Sorry for the lack of progress reports throughout 2025 and early 2026. My day job was brutal, and I was in a bad way healthwise for a lot of 2025, which I put down in part to my day job.
I’m not strictly a religious person, probably more spiritual, but in this matter, I’d love to think this was a divine intervention. A few weeks ago, I was laid off as part of a “reduction in workforce” program. I’ve been on the verge of quitting for a while now, and subconsciously I’ve been “slow quitting” for some time. That said, it was a shock to get laid off, and for the first week I did feel a little unanchored; in the second week, however, I felt a weight lift off my shoulders and was a lot happier. Third week, this is the best that could have happened to me. Thank you!!
I’ll miss the team, so a big thank you to Lonnie, Prateek, Dipanshu, Yogesh, Parveen, Swatantra, Siow Ting, and Wai Peng. I hope I haven’t forgotten anyone. I wish you the best and hope to see some of you in India next year.
Over the last few months, we’ve been slowly working on framing out the front door. We got some lovely local oak from John Paul, and I’ve been slowly constructing and painting the pieces at our apartment. We use linseed oil paint, which takes a long time to cure, but we’ve sped this up with some UV LED lights. More on the door in a future post.
I’ve also been working on tidying up the workspace at DM. For the last few years, we’ve been trying to crank out projects with little regard for workplace ergonomics, and it got to the point where you pretty much had to climb over “stuff” to get from one part of our workshop to the other. It took me about a week to sort things out, and now you can pretty much access all areas of the shop. I did take before-and-after shots, but I can’t find the before shots, so there’s no point in showing the after shots.
In between door work and cleaning the shop, I’ve been enjoying a bit of gardening. I never used to like it as a kid, but my parents were good gardeners, and fortunately, I did pick up some gardening tips from them. I’ve been working on two shady sections behind the house, and I decided to turn both into rock gardens. The first photos are from behind the house, and this is what you’ll see when you look out the rear windows: lots of ferns, hostas, and a bunch of other plants whose names I can’t remember. It will probably take a while to fill out, and I’ll also be adding some more rocks.
Surreal, but when I was happily weeding the new rock garden, I heard my parents speak to me. It was in my head, so no sound, but it felt 100% from my folks, and they simply said, “We’re crossing over.”
Here are some before and after pictures of the new rock garden. You can see how weedy and neglected it got. It’s nice to have the time to work on it.
Below we have our beautiful wild flower meadow. It was larger last year but had less color variation. Next year, we’ll extend it and add a stepping stone path through it. The Viburnum, as usual, looks magnificent, and our newly planted dogwood tree is doing great, shame I didn’t catch it in blossom.
Lastly, our new raised vegetable beds. Netted to protect them from the very cute woodchucks. We learned our lesson quickly when we found all our lettuce, rhubarb, parsley, and dill had been eaten down to the roots. We’re also growing basil, a few varieties of tomatoes, aubergine, leeks, and chilis.
Feels good to be back.