Psych!

If you had assumed that The Nearly Constant Gardener's blogging days were over based on my extraordinarily unpopular final blog, you would have been right, until today. I say that my final blog post, "All Good Things...," was extremely unpopular because I don't think anyone actually got it. It must have been a bit too cerebral for my readership, so I apologize. I intended for that to be an abrupt end to this blog, but I've had a change of heart. Consider this an early Christmas gift from me. At the risk of sounding arrogant, it may be the best one you get this year.

As you know, or hopefully inferred from all my previous references in the blog to starting law school in the fall, I started law school in the fall. Law school is hard. Law school requires an inordinate investment of time. There was no room for blogging. But now, law school is over, at least until sometime in January, but that's not for awhile so we don't have to worry about it.

It's not much but it's all a law student has time for.

Thanks to law school, I have no time for nearly constant gardening, or even sporadic gardening, but that's just as well because we had to move to New Orleans and leave behind my masterpiece in progress in East Austin. We miss it everyday, but I'm confidant that our tenants are taking good care of it.

Our meager gardening projects here in New Orleans, or as the locals call it "New Orleans," are confined to a few potted plants (some you may recognize from Austin). I'm not sure that I would even know how to garden in this city. It rains constantly. Without the time spent standing in the yard holding a water hose in one hand, I'm not sure how I would be able to drink and garden simultaneously. 

Drinking my gin and juice (with out Christmas tree).

I'm going to break from TNCG tradition here (blogger's prerogative), and suggest a Tuesday Morning Gardening Cocktail on a Friday morning. This is because, as with anytime I suggest a cocktail, I feel the need to justify drinking at an entirely inappropriate hour of the morning. Gone are the halcyon days of being drunk before Travis left for work last spring and summer, all in the pretext of blogging. In my attempt to recapture the magic of that bygone era, I am today, on the morning after my final final exam (Criminal Law, picture me miming shooting myself in the temple), nearly drunk at 10:45 am.

Oh, and by the way, the cocktail is gin and (cranberry) juice, just like Snoop Dog and The Gourds.

A pansy, the most masculine of winter flowers.

In case I don't blog ever again (I make no promises but, as you know, I am self-indulgent and enjoy the ego boost my blog provides), merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, happy Festivus (my favorite thanks to the "airing of grievances" tradition), happy Kwanza, happy Winter break, or happy whatever else is going on in your life wherever you are. I like to cover my bases in acknowledgement of the international reach of this blog.