didn’t feel like doing it. lol. So, I’ve decided to combine the information for the past two months into one post.

First, let’s start with a garden update. This is for you, Celeste! 🙂 I got lots of stuff planted in May. The squash, green beans, banana peppers, bell peppers, lima beans, and okra all went into the ground. They are all thriving. I’ve already picked and eaten some bell peppers and banana peppers. The squash, green beans, and lima beans are all flowering right now. So, hopefully we’ll get some to eat before too long. Our planter of strawberries is consistently giving us some delicious berries, as well. We also discovered that we have a bunch of mulberry trees in our new yard. We’ve been munching on them for almost a month, now. Unfortunately, our lettuce and green onions didn’t really thrive, and the potatoes caught a fungus. I managed to save the potatoes with pruning and anti-fungal treatments, but the lettuce and green onions were a bust. I plan to start harvesting some potatoes in the next couple of weeks. So, we’ll see how that goes. We also bought a tomato plant in a planter, and it is growing tomatoes like crazy. I’m just waiting for them to ripen.

On the blogging front, things have been hit or miss. I have had some bursts of inspiration where I consistently posted and other weeks where I barely looked at the blog at all… Let’s not dwell on that, though. Now on to the monthly wrap-up!

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Welcome to my monthly wrap-up for April 2025! I’m a bit late again this month. I just really have not had any motivation to do these monthly wrap-up posts this year. They’ve honestly begun to feel like a bit of a chore, but I do feel accomplished when I finally finish them. So, here it is. lol.

April was a pretty great month. I spent so much time outdoors and got half of my garden planted. The potatoes, onions, lettuce, and carrots were all growing by the time the month ended. I also picked up a hanging basket of strawberries, which is doing really well, and a couple of blueberry bushes that I planted in pots. Fingers crossed we get a decent harvest of something. 🙂 Even if we don’t, I’ve still had a lot of fun working outside and watching everything grow. I also used my zero-turn mower for the first time. It took some getting used to, but I didn’t demolish anything while trying to drive it. So, I consider it a success.

On the blogging front, I managed to be fairly consistent with posting new stuff. I wrote some reviews and participated in some weekly memes. I even took the time to do some tags. My engagement with others was still pretty low, though. I just haven’t been feeling like spending a bunch of time on social media, but I do miss seeing what everyone else has been up to. Hopefully, I can be more active in May (spoiler alert: I’m not. 🤣).

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Welcome to my monthly wrap-up for March 2025! I’m a bit late again this month. Unfortunately, I just haven’t been in the mood for blogging that much. I finally got this post finished, though. So, here it is! lol.

March was a great month. The weather finally started warming up some, and I was able to spend more time outside. I began building my new raised garden beds. The yard had a bunch of limbs that needed picking up, as well. So, I got that done, too. In addition to my outdoor endeavors, I dominated the Trope-ical Readathon. I finished all of the prompts, and then some. It was the most I’ve read in a really long time, and I had a great time with it.

On the blogging front, things slowed down a bit. All of the extra time that I spent reading and doing outdoor chores kept me from blogging as much as I did the last few months. It also cut into my blog hopping time, which I’m a bit bummed about. I guess I need to work on figuring out how to balance my time a bit better. 🙂

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Welcome to my monthly wrap-up for February 2025! Yes. I realize it is already almost the end of March. Better late than never, though. Right? February was a good month. I had a great birthday and got to spend a week visiting my parents back in Louisiana. I spent most of my time at home hibernating because of the cold, which meant I had plenty of time to read. 🙂

The blog continued to flourish in February. I had my best day ever thanks to one post that really took off. I posted consistently throughout the month and even managed to get quite a lot of blog hopping done. It was just a really great month.

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Welcome to my monthly wrap-up for January 2025! January was truly a month of beginnings. My wife started her new job, and we both continued exploring our new home. The unpacking kept going slowly but surely, as well. I’ve been experiencing a real winter for the first time, and I like it for the most part. I’m definitely looking forward to spring, though. We’ve learned about some of the quirks of our house the hard way. lol. Yay for frozen pipes/vents, broken furnaces, and dead squirrels in the chimney. However, nothing too terrible or expensive has gone wrong. Hopefully, it stays that way.

The blog had a bit of a renaissance in January, as well. I posted way more than I have in a long time and views (total and per post) were up for the first time in almost a year. It’s amazing what a little consistency can accomplish. Now, let’s take a look at what I managed to read last month!

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The packing continued all throughout October. I finally managed to get all the books into boxes. I thought it would never end. lol. We ended up with 60+ boxes of books. I think 2025 will need to be a year of focusing on reading the stuff on my shelves even more than ever before. I am NEVER moving this many books again, and I need to read and cull any books that are not ones I love.

We’ll finally be heading to Illinois on November 16! It can’t come soon enough. I’m so ready to get through all of the stress and begin enjoying the process of exploring our new space. The impending move does mean I’ll be offline a bit more in mid to late November, but I’ll try to check in as often as I can.

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Welcome to this incredibly late monthly wrap-up post! Where did September and the first half of October go? So much has happened in such a short period of time. My wife accepted a new job in the Midwest, and she starts at the beginning of January. So, that means I’ve been getting everything ready for our move from Louisiana to Illinois. We’ve toured homes virtually and had an offer accepted on a house. Now we’re navigating inspections and mortgage applications, not to mention getting our current house ready to go on the market. The packing has been a full-time endeavor, and I’m only just getting started. It is all a bit overwhelming, but I know we’ll manage it.

On the blogging front, my blog hopping has still been extremely limited. Unfortunately, that is unlikely to change until sometime next year. With our impending move, I’m just extremely busy with the house buying/selling process and packing up all of our stuff. I’m honestly struggling to even read at this point. I just don’t have nearly as much free time as I used to.

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August was such a busy month. My roof finally got replaced. Yay! Now I’m broke, though. 🤣 Home stuff is just so expensive, and the roof took a nice chunk out of our savings. Despite the cost, I am extremely grateful to have it all finished and to have had the resources to keep a functional roof over our heads. My wife and I also visited what could potentially become our new home. She had a site visit at a potential employer in the Midwest, and we both really loved it there. Fingers crossed that everything works out. I’d definitely like to leave this Louisiana heat behind.

On the blogging front, my blog hopping has still been extremely limited. I hope that will change soon, but if we end up moving in the near future, it probably won’t get any better for a while. I did participate in the Trope-ical Readathon in August, though. It went pretty well all things considered, even though I didn’t quite finish all the prompts like I usually do.

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I am definitely glad to see the end of July. It was a rough month for a lot of reasons, including COVID, shingles, and roof leaks. You can read all about my woes here. Some things have gotten better, but the first part of August has sucked, too. lol. Shingles is no joke, ya’ll. I had the misfortune of developing it on my face/mouth. It is still not 100% better, but most of the sores have healed up. Now I just have to wait for the nerve pain to (hopefully) get better.

On the blogging front, I managed to finish all of my BBNYA round one excerpts despite all of the chaos. There are some phenomenal books in this year’s competition, and I’ve added quite a few of them to mount TBR. I did plan to write a post about my favorites that didn’t make it through round one, but it never happened because I wasn’t feeling well. I might still manage to get something up eventually. We’ll see. I was a bit more consistent with my blogging in July, at least until I started feeling very unwell. My blog hopping and engagement took a nosedive, though, with everything going on. It still hasn’t really recovered, but I’m hoping to be back to normal soon.

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