Finding a local boardgame group and getting outdoor faucets for garden and fire pit are both greater mental boosters than I realized before yesterday 🎵🎉

Evicted this lil guy from our garage.

Early fall mornings here are breath-taking.

RL “Stardew” farming update: Asian eggplants, okra, and first harvest of Chinese okra (luffa). Forgot to plant the luffa till pretty late in the season, impressed by how well they are doing.

Eggplants making a rebound with weather cooling down. Beautiful sunrise this morning too.

Beautiful fog panning over the river this morning.

Finally opened up the gauche kit mom helped me get half a year ago. Photo study. Weather has been ridiculously amazing in Arkansas last couple of days. Unsure if false fall or real fall but I will take it! Photo taken last year in CO.

First time seeing rainbow at home since we moved. Beautiful evening overall.

Sketch night doodle, immersed for a few hours in nostalgia-inducing nerd chatters about DnD and jokes/stories about the industry from a highly problematic but also in some ways purer time.

Lunch sketch group sketch. Getting the itch for pencil drawings again - been kind of slowly falling out of digital paintings since the AI pocalypse

Becoming a soup person due to the overwhelming need of eating up garden vegetables as well as the pure deliciousness.

Corn flowering.

Happy 4th!

From garden, about to become delicious soup. Grateful to have something to look forward to every day.

This morning’s garden harvest. We need to find a way to eat vegetables way faster!

In OG WoW, I loved running around in Un'goro Crater hunting and skinning everything as a happy little hunter. So I really enjoyed painting the signature card version of Restore the Wild for Hearthstone's The Lost City expansion. Many thanks to the AD Jim Nelson and the team. ©Blizzard Entertainment

The last piece of gear of Night Hunter of Hornworms, Head Net of Protection from Mosquitoes +1, is now ready in my deployment menu. Tried out the black light last night & caught 6 of those buggers poised to decimate humanity/tomatoes. Next time there will be less void debuff of buzzing & biting.

Just a little over a week into growing, the pea sprouts are ready for first harvest. Looking forward to having some fresh greens tonight!

Father’s Day delivery to my dad, then today’s haul. The smaller rounder brown sugar tomatoes taste reminiscent of a really tasty tomato variety we used to enjoy as fruit in NE China when I was a kid, as I hoped.

Last couple of day’s harvest

This is the first time we stayed home for 3 weeks (and going!) in a row since we started the moving process. Posting some garden updates: tomatoes, bell pepper are getting big. Eggplants and cucumbers are starting to form.

2 sunny days in a row without rain is kinda rare during the last couple weeks!

Nice evening after a few stormy days 🥰

First time eating home-grown spinach last night and it was shockingly flavorful. Probably the best-tasting home grown veggie we’ve had so far. Powered by this, started a new mini plot inside the garden. What to grow this late in the season TBD.

First harvest of spinach, a shocking amount given we’ve only planted 5 as a test and this was a partial harvest. This is the first produce out of our first year garden!

Came home to huge squash plants and even a few baby squashes. That was fast!

First time night time plein air, and last painting before going home. Oil on gesso board 8x10”. Not being used to going out into town/cities at night anymore, it felt surreal and a bit unsettling in an interesting way to be there.

Oil on gesso board 11” x 14”. Also saw big horned sheep in the wild for the first time ever, fittingly next to Sheep Lake. Magical.

Squeezed a lil 9x12 plein air into the morning before work. Challenged myself in getting over my fear of trying to paint straight lines in oil today.

Always love snowy mountains. Plein air from this morning, oil on gesso board 11x14”.

Got to paint out with mom again! Beautiful weather and RMNP. Oil on canvas 11x14.

Visiting mom and immediately met her deer neighbors literally one mailbox down. Magical.

Year one peaches are getting to apricot-size - probably too early for this tree to bear any meaningful fruits this year, but still fun to see.

Corn is finally planted, hoping for non-sweet corn I grew up loving. (Trying yellow dented.). Garden’s coming along nicely especially the tomatoes. In between watering stuff I had to pause and snap a picture because the morning was so beautiful.

Had to clarify to a teammate not once but twice that I use physical stickies instead of digital ones as part of my note-taking arsenal recently, which somehow restarted my habit of making meeting doodles. The middle creepy one came from a meeting that was getting a bit too long 😅

Dad and his wife visited, and turned out to be way more interested in learning woodland maintenance together with us than our original plans of hitting some AR state parks. Several hours of working together made for the start of a nice walking path as well as another unique memory together.

No trees, houses, dogs, or humans were harmed in the making of this bonfire!

Husband collected branches around the house that fell during the last storm, so I guess we’ll be having an epic bonfire soon.

Learned about Crimson Clovers today. They are now everywhere! Two weeks ago we left in early spring with leaves just peeking out. Came back to a spring explosion 💚

Mad dash with both work and other life things (not in a bad way), but we managed to mulch everything we’ve got so far. 3 more fruit trees and our year 1 planting is done - possibly will add a flower garden but less of a rush to catch the season.

This took significantly more time than it would in games like Stardew or Minecraft, but significantly less time than many things in game development ;) our first ever multi-bed garden is officially functional. Pending some reinforcements, path treatment, and (hopefully) water well set up.

Got our orchard started. Still waiting on a few trees to become available in the local nursery that’s been run by a kindly gentleman for almost 30 years.

In the last couple of days we went from “how the heck are we gonna build a fence” to appreciating the genius invention that is a T-post driver. YouTube has truly been an invaluable resource. Welded wire fence going up soon, so deers will hopefully not be eating out salad.

RL Stardew update: Getting close to the projected last frost date for this region. Getting sprouts acclimated to the outside now, and garden beds are ready to go once we get some de-fences up (sorry) against local deers.

Love it when we catch a river barge on our morning walk.

Town Of Zoz indie game official announcement today! So happy to finally share. Please Check us out and spread the word! 🔪🍄

Husband put up the feeder yesterday and these 2 bird buddies immediately showed up. Thought the big red one seemed surprisingly patient with “the adolescent one” before i realized it might be a lady friend.

I loved painting this chubby Moonkin for the Divination card for Hearthstone's Emerald Dream set :)

Picked through new batch of home grown bean sprouts. Should do this more often, so easy and sparks joy.

41st birthday! I remember feeling a little sad when hitting 30, but gotta say I’m already super enjoying this new decade where I’m finally fully embracing giving less of an eff every year instead of being a self conscious youth. Feel free to ask any questions or share any wisdom related to aging up!